Silva Paranhos and the construction of a post-Lopista Paraguay

Abstract

The Paraguayan or Triple Alliance War is generally known for its terrible destructiveness and loss of life, essentially unequalled in the history of modern Latin America. What is less well known are the efforts made to create a new regime as the government (and army) of Marshal Francisco Solano López was breathing its last in the eastern forests of Paraguay. The following article discusses the events surrounding this process of nation-building, noting how a key Brazilian diplomat had the unenviable task of defending his own country’s geopolitical interests while attempting to put the Paraguayan Humpty-Dumpty back together in 1869–70. Here it is argued that he succeeded with the first but only partially with the second.

Keywords:

• Paraguay
• Brazil
• Argentina
• Triple Alliance
• territorial disputes
• provisional government
• nation-building
• diplomacy

Notes

1. La Regeneración (Asunción), 31 December 1869 alluded to staggering losses recorded in a preliminary census, findings also asserted shortly thereafter by Paraguayan doctor Cirilo Solalinde, who saw the disaster at first hand and who noted that the Paraguayan population had fallen to less than 100,000. See Solalinde Testimony (Asunción, 14 January 1871), in Scottish Record Office (Edinburgh), CS 244/543/19. In the late 1990s, a previously undiscovered national census for 1870–71 came to light in the Paraguayan Defense Ministry’s Archive, and the high losses it recorded generally confirmed the picture of a demographic disaster. See “Censo general de la república del Paraguay según el decreto circular del Gobierno Provisorio de 29 de septiembre de 1870,” in Whigham and Potthast (1999) and Kleinpenning (2011).

2. Paranhos notes, Rio de Janeiro, 23 January 1869, in Archivo Nacional de Asunción-Colección Rio Branco [hereinafter ANA-CRB] I-30, I-30, 25, 41, no. 2, and Oneto y Viana (1903, 235–45).

3. Argentina’s president Bartolomé Mitre had tied his own political fortunes to the Triple Alliance. As the war progressed, however, a great many politicians in Argentina came to doubt the wisdom of his policy. They resented the loss of life that had occurred whenever Brazilians had been in command, and looked to find ways to distance the national government from any long-term relation with the traditional rival. The 1868 presidential election threw power to Sarmiento, an anti-war candidate mainly concerned that Argentina not concede too much influence in Paraguay to Brazil, nor relinquish any of the previously indicated territorial claims. See Whigham (2011–13, vol. 3, 224–31).

4. “Chronique,” Ba-Ta-Clan (Rio de Janeiro), 5 April 1869. Many Argentines, and not a few members of the Legión Paraguaya, had favored elevating General Juan Andrés Gelly y Obes to Paraguayan Head of State. His father had been born in the country and had once served as minister in a previous government. See Decoud (1869).

5. The Standard saw in this delay the hand of Brazilian officers and politicians: “What are we doing? Where are we going? What are we looking forward to? […] Holding the prize in their hands, [the Brazilians] are in no hurry whatsoever, and such is their confidence in the future, that while waiting for the arrival of [Paranhos], many of the officers, even of superior grade, have plunged into the vortex of commerce, and deal in anything and everything […] [General Guilherme] may be clever, and a good soldier, but he is not fit to command an army […] We are conceding to inactivity, what we never did to audacity and pretensions.” See “The Seat of War (Asunción), 15 Feb. 1869,” The Standard (Buenos Aires), 20 February 1869.

6. European merchants and sutlers had for some time been very active behind the Allied lines operating barber shops, groceries, saddleries, restaurants, saloons, and, it seems, brothels. In September 1867, one war correspondent counted 118 tents dedicated to sutler operations at the main Allied camp, 77 under the Brazilian flag, the rest under the Argentine. See Mattos Report (1867). The great majority of these establishments moved to Asunción immediately after the capital fell in January 1869. Still more mercantile establishments were opened quickly thereafter and staffed by other foreign businessmen coming directly from Montevideo and Buenos Aires. See Whigham (2011–13, vol. 3, 300–10).

7. The 7 March 1869 issue of The Standard reported: “López’s men in many parts have abandoned his cause, and are daily flocking to the capital; and from the poor people who now and then escape from the mountains it is known that the general feeling of the sorrowing population of that ruined land is to get rid of López and return to their homes.” There was less to this observation than met the eye, for many refugees coming from the back-country were fleeing not from the Marshal but from the uncertainty of their circumstances.

