Martín Almada
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Martín Almada (b. 30 January 1937) is a lawyer, writer and educationalist from Paraguay. He was born in Puerto Sastre, but his family moved to San Lorenzo, near the capital Asunción, when he was six. After he had finished his studies in educational science in 1963, he founded the educational institution "Juan Bautista Alberdi" in San Lorenzo and the "Centro de Animación Sociocultural". He then embarked on a law degree and graduated in 1968.
In 1972, he became the president of the association of educationalists of San Lorenzo, a local action group that received support by other sections of the society and positioned itself as an opposition of the dictatorship.
In this time, Almada graduated at the University of La Plata in Argentina as a doctor of educational science. His thesis on education in his home country was sent to the government in Paraguay as an act of information exchange of Operation Condor. As a result, Almada's work was brutally interrupted by the military regime of Alfredo Stroessner and he was left behind with the death of his wife, the intervention by the state and the persecution of two of his lecturers. He himself was imprisoned as a political enemy in 1974 and tortured for about three and a half years.
A campaign by Amnesty International resulted in Almada's release in 1977. He went into exile with his mother and his children and wrote his book Paraguay: The Forgotten Jail, the Country in Exile about his time in torture. The book raised discussions about human rights all over the world. In 1986, he joined UNESCO until 1992, when he returned to Paraguay. There he concentrated on the publication of papers of the dictatorship that reveal its repression and torture and in 1992, he finally discovered the ”Terror archives”.
He received several awards for his courage and work, including the prize "Antorcha a la libertad” of the Libre Foundation in Asunción in 1999 and the Right Livelihood Award in 2002.
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[edit] Publications
Paraguay: The Forgotten Jail, can be downloaded from Martín Almada's website
