History of Paraguay

Native peoples In the 16th century, the Guaraní people were dispersed throughout the forests of the Río de la Plata Basin. Their pre-Columbian population is estimated at between 300,000 and one million. With the arrival of Europeans, the population rapidly decreased due to epidemics of European diseases. The Guaraní were united only by language and cultural similarities; no political structure existed above the village level, and they were a semi-sedentary agricultural people. Although the Guaraní initially resisted Spanish incursions into their lands, two characteristics influenced their early cooperation with the Spanish and missionaries. First, the Guaraní were themselves warlike, but they were threatened by hostile tribes around them and by slave raiders. The Spanish, especially Christian missionaries, afforded a degree of security to the Guaraní. Second, the Guaraní had a custom of exchanging women among themselves and with outsiders to cement alliances. This facilitated a proliferation of sexual relations of Guaraní women with Spanish men. The mestizo offspring of Spanish/Guaraní unions had the legal rights of Spaniards and Paraguay became a mestizo society by 1580; nowadays, Guaraní is an official language alongside Spanish. The Spanish and mestizos subjected the Guaraní population to the encomienda system of forced labor after 1556 and the reductions of Christian missionaries beginning in the 1580s. The Gran Chaco, a semi-arid flatland west of the Paraguay River, was the home of the Guaycuru peoples. The most important of the Guaycuru in Paraguay were the Payaguá, a riverine people ranging for up and down the Paraguay River, and the Mbayá who lived in northwest Paraguay. The Guaycuru tribes were nomadic and warlike. The Mbayá developed a horse culture in the 17th century while the Payaguá made travel up and down the Paraguay River dangerous. These tribes frequently raided the Spanish settlers and Guaraní farmers. They resisted the reductions and Christianity of the missionaries and were a threat to the Spanish and other native peoples for more than 300 years. Early explorers and conquistadors Much of the earliest written history of Paraguay comes from records of the Spanish colonization, beginning in 1516 with the Juan Díaz de Solís' failed expedition to the Río de la Plata. On the home voyage, after Solís' death, one of the vessels was wrecked off Santa Catarina Island near the Brazilian coast. Among the survivors was Aleixo Garcia, a Portuguese adventurer who acquired a working knowledge of the Guaraní language. Garcia was intrigued by reports of "the White King" who supposedly lived far to the west and governed cities of wealth and splendor, a reference to the Inca Empire. In 1524, Garcia joined a Guaraní invasion of the Inca Empire. Garcia's group discovered Iguazú Falls, crossed the Río Paraná and arrived at the site of Asunción, the future capital of the country, thirteen years before it was founded. At Asunción, the Guaraní gathered an army of 2,000 men and penetrated the outer defenses of the Inca Empire on the eastern slopes of the Andes. After Garcia's murder by his Indian allies, news of the raid reached the Spanish explorers on the coast. The explorer Sebastian Cabot was attracted to the Río Paraguay two years later. Cabot was sailing to Asia in 1526 when he heard of Garcia's exploits. He decided that the Río de la Plata might provide passage to the Pacific, and, eager to win the riches of the Incas, became the first European to explore that estuary. Finding silver amongst the Guaraní there, he renamed the river Río de la Plata. Cabot returned to Spain in 1530 and told Emperor Charles V about his discoveries. Charles gave permission to Pedro de Mendoza to mount an expedition to the Plata basin. The emperor also named Mendoza governor of the Governorate of New Andalusia and granted him the right to name his successor. Mendoza proved to be unsuitable as a leader, and his cruelty undermined the expedition. Choosing what proved to be a terrible site for the first Spanish settlement in South America, in February 1536 Mendoza built a fort at a place of poor anchorage on the southern side of the Plata estuary on an inhospitable dead-level plain. Dusty in the dry season, a bog in the rains, the place was inhabited by the fierce Querandí tribe, who resisted the Spaniards. The Spanish named the outpost Buenos Aires (Nuestra Señora del Buen Ayre). Juan de Salazar de Espinosa and Gonzalo de Mendoza, who had been part of Mendoza's expedition, explored the Paraguay River after Mendoza's departure. They descended the river, stopping at ananchorage. They commenced building a fort there on 15 August 1537, the date of the Feast of the Assumption, and called it Asunción. Asunción would be the province and later Paraguay's capital thenceforth. Within 20 years, the new town had a population of about 1,500. Transcontinental shipments of silver passed through Asunción en route from Peru to Europe. Asunción became the center of the Governorate