8. A perusal of the 335 appended names – and the affirmative references within this document to the “valiant corps of volunteers” – attests to its strong legionario orientation. The subsidizing of the Legión Paraguaya had been managed by the Argentines in a routine way, and most of the Paraguayans involved retained an affinity for their sponsors in Buenos Aires and shared their mistrust of the Empire. Whether this mistrust could serve Argentine interests over the long run was never certain. See Petition of Paraguayan Citizens to the Governments of the Alliance, Asunción, 20 February 1869, in Decoud (1934, 39–49).

9. This calculation is attributed to an unidentified resident Englishmen who was clearly not exaggerating when he observed that the figure would likely grow over the next months. See “Correspondencia. Assunção, 18 Ago. 1869,” Jornal do Commercio (Rio de Janeiro), 1 September 1869.

10. Argentine public opinion at this time found reason to suspect every move that Paranhos made, with one Porteño newspaper noting that the Provisional Government would be composed of “men in the Brazilian column who will decide their country’s future in accordance with the [political] ambitions of the Empire.” See “Cuestiones del día,” La República (Buenos Aires), 16 March 1869. Many in Buenos Aires by now viewed the war with Paraguay as having been a mistake; Mitre had been duped by Imperial agents, they argued, and as for the Marshal’s people, in truth they fought “because of love for their caudillo and for the conviction that they thus defended the independence of their fatherland.” See “Teatro de la guerra, Trinidad, 12 March 1869,” in El Nacional (Buenos Aires), 16 March 1869.

11. The various exile groups still felt optimistic about winning recognition for their respective organizations as authoritative voices in Paraguay because, at that moment, the Allied powers seemed even more riven by dispute than themselves. See Misc. Correspondence of Paraguayan exiles in UC Riverside, Juansilvano Godoi Collection [hereinafter UCR-JSG], Box 14, nos. 11–13, 15; Declaration of Paraguayan Citizens, Asunción, 31 March 1869, and José Díaz de Bedoya, J. Egusquiza, and Bernardo Valiente to Mariano Varela, Buenos Aires, 29 April 1868 [sic. 1869], in Díaz (1878, vol. 11, 199–203).

12. The rumor of a possible American intervention was likely started by US Minister Martin McMahon, who wished to buy López some time. See Washburn (1871, vol. 2, 578–80). Paranhos knew enough of US policy considerations to doubt the validity of this tale, but he could not afford to ignore the reactions of those Conservative Members of Parliament who might happen to believe it. See Doratioto (2007, 39).

13. The idea of establishing a Provisional Government in Paraguay dated from 1867, when the Imperial Council of State met in Rio de Janeiro to discuss the character of a postwar regime, and had become even more representative of Brazilian thinking since the Conservative takeover of parliament in 1868. See Doratioto (2002, 421).

14. Few Paraguayans actually favored such a move at the time, but a decade later, in a notorious letter to his brother Adolfo, José Segundo Decoud appeared to suggest that the “miserable condition of Paraguay [makes it] impossible to maintain its independent existence.” See Decoud to Decoud, Asunción, 21 January 1878, in UCR-JSG. A decade and a half afterwards, Decoud was the victim of a smear attack based on a falsified version of the earlier letter, altered to give the year as 1891, in order to tar Decoud quite literally as a vendi-patria. What appeared as a politically risky but not wholly absurd proposition in the late 1870s, thus attained a treasonous tone some years later. See Warren (1985, 100–1).

15. Ex-president Mitre strongly opposed the drift suggested by Varela, which he thought tantamount to throwing away his country’s claims in Misiones and the Chaco (the rendering of just desserts) in favor of nebulous political considerations. See Doratioto (2002, 419–22; 2005, 256).

16. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Argentine jurist and diplomat Ernesto Quesada noted with more assurance than accuracy that the “generation of Paraguayans educated in the Plata (the Ferreiras, Urdapilletas, Iturburus, Decouds, Acevals, Audiberts, Parodis, Caminos, Godoys, Sosa Escaladas, Cañetes, etc.) knew better than anyone that the Chancellery of the Casa Rosada had never accustomed itself to applying a policy of continental projection [sic. imperialism], knowing that it was always better to practice the maximum of laissez faire” (1902, 69). In fact, it is clear that they knew nothing of the kind.

17. See Arthur de Gobineau to French Foreign Minister, Rio de Janeiro, 8 July 1869, in Raymond (1990, 122–4).

18. The Brazilian military commanders had done nothing to prevent their soldiers sacking Asunción during early 1869; their failure to curb these excesses made the Councilor’s efforts to set up an effective occupation all the more difficult. See La Tribuna (Buenos Aires), 16 January 1869; O’Leary (1919); Zubizarreta (1965); and Whigham (2011–13, vol. 3, 300–10).

