THE REPUBLIC OF PARAGUAY
We have seen how Paraguay, having in the early days of the war of
liberation compelled the retirement of the Argentine army commanded by
General Belgrano, was left to its own resources. It is said by some that
Belgrano, during the intercourse he maintained with the Paraguayans
subsequent to the defeat of his force and previous to his definite
retreat, contrived to inculcate some ideas of independence into the
heads of the officials of the inland province. These seeds of liberty
may or may not have borne fruit, but in any case it is certain that
public opinion in Paraguay rapidly veered round in favour of
independence, and as early as 1811 the Spanish Government was replaced
by a Junta, which consisted of a President, two Assessors, and a
Secretary. The person appointed to the latter office was Don Jose Gaspar
Rodriguez de Francia, whose name was destined to become dreaded
throughout the length of the Republic which was now to establish itself.
It was not long before the strong personality of Francia dominated the
Junta. The history of Paraguay at this period differs widely from those
of the more progressive nations surrounding it. In Paraguay a certain
_opera bouffe_ element, together with a series of grimly farcical
incidents, continually mingled themselves with some of the darkest
tragedies that have been known in any age. From the very start something
of the kind had become evident. The members of the Junta, for instance,
finding their own means insufficient to support the pomp and state which
was suddenly thrust upon them, and which they had grown to love, began
to adopt some extraordinary measures in order to maintain their
position. Any portable national assets were sold without the least
compunction for this purpose, and they even went to the length of
compelling State prisoners to purchase their liberty--an idea which
undoubtedly ranks as one of the most extraordinary schemes for raising
money ever employed. Measures such as this constituted a sufficiently
ominous beginning; they provided, indeed, an only too true augury of
what was to come and from what species of wrongs the unfortunate country
was doomed to suffer for generations.
In justice to Francia himself it must be said that he took no part in
these first minor acts of oppression. His grim and proud nature cared
but little for mere matters of pomp and ceremony. Money and possessions,
curiously enough, affected him little. Messrs. Rengger and Longchamps
vouch for it that, having once discovered that he was the possessor of
800 piastres, he thought this sum a great deal too much for a single
person, and he spent it. A remedy such as this seems simple enough for
an unusual complaint!
By the year 1813 all but the most powerful elements of the Junta had
been weeded out. The power was now confined to the two remaining
members--Dr. Francia and his colleague, Fulgencio Yegros. These were now
endowed with the titles of Consul. Two curule chairs were specially
manufactured for them. These classical seats were covered with leather.
On one was the name of Caesar, on the other that of Pompey. It is
possible that Francia had some faint smattering of Latin and of Roman
history; at all events, he is said to have pounced on the first and
eagerly to have taken possession of it. The two Consuls began their
reign by employing a vast amount of ceremony and form in order to
accomplish a few quite arbitrary acts. The majority of these were
directed against the Spaniards, who, suffering now from the swing of the
pendulum of fate, were as much oppressed as they had formerly oppressed.
Indeed, the situation of those Spaniards who still remained in Paraguay
was now pitiable in the extreme. Persecuted on all sides by the high
officials, they could expect, in the face of an example such as this,
scant consideration from the populace.
In the year 1814 Francia determined that the time had come when he could
dispense with the services of his colleague, Yegros. By means of a _coup
d'etat_ he packed the Congress, and succeeded in intimidating his
adversaries. As a result, he was named Dictator of Paraguay for a period
of three years, notwithstanding a counter-move on the part of the
military followers of Yegros. This was calmed by Yegros himself. In a
moment of considerable generosity this latter pacified the officers and
the troops, and thus left the way clear for Dr. Francia.
At this period the new Dictator again gave evidence of his curiously
complex character. Congress, anxious to please the new ruler, whose
power of domination had already become so evident, had allotted to His
Excellency the Dictator an annual allowance of 9,000 piastres. Francia
definitely refused to accept more than one-third of this, and, moreover,
continued firm in his refusal, alleging that the State was far more in
need of money than he. On paper, never was the start of a
Chief-of-State's career more fraught with promise than that of
Francia's. He had given evidence of despotism, but also of an earnest
spirit. No sooner had the reins of absolute power fallen to his lot than
he altered entirely the mode of his life. From a comparative libertine
he became a man of austere habits, displaying a most extraordinary
industry in his attention to the matters of State. His manner, moreover,
was affable to poor and rich alike, and the claims of the humblest met
with a courteous consideration rare in any State at any time, but doubly
amazing in a period of chaos such as was reigning throughout the
Continent at the time.