of Guayrá in 1617, a province of the Spanish Empire which also encompassed present-day Paraná; Asunción was the base for the colonization of this part of South America. Spaniards moved northwestward across the Chaco to found Santa Cruz in present-day Bolivia; eastward to occupy the rest of present-day Paraguay; and southward along the river to re-found Buenos Aires, which had been abandoned by its inhabitants in 1541 in favor of Asunción. Jesuit missions among the Guaraní The Guaraní of eastern Paraguay and neighboring Brazil and Argentina were in crisis in the early 17th century. Recurrent epidemics of European diseases had reduced their population greatly and the forced labor of the encomiendas by the Spanish and mestizo colonists had made virtual slaves of many. Franciscan missionaries began establishing missions called reductions in the 1580s. The first Jesuits arrived in Asunción in 1588 and founded the mission (or reduction) of San Ignacio Guazú, their first, in 1609. The objectives of the Jesuits were to Christianize the Guaraní, impose European values and customs on them, and isolate and protect them from European colonists and slavers. In addition to recurrent epidemics, the Guaraní were threatened by the Bandeirantes from Brazil, who captured natives and sold them as slaves in modern Brazil. Initially, the richly populated Jesuit missions missions had few defenses against the slavers and thousands of Guaraní were captured and enslaved. Beginning in 1631, the Jesuits moved their missions from the Guayrá province (present day Brazil and Paraguay), about southwest to the three borders region of Paraguay, Argentina, and Brazil. About 10,000 of 30,000 Guaraní in the missions chose to accompany the Jesuits. In 1641 and 1642, armed by the Jesuits, Guaraní armies defeated the Bandeirantes and ended the worst of the slave trade in their region. From this point on the Jesuit missions enjoyed growth and prosperity, punctuated by epidemics. At the peak of their importance in 1732, the Jesuits presided over 141,000 Guaraní (including a sprinkling of other peoples) in about 30 missions. The missions are controversial, with their detractors accusing them of enslaving the Guaraní and taking away, or at least changing, their way of life. The Comunero Revolt (1721–1735) was a serious protest by Spanish and mestizo Paraguayans against the Jesuit missions. The residents of Paraguay violently protested the pro-Jesuit government of Paraguay, Jesuit control of Guaraní labor, and what they regarded as unfair competition for products such as yerba mate, as the Jesuits did not have to pay any taxes to the Spanish crown. Although the revolt ultimately failed and the missions remained, the Jesuits were expelled from institutions they had created in Asunción. In 1767, Charles III of Spain expelled the Jesuits from the Americas. The expulsion was part of an effort in the Bourbon Reforms to assert more Spanish control over its American colonies. In total, 78 Jesuits departed from the 30 remaining missions leaving behind 89,000 Guaraní. Most Guaraní initially welcomed the expulsion of the Jesuits. Spanish authorities made promises to Guaraní leaders and gained their support. Within two years, however, the financial situation of the former missions was deteriorating and Guaraní began leaving them seeking both freedom and higher wages. A decree in 1800 freed the Guaraní still in the missions from their communal obligation to labor. By 1840, the former missions were in ruins. While some Guaraní were employed outside them, many families were impoverished. A growing number of mestizos occupied what had formerly been mission lands. In 1848, Paraguayan President Carlos Antonio López declared that all Indians were citizens of Paraguay and distributed the last of the missions' communal lands. Colonial decline After Buenos Aires was refounded in 1580, Asunción gradually deteriorated in importance. In 1617, when the Governorate of the Río de la Plata was divided, Asunción lost control of the Río de la Plata estuary and became dependent on Buenos Aires for maritime shipping. In 1776, the crown created the Viceroyalty of Río de la Plata; Paraguay, which had been subordinate to Lima in modern Peru, now became a provincial outpost of Buenos Aires. Located at the periphery of the empire, Paraguay served as a buffer state. The Portuguese blocked Paraguayan territorial expansion in the north, native tribes blocked it – until their expulsion – in the south, and the Jesuits blocked it in the east. The Viceroyalty of Peru and the Real Audiencia of Charcas had nominal authority over Paraguay, while Madrid largely neglected it, preferring to avoid the effort and expense of governing and defending a remote colony that had proved to have little value. The governors of Paraguay had no royal troops at their disposal and were instead dependent on a colonist militia. As a result of its distance from the rest of the empire, Paraguay had little control over important decisions that affected its economy. Spain appropriated much of Paraguay's wealth through burdensome taxes and regulations, and subordination to Buenos Aires made commerce much more difficulty than it should have been. The result was dire poverty in Paraguay. ==Independence==