19. The number of displaced persons flowing into Asunción continued to increase. According to one source, the cost of supplying rations to these refugees had grown by September to 100,000 milréis a day, a huge sum for which the Brazilians had made no allowance. See “Enormous expenses,” in unidentified clipping attached to Lidgerwood to Secretary of State William Seward, Petrópolis, 24 September 1869, in National Archives and Records Administration (Washington) [hereinafter NARA], M-121, no. 37.

20. Once the various Allies (and outside powers) could agree that Brazil had droit du seigneur over the prostrate Paraguay, the precise geopolitical configuration of the borderlands amounted to little more than a trifle – but at this stage, Paranhos had to be careful even of trifles. See Memorandum of Paranhos (?), 30 April 1869, in Museo Histórico Militar (Asunción)-Colección Gill Aguinaga, carpeta 142, no. 14.

21. The Brazilians were anxious to resurrect Paraguay as a viable entity, so that it could serve as a buffer State and effectively cancel out any Argentine pretensions to northern territories abutting the Mato Grosso. The Argentines had already displayed some interest in the Chaco territories opposite Asunción, and it was a matter of long-term Brazilian interest that Buenos Aires not get those lands. Hence, the Empire looked with approval on any policies that strengthened the hand of a post-Lopista Paraguay. The postwar construction of a fortified naval base at Ladário in Mato Grosso seems to have been built to help dissuade Argentine ambitions in this quarter. See Doratioto (2002, 463–70).

22. The Mitrista distaste for Varela eventually caused Darmiento to replace him with a less controversial figure, Carlos Tejedor.

23. For many months, the members of the Alliance had seemed rather like the Graiae, the three primordial witches who shared a single eye among them and could see no further than what that one eye permitted. Now, however, the Allies had rediscovered their mutual animosity and were confronting each other rhetorically almost as much as they confronted the Marshal’s army. See Cardozo (1987, 248).

24. The new regime was forbidden any role in military matters and any unauthorized contact with the Marshal’s agents. “Provisional Government of Paraguay. Agreement of the Allies,” 2 June 1869, in Díaz (1878, vol. 11, 206–10); and unidentified clipping in Asboth to Hamilton Fish, Buenos Aires, 21 July 1869, in NARA, FM-69, no. 18.

25. Some of the jibes were directed at the Paraguayan delegates who had met with Varela and Paranhos, others at men who had been in Asunción for some time and who now wished to assume the status of courtiers. See “De lo que han sido capaces,” La Verdad (Buenos Aires), 19 June 1869, and Godoi (1912, 232–3).

26. See “Importantes notícias del Paraguay,” La Nación Argentina (Buenos Aires), 8 April 1869.

27. The Club del Pueblo formally rechristened itself the Gran Club del Pueblo in March 1870. Later in the decade the ideological rivals of the Decoudista faction adopted for themselves the first of these two names before renaming their faction once again in 1878, this time calling it the Club Libertad. These name changes have occasioned considerable confusion in the scholarly literature. See Warren (1978, 54); and El Nacional (Buenos Aires), 7 November and 12 December 1869.

28. The liberal opponents of the López regime often spoke among themselves in French and used Guaraní only when they wished to express contempt. Ironically, they were not far removed in this habit from the Marshal, although for López French was the language of intimacy, not of intellectual discourse. With regards to the latter, it might be submitted that, in spite of well-read intellectuals like the Decoud brothers, the Argentine model for liberalism that the Paraguayans admired was somewhat passé – at least insofar as it reflected European impulses, which by the late 1860s had moved away from the ideals of Mazzini and the Frankfurt liberals. See Shumway (1991, passim); Halperín Donghi (1993, 105–21, 135–9).

29. Act of Foundation of the Club Unión, Asunción, 31 March 1869, in Museo Histórico Militar, Colección Gill Aguinaga (uncatalogued section).

30. Although Héctor Francisco Decoud’s account gives the Club Unión Republicana a generally hostile slant, there is no reason to doubt his observation that the Bareiristas had exaggerated the membership of the Club by including many falsified signatories. It was a common practice in early elections in Argentina to append the names of deceased individuals to the voting rolls. See Sábato (2002); and Sábato and Lettieri (2003).

31. The incidence of petty larceny and graft was common in occupied Asunción. See Gill Aguinaga (1967–68, 17–26); and “Sobre el saqueo de Asunción,” El Nacional (Buenos Aires), 21 February 1869.