In 1817 his period of Dictatorship expired. It was then that Francia
made his supreme effort. Intrigues, persuasions, and veiled threats
strengthened the position which his cautious and cleverly conceived
conduct had created for him. Numbers of his creatures now came forward
with suggestions. Congress fell into the trap, and Francia was appointed
Dictator of Paraguay for life. This was the moment for which Francia had
waited so patiently and so long. With the last obstacle to his full
power now removed, the change in the Dictator's conduct was as complete
as it was sudden. Had he sat at the right hand of Nero his refinements
of tyranny could not have been more successful. In a very short while
his methods had terrorized Asuncion.
When Dr. Francia and his hussar escort rode abroad, the streets through
which the cavalcade passed resembled a desert, for anyone who had the
misfortune to find himself anywhere near the line of route was set upon
and beaten with the flat of their swords by the hussars for the mere
fact of daring to be in the neighbourhood of the Dictator in a public
place. At the outset there were some who protested. The fate of every
one of these was, at the lightest, to be flung into dungeons and loaded
with massive and torturing chains.
Following the inevitable progress of tyranny, as time went on Francia's
vigilance and cruelty increased, while as the discontent of the populace
became evident his suspicions grew more and more on the alert.
Conceiving the possibility of an assassin lurking behind one of the
orange-trees with which the streets of the capital were so liberally and
beautifully planted, Francia cut them down, and it is said that when his
horse once shied at the sight of a barrel before a door, the owner of
the cask was made to suffer severely on account of the nerves of the
Dictator's steed!
Paraguay gradually became more and more a hermit State under the rule of
this despot. It was difficult in the extreme to enter the country, but,
having once passed its frontiers, it was harder still to return. Forts
were established along the borders, and the rivers were strictly
policed. A strict watch was kept on all travellers, and none might move
from spot to spot without being in possession of a passport especially
granted by the Dictator. Some there were who attempted to make their way
from the now dreaded country through the vast swamps of the Chaco, but
death at the hands of the Indians or the teeth of the wild beasts was
the usual result.
It was inevitable that stagnation of commerce should have ensued, but
the traders by this time no longer dared to complain openly. Francia
himself, so long as he had the State to govern, cared little whether its
people were rich or poor. As for the unfortunate Spaniards in Paraguay,
the enactments against them became more and more severe. As evidence of
his supreme contempt for these Europeans, Francia issued a decree by
which they were forbidden to intermarry with a white woman. This
extraordinary measure shows the length to which this strange man carried
his tyranny, and how deeply was the hatred of the Spaniard implanted in
his queer and grim mind.
It is impossible, however, to go fully into the details of Francia's
autocratic reign, incredible as many of these are. The destruction of
the Church, the secularization of the monks, wholesale executions and
torturings, the suppression of the Post Office, and a hundred other acts
of irresponsible and childish tyranny--these are only some of the
episodes which characterized the days of his rule.
During all this while the power of the army grew until militarism became
rampant--militarism, that is to say, instigated by Francia, since no
officer or man of his troops dared move hand or finger unless commanded
by the Dictator himself. His title was now "Supremo Dictator Perpetuo de
la Republica del Paraguay" (Supreme and Perpetual Dictator of the
Republic of Paraguay).
This he retained until the day of his death, no man daring to dispute
for a single instant his perfect right to the title. Grim and
implacable, he continued his career unchallenged to the last.
Considering the circumstances, his vitality remained unimpaired for a
strangely long period, for Francia died at the advanced age of eighty
years, after a virtual reign of nearly thirty years.
Francia was succeeded by Carlos Antonio Lopez, who showed himself, by
comparison, a liberal-minded and progressive ruler. During his reign few
events of real importance occurred, although the trading facilities
permitted by the new Dictator were responsible for the increasing
intercourse between Paraguay and the outer world. On the death of Carlos
Antonio Lopez the chief office of the State of Paraguay was occupied by
his eldest son, Francisco Solano Lopez.
Francisco Solano had seen more of the outer world than was usual in the
case of the Paraguayan of that period. He had resided in Paris, where he
had carried out a diplomatic mission, and where his intelligence had won
golden opinions from all those who came into contact with him. Indeed,
the impression he had produced on all sides was favourable in the
extreme, and great things were expected as the outcome of his government
in Paraguay.
On the death of his father Lopez showed no small sense of initiative,
for the only office to which he could assume any shadow of a right to
claim at the moment was that of Vice-President. Acting in this capacity,
he obtained immediate control of the army, summoned a meeting of the
Deputies, and told them it was their task to elect a new President.