demands shared power from governor Velasco on the night of May 14, 1811 The rise of Napoleon Bonaparte, and the subsequent wars in Europe, weakened Spain's ability to maintain contact with and defend and control its colonies. The British invasions of the River Plate of 1806–7 were repulsed by the local colonial troops and volunteer militias, including a Paraguayan contingent, without help from Spain. Among the many causes of the May Revolution, the spark that initiated the Argentine War of Independence and Paraguay's movement towards independence, were Napoleon's invasion of Spain in 1808, the capture of the Spanish king, Ferdinand VII, and Napoleon's attempt to put his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne, which severed the major remaining links between the metropolis and the colonies as Joseph had no supporters in Spanish America. Without a king, the entire colonial system lost its legitimacy, and colonies revolted. The Buenos Aires open cabildo deposed the Spanish viceroy on 25 May 1810, vowing to rule in the name of Ferdinand VII. The May Revolution eventually led to the creation of the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata which wanted to bring the province of Paraguay under its control. News of the revolutionary events in Buenos Aires stunned royalist citizens of Asunción. Discontent with the Spanish monarchy was put aside in favor of the much bigger rivalry with the city of Buenos Aires. The porteños failed at their effort to extend control over Paraguay by choosing as their spokesman in Asunción. Espínola was "perhaps the most hated Paraguayan of his era", according to John Hoyt Williams. Espínola's reception in Asunción was less than cordial, partly because he was closely linked to a hated ex-governor, Lázaro de Rivera. Barely escaping arrest in Paraguay, Espínola fled back to Buenos Aires and lied about the extent of porteño popularity in Paraguay, causing the Buenos Aires ruling junta to decide to launch the Paraguay campaign, sending 700 troops under General Manuel Belgrano to subdue Asunción. Loyalist Paraguayan troops, reinforced by locals, soundly thrashed the porteños at the Battles of Paraguarí and Tacuarí. Officers from both sides openly fraternized during the campaign and from these contacts the Paraguayans learned that Spanish dominance in South America was ending, and that they now held the real power; ideologically, they were inspired by the ideals of the French Revolution. The actions of the last Spanish governor Bernardo de Velasco only further agitated local politicians and military officers. Believing that the Paraguayan officers posed a threat to his rule, Governor Velasco dispersed and disarmed local forces and sent most of the mobilized soldiers home without paying them for their service. Velasco had previously lost face when, believing that Belgrano had won at Paraguarí, he fled the battlefield and caused a panic in Asunción. The last straw was Velasco's discussions with the Brazilian Portuguese, from whom he asked for military and financial help in order to maintain Spanish colonial rule in Paraguay. This move ignited a military uprising in Asunción on 14 May 1811 and formation of a power-sharing junta. On 17 May a public proclamation informed people that a ruling junta, consisting of Governor Velasco, Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia and Army captain Juan Valeriano de Zeballos had been created. ==Era of dictatorships (1814–1870)==

Francia , a 19th-century ruler of Paraguay, with a mate and its respective bombilla Upon its independence, Paraguay was underdeveloped in comparison with its neighbors. Most residents of Asunción and virtually all rural inhabitants were illiterate. University education was limited to the very few who could afford studies at the University of Córdoba, in Argentina. Very few people had any experience in government, finance, or diplomacy. The country was surrounded by hostile neighbors, from the indigenous tribes of the Chaco to the Argentine Confederation and the Empire of Brazil. Strong measures were needed in order to preserve independence. After the uprising of 14–15 May 1811, Francia became a member of the ruling junta. Although the landowners initially held the most power, Francia attracted support from the nation's peasants. Francia built his power base on his organizational abilities and his forceful personality. By outwitting porteño diplomats in the negotiations that produced the treaty of 11 October 1811 (in which Argentina implicitly recognized Paraguayan independence in return for vague promises of a military alliance), Francia demonstrated that he possessed skills crucial to the future of the country. Eventually, a Third National Congress was held on 3–4 October 1814 and replaced the two-man