32. This provision, the inclusion of which demonstrates just how far sutler power extended, declared that “[a]ll individuals, ships, provisions, forage, and other material of whatever species, belonging to the Allied armies or to its contractors shall have ingress into and egress from the Republic, free of all and every onus or search, the same as granted to the generals and diplomatic representatives of the Allied Governments.” See Tasso Fragoso (1941, 47–8) and Warren (1978, 54).

33. Paranhos had sought the inclusion of Egusquiza in the Provisional Government as proof of the Empire’s willingness to enlist old Lopistas. This was a typical concession to the politics of the moment, in which the Councilor appeared so mild and judicious to the Brazilians, and so infamous to Paraguayans of every political stripe. See Doratioto (1997, 231).

34. “He’s quite a devil this Decoud,” said a perturbed Paranhos at one point. See Decoud (1925, 134–6). Another of the Decoud sons, Juan José, had for some time used the pages of a Correntino newspaper to spit bile on Paranhos and the Count’s military regime. The Brazilian Foreign Minister, who took the insults personally, saw no reason to cater to any one of that surname after that, and so put his foot down when the matter of candidates for the triumvirate arose. See Godoi (1912, 236–7); and, as an example of the abovementioned Decoudista diatribes, see La Voz de la Patria (Corrientes), 16 April 1869. The Brazilians never warmed to the Decoud family, and as late as 1894 arranged a coup in Asunción to prevent a José Segundo presidency. See Warren (1982, 221–36).

35. Egusquiza must have taken this threat seriously, as he quickly fled Paraguay, never to return. Ferreira later served as president (1906–1908), but he could never shake the legionario affiliation of his youth. See Ferreira to Héctor Decoud, Buenos Aires, 20 January 1916, in Decoud (1925, 107–13).

36. The old Lopista system had always taken the form of a rigid hierarchy consisting of rival paladins seeking the Marshal’s blessing; the Provisional Government was similar in that each faction sought the patronage of Paranhos. Colonel Decoud, head of the Club del Pueblo, was made Chief of the Asunción police. His son Juan José was named attorney-general, and José Segundo first became Rivarola’s private secretary, and later Minister of Education. Even Ferreira earned a post in the new government, that of port commander at Asunción. Although the Decoudistas were kept from the most senior positions in the new government, their presence in the second tier was very prominent – all the result of political pay-offs from Paranhos and Rivarola rather than from serious compromises. See Bordón (1976, 49–52); Godoi (1912, 250–1); Centurión (1938, 10–11, 19–20).

37. Act of Installation of the Provisional Government (Asunción, 15 August 1869), in Registro Oficial (1887, 3–4).

38. According to the Buenos Aires Standard’s description, this street theater “partook of some grotesque features.” See “Installation of the Paraguayan Triumvirate,” in the 25 August 1869 issue.

39. Paraguayan peasant women had provided the backbone to the wartime economy in Paraguay since at least 1867, working in heavy farm labor to keep the Lopista troops supplied with foodstuffs. As resistance crumbled, however, most women joined the ranks of refugees drifting into Asunción. Their desperate circumstances did not much improve over the next decade, as indicated by Barbara Potthast-Jutkeit (1996). The reference to “golden combs” (peinetas de oro or, in Guaraní, kyguá verá) concerns that group of Paraguayan women whom Colonel George Thompson castigated as “third class girls who had any pretension to good looks and who were tolerably loose in their morals.” The Marshal often favored these women at government soirees as a way to spite those families whose loyalty to the cause he had always discounted. See Thompson (1869, 43–4); and “Testimonio del Señor Serafino,” La Nación Argentina (Buenos Aires), 17 October 1865.

40. See Valdez (1892, 196); “Correspondencia” (Asunción, 7 August 1869), Jornal do Commercio (Rio de Janeiro), 21 August 1869.

41. Although Juansilvano Godoi (1912, 242–3, 278–9) almost certainly overstated the silver pilfered by Díaz de Bedoya as “300 or more arrobas [7500 pounds],” the quantity taken was surely large. Scholars will look in vain for anything positive said of this triumvir, whose defalcations hurt his country when it was most in need and whose learning did not go beyond that of a fourth grader. See Decoud (1925, 148–9).

42. When traveling in the countryside, for example, Bareiro evinced a decidedly paternalistic attitude toward the lower classes that seemed odd in an urban gentleman, but which was arranged entirely for effect. “With his shiny coat clinging to his body from perspiration, Bareiro would fraternize with the most rustic peasant who would then support his accession to the highest post of the nation” (Sienra Carranza 1975, 133). Bareiro eventually headed an authoritarian government of the right that carefully elaborated a populist discourse that mimicked that of the nineteenth-century left. This earned him considerable support from the lower classes while other self-identified champions of the poor earned only their contempt.

