The Paraguayan Capital Police’s Investigations Department was the main clandestine torture and detention centre in Paraguay. The four-storey building was situated at No. 265 Presidente Franco Street in the capital city of Asunción.

The Investigations Department was responsible for a network of other torture and detention centres situated nearby. One of its branches called “Vigilancia y Delitos” (“Vigilance and Crimes”) was the first destination where political prisoners were brought.

In 1968, the Chief of Police, Pastor Coronel, assumed the leadership of Paraguay’s Investigations Police. Once Pastor Coronel was appointed to the Investigations Department, he brought about significant changes. He turned the Department into the central point for repression across the entire country, which assumed duties related to intelligence and controlling social and political dissent. The Investigations Department fulfilled its duties in cooperation with the intelligence offices of the Armed Forces and the National Directorate of Technical Issues (Dirección Nacional de Asuntos Técnicos), also known as “la Técnica”.

According to the report produced by Paraguay’s Truth and Justice Commission, it is estimated that 2,000 people were tortured and detained at the Investigations Department, 39 of whom were disappeared or assassinated. This same report highlights that the abductions and torture were not carried out in the clandestine detention centre, but rather in official places whose existence was known throughout Paraguayan society. The publication notes that almost 80% of the arrests of political prisoners were carried out in various local police stations and departments. 30% of the abductions and tortures took place in the Investigations Department secret prison.

During the 1970s, the Investigations Department was Paraguay’s operational interface with the other services which were working in coordination with different forces across the region in the context of Operation Condor.

Survivors’ testimonies have revealed the brutality of the conditions of confinement and torture. Several aspects of the prison conditions could be traced back to the brutality that was common during the colonial era. The victims mentioned that they were beaten with clubs and leather whips used for animals, which were known by their name in the indigenous language, Guarani: tejuruguái. The Investigations Department stood out for the cruelty of its torturers who referred to the whips with sarcastic names, such as the “national constitution”, “democracy” and “human rights”. Some of the whips had a piece of metal at the end to inflict more serious injuries and pain.

It has been revealed that 28 victims of Operation Condor passed through this torture centre. An emblematic case is that of the Chilean national, Jorge Isaac Fuentes Alarcón and the Argentine national, Amílcar Santucho; both of whom were held there in May 1975, following their abduction.

Fuentes Alarcón was tortured and interrogated by Pastor Coronel. He was then handed over to agents from the Chilean Directorate of National Intelligence (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional, DINA). A document was found in which the Director of the DINA, Colonel Manuel Contreras sent his sincere gratitude to the Head of the Paraguayan Investigations Police, Pastor Coronel for cooperating with the DINA agents during their mission in Paraguay.

Another emblematic case which illustrates the role of the Investigations Police in the regional repressive coordination is that of the Paraguayan national, María Rosa Aguirre. The young woman was captured by the Uruguayan Joint Forces in the capital of Montevideo in 1974, while she was pregnant. Aguirre was secretly transferred to Paraguay, where she was held for several months in the Investigations Department and other police units during her pregnancy. It is presumed that the 20-year-old woman later died from childbirth at the “Rigoberto Caballero Police Clinic” (“Policlínico Policial Rigoberto Caballero”), but her body was never found. From the documents found at the Paraguayan Archives of Terror, it was possible to identify her daughter, who recovered her identity in 1999.

The building is currently used as the headquarters of the Capital Police’s Human Rights Department.

The archives of the Investigations Department were discovered in 1992 in a police station in the city of Lambaré. These documents, which became known as the “Archives of Terror” (“Los Archivos del Terror”), are now available to access in the Museum of Justice (“Museo de Justicia”) at the Centre of Documentation and Archives for the Defence of Human Rights (“Centro de Documentación y Archivo para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos”).