Seeing that the building was surrounded by troops in the pay of Lopez,
the great majority took the hint. Two only of their number did not
acclaim Francisco Solano as the new autocrat of Paraguay, and as these
two disappeared on the following night, and were never seen again, the
unwisdom of opposition was strongly inculcated from the start. The
Dictator's full title was "Jefe Supremo y General de los Exercitos de la
Republica del Paraguay"; his familiar title, and the one he most
encouraged, was "Supremo."
With the power once in his hands, Francisco Solano Lopez changed his
tactics as completely and as abruptly as had Francia in his day. Tyranny
once more became the accepted order of things. Lopez had brought with
him from France his mistress, Madame Lynch, a Parisian of Irish descent,
and it was this latter alone who possessed the slightest influence over
the new autocrat. Indeed, once firmly established on his throne--for his
Dictator's seat was in reality nothing less--Lopez II. showed a most
callous disregard for the lives of any of his subjects, whether great or
small. Ever since his visit to France Napoleon had constituted his ideal
of manhood, and it was upon the conduct of the great Corsican that he
loved to think he modelled his own.
Certainly Lopez was utterly free from any dread of holocaust. In a very
short while the prisons had been filled to overflowing, and the red soil
of Paraguay grew redder with the blood of hundreds of executions. Once
again the barriers began to be set up between Paraguay and the outer
world, and once again it became almost impossible for one who had
crossed its frontiers to return to his native land. But, since it was
the fate of Lopez to have lived in a later age than Francia, the
ambitions of this third Dictator were correspondingly enlarged. It was
not his design ultimately to shut off Paraguay from the rest of the
Continent; it was his plan rather to cause the frontiers of his country
to spread until they had enveloped all the other lands. Thus he
considered he was acting in conformity with the true Napoleonic
tradition, and also, incidentally, with his own desires and dreams.
In order to be prepared for the great day which was to come to Paraguay,
the army was increased, trained, and drilled until it became one of the
most important and efficient military organizations in the Continent.
This army was completely and entirely the toy of Lopez. The men were his
to be shot or promoted at his slightest whim, and the officers were
subjected to precisely the same irresponsible but merciless discipline.
Even at this period in no other country of South America, perhaps, would
such a state of affairs have continued. Paraguay, however, as has been
explained, differed in its ethics from any of the neighbouring States.
The population was largely composed of civilized Guarani Indians, and
the section of this great family in these latitudes had from the
earliest days of the Continent been noted for its easy-going and
somewhat indolent qualities.
The result of the intercourse between the Spaniards and Indians had
produced a small minority of _mestizos_, whose enterprise scarcely
exceeded that of the natives. The soft and enervating climate was, of
course, largely responsible for this; indeed, it was inevitable that a
beautiful and lotus-eating land of the kind should have produced
inhabitants to match. A few only of the Paraguayans had had the
advantage of travelling in Europe, and on their return to their native
land its atmosphere very seldom permitted them to remain for long
without the local and somewhat demoralizing influences.
Had Lopez been content to continue to act as supreme and all-powerful
lord of every man and thing within his own frontiers, the affairs of
Paraguay, enlivened at intervals by those salutary orgies of executions,
might have drowsed on indefinitely. For a man of the temperament of
Francisco Solano Lopez such comparative repression was impossible. He
had dreamed himself Emperor of South America, and this he was determined
to be.
Of all the neighbouring countries, Brazil was the first to be alarmed.
She had the most reason, since her frontiers ran to the greatest length
side by side with those of the land which held the ambitious Dictator.
Ere Francisco Solano Lopez had reigned two years the inevitable had
occurred. Arrogance and threats of aggression on the part of the inland
State, resentment and profound mistrust on the part of the Brazilian
Empire, led to open breach. The pretext lay in the joint interference on
the part of Brazil and Paraguay in the internal affairs of Uruguay,
which troubled Republic was just then in a more than usually violent
state of revolution.
Lopez, in a moment of somewhat artificial exaltation, protested solemnly
against the Brazilian policy as directed against Uruguay. Since this
protest was ignored, Lopez resolved on war. He commenced hostilities by
the capture of the _Marques de Olinda_, a Brazilian steamer which
conveniently found itself at the moment at Asuncion, on its way up the
great river system to the Imperial territory of Matto Grosso.
The crew and the passengers of the _Marques de Olinda_ were taken ashore
as prisoners. These included the Brazilian Governor of Matto Grosso,
who, together with the great majority of his fellow-passengers, was
destined never to see his native land again. This decisive act lit up
the flames of war, and the most important struggle between the races of
its own soil which the Continent had ever seen now commenced; for in the
end, not only were Brazil and Paraguay involved, but the neighbouring
States of Argentina and Uruguay as well.