Paraguayan Gringo

The next dictator was Carlos Antonio López. López loosened the ties of dictatorship only slightly, but reversed Francia’s paranoid isolationism. He reestablished communications with the outside world and normalized relations with the papacy. López encouraged road and railway building, improved education somewhat, and became the largest landowner and the richest man in Paraguay. He made his son Francisco Solano López commander-in-chief of the army, thereby ensuring the younger López’s succession to power in 1862, when the elder López died.

During his dictatorship, Francisco Solano López provoked quarrels with Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, who allied and attacked Paraguay. The War of the Triple Alliance (1865–70), sometimes called the Paraguayan War, was the bloodiest in Latin American history. López, who fancied himself a Latin Napoleon, drafted virtually every male in Paraguay over the age of 12, with no upper age limit, and insisted that his troops never surrender. The war was a disaster for Paraguay, which lost two-thirds of all its adult males, including López himself. Paraguay’s population fell from about 600,000 to about 250,000. The war also cost Paraguay 55,000 square miles of territory, its economic wellbeing, and its pride.

For the next 50 years, Paraguay stagnated economically. The male population was replaced by an influx of immigrants from Italy, Spain, Germany, and Argentina. Politically, there was a succession of leaders, alternating between the Colorado and Liberal parties. Then, a long-smoldering feud with Bolivia broke into open warfare (1932–35) after oil was discovered in the Chaco, a desolate area known as the “green hell.” Although outnumbered three to one, the Paraguayans had higher morale, were brilliantly led, and were better adapted to the climate of the region. Moreover, they regarded the conflict as a national undertaking to avenge the defeat of 1870. Paraguayans conquered three-fourths of the disputed territory, most of which they retained following the peace settlement of 1938.

Although President Eusebio Ayala emerged victorious from the Chaco War, he did not last long. The war produced a set of heroes, all of whom had great ambitions. One such man, Col. Rafael Franco, took power in February 1936. In 1939, after two more coups, Gen. José Felix Estigarribía, commander-in-chief during the Chaco War, was elected president. Estigarribía was killed in an airplane crash only a year later, and Gen. Higinio Morínigo, the minister of war, was appointed president by the cabinet. Through World War II, Morínigo received large amounts of aid from the United States, even though he allowed widespread Axis activity in the country. Meanwhile, he dealt harshly with domestic critics.

Morínigo retired in 1948, but was unable to find a successor. After a one-year period of instability, Federico Chávez seized control, and ruled from 1949 until 1954. In May 1954, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, used his cavalry to seize power. He had himself elected president as the candidate of the Colorado Party, and then was reelected in another single-slate election in 1958, although he did permit the Liberal Party to hold its first convention in many years. With US help, he brought financial stability to an economy racked by runaway inflation, but he used terrorist methods in silencing all opposition. Exiles who invaded Paraguay simultaneously from Argentina and Brazil in December 1959 were easily routed. Six other small invasions during 1960 were also repulsed. Stroessner won a third presidential term in February 1963, despite the constitutional stipulation that a president could be reelected only once.In August 1967, a constitutional convention approved a new governing document that not only provided for a bicameral legislature but also established the legal means for Stroessner to run for reelection. Stroessner did so in 1968, 1973, 1978, 1983, and 1988, all with only token opposition permitted. On 17 September 1980, the exiled former dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, who had been granted asylum by the Stroessner government, was assassinated in Asunción, and Paraguay broke off relations with Nicaragua.

During the 1980s, Stroessner relaxed his hold on Paraguay. The state of siege, which had been renewed every three months since 1959 (with a partial suspension from February 1978 to September 1980), was allowed to lapse in April 1987. Opponents of the regime gave credit for the ending of the state of siege to the United States, which had kept pressure on the Stroessner administration. However, allegations of widespread human rights abuses continued to be made. In April 1987, Domingo Laíno, an opposition leader exiled in December 1982, who had tried unsuccessfully to enter the country on five earlier occasions, was allowed to return to Paraguay. Part of this liberalization may have been in response to mounting criticism from the Roman Catholic Church, whose position moved closer to that of the various dissident groups.