43. There was considerable public finger-wagging on both sides of this issue. Three months after McMahon sent his message to the Secretary of State, the Argentine ambassador to Washington both dismissed the general as an abject slanderer and apologist for “the monster [López],” and lauded Allied treatment of prisoners as standing “in strong contrast to the barbarity of [the Marshal].” See Manuel R. García to Mary Mann, Washington, 30 October 1869, in Mary Mann Papers, Library of Congress (Washington), mss. 2882. Regarding McMahon’s presence in Paraguay during this final stage of the war, see McMahon (1870, 633–47).

44. The Paraguayan people might claim a certain moral authority by virtue of their terrible suffering, but such cannot be said for the triumvirs, who were capable of displaying an ostentatious, almost oriental, disregard for their countrymen’s plight. It was therefore indecorous for them to presume to teach people their duties. See Moby Ribeiro da Silva (1999, 43–52).

45. See “Important from Paraguay,” The Standard (Buenos Aires), 21 September 1869. See also El Nacional (Buenos Aires), 17 September 1869, which speculates that cholera was again about to fall upon these poor people; and Brezzo (1999, 45–51).

46. See Decrees of 1–10, 11, 13, 15, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, and 29 September 1869 in Registro Oficial (1869, 11–27). El Nacional (Buenos Aires), 15 Oct. 1869, reported that sutlers were organizing to oppose the government licensing of their activities.

47. These efforts to raise revenues were a matter of too little, too late. As the London Times noted in its 6 December 1869 issue, the new government wished to “restore the country to order, but destitute as it is of resources, without a trade save the army supply, without a solitary staple wherewith to feed the people, and without even the vestige of a treasury, it is impotent and every way unequal to the task.”

48. It cannot be said that the Allied commissioners were unaware of the scale of the problem. In a personal note to Varela, Commissioner Pérez remarked that “what was most horrible and degrading in the liberated zones was the unfortunate state of the families. Hunger, misery, suffering, and nudity abound, and even in the streets [one can see] a mass of cadavers. This, my friend, no one can imagine, it is necessary to see.” See El Nacional (Buenos Aires), 29 August 1869, and also Emilio Mitre to Martín de Gainza, Caraguatay, 25 August 1869, in Museo Histórico Nacional (Buenos Aires), doc. 6692.

49. In addition to passing these decrees as a way to supposedly favor the poor, the government ministers also decided to expel to their home districts all the displaced women and children huddled into the plazas of the city “as a hygienic measure” (Godoi 1912, 262–3).

50. Mitre and the financial backers of La Nación Argentina had evidently planned to establish a liberal newspaper in occupied Asunción tentatively called El Sol de Lambaré, but, for a variety of reasons, the project never came off. This left the field open for La Regeneración, which was edited by Decoud and radiated his angry politics as if the type were inked with pitchblende. Juansilvano Godoi (1912, 267–70) regarded the paper, which appeared thrice weekly, as progressive in spirit, as favoring a broad concept of social welfare and public education for women. Other readers might argue that there was nothing of real value in La Regeneración. See Warren (1983, 483–98); Fois Maresma (1970); Johansson (2013); and Whigham (2012, 157–80).

51. Both La Voz del Pueblo and La Regeneración ceased publication in September 1870 when their respective offices were wrecked in the night by parties unknown (although it was hardly difficult to point the finger at government agents). See Warren (1983, 485).

52. The term “viceroy” was maliciously applied to the Councilor not just by Paraguayans, but, over the years, by Argentines, Uruguayans, and Brazilians alike. See Júlio de Barros, “Congresso de Assumpção,” A Reforma (Rio de Janeiro), 6 April 1870; La República (Buenos Aires), 9 January 1870; and Doratioto (2002, 436).

53. Without access to money (or meaningful power), the Provisional Government was helpless to alleviate the most immediate problems facing displaced populations in the city. Conditions were so bad that, on 1 December 1869, Rivarola admitted to “the difficulty of transporting cadavers to the public cemeteries for lack of men to convey them, the task [having been relegated] to women already sunken from hunger and fatigue [brought on by living] under the yoke of Solano López, who had [sought] to exterminate the Paraguayan nationality.” He ordered his little militia to aid in the interment of the dead wherever they were found, not bothering to carry them “to more distant burial grounds.” See Circular of Rivarola, 1 December 1869, in Registro Oficial (1869, 38–9).