consulate with a one-man dictatorship, to which Francia was elected. El Supremo Dictador Francia detested the political culture of the old regime and considered himself a revolutionary. He admired and emulated the most radical elements of the French Revolution. Some commentators did compare him to the Jacobin Maximilien de Robespierre. In 1820, Francia's security system uncovered and quickly crushed a plot by the élite to assassinate El Supremo, as he was then known. Francia arrested almost 200 prominent Paraguayans among whom were all the leading figures of the 1811 independence movement, and executed most of them. In 1821 Francia again struck against the Spanish-born elite, summoning all of Paraguay's 300 or so peninsulares to Asunción's main square, where he accused them of treason, had them arrested, and held them in jail for 18 months. They were released only after agreeing to pay an enormous collective indemnity of 150,000 pesos (about 75 percent of the annual state budget), an amount so large that it broke their predominance in the Paraguayan economy. Eventually, El Supremo came to personally control every aspect of Paraguayan public life. No decision at the state level could be made without his approval. In order to destroy the colonial racial hierarchy, Francia forbade Europeans from marrying other Europeans, thus forcing the élite to choose spouses from the local population. He sealed Paraguay's borders to the outside world and executed anyone who attempted to leave. Foreigners who managed to enter Paraguay were not allowed to leave afterwards. Both of these decisions actually helped to solidify the Paraguayan identity. There no longer were separate racial identities; all inhabitants had to live within the borders of Paraguay and build a new society which has created the modern Paraguayan society in which Hispanic and Guaraní roots were equally strong. Paraguayan international trade stopped almost completely. The decline ruined exporters of yerba maté and tobacco. These measures fell most harshly on the members of the former ruling class of Spanish or Spanish-descended church officials, military officers, merchants, and hacendados (large landowners). One of Francia's special targets was the Roman Catholic Church, which had provided an essential support to Spanish rule by spreading the doctrine of the "divine right of kings" and inculcating the native masses with a resigned fatalism about their social status and economic prospects. In 1824 Francia banned all religious orders, closed the only seminary, "secularized" monks and priests by forcing them to swear loyalty to the state, abolished the fuero eclesiástico (the privilege of clerical immunity from civil courts), confiscated Church property, and subordinated its finances to state control. The common people benefited from the suppression of the traditional elites and from the expansion of the state. Francia took land from the elite and the church and leased it to the poor. About 875 families received homesteads from the lands of the former seminary. The various fines and confiscations levied on the elites helped to reduce taxes for everyone else. As a result, Francia's attacks on the elite and his state-socialist policies provoked little popular resistance. The state quickly became the nation's largest landowner, eventually operating forty-five animal-breeding farms. Francia left the state treasury with at least twice as much money in it as when he took office, including 36,500 pesos of his unspent salary, the equivalent of several years' salary. His greatest accomplishment — the preservation of Paraguayan independence — was a result of his non-interventionist foreign policy. Regarding Argentina as a potential threat to Paraguay, he shifted his foreign policy toward Brazil by quickly recognizing Brazilian independence in 1822. This move, however, resulted in no special favors for the Brazilians from Francia, who was also on good, if limited, terms with Juan Manuel Rosas, the Argentine governor. Carlos Antonio López Confusion ensued after Francia's death on 20 September 1840 because he had left no successor. Eventually, on 9 February 1841, a coup led by military officer Mariano Roque Alonso prevailed. On 14 March 1841, the Fifth National Congress re-established the two-man consulate of the early independent era, appointing Alonso and Carlos Antonio López as joint consuls for a three-year term. This Second Consulate lasted until 13 March 1844, when Congress named López the president of the Republic — a post he held until his death in 1862. While maintaining a strong political and economic grip on the country, López worked towards strengthening Paraguay's independence. López's government was similar to Francia's, but his appearance, style, and policies were different. Francia had pictured himself as the first citizen of a revolutionary state, whereas López was a despot who treated Paraguay like a personal fiefdom, using the state to enrich himself and his family. López soon became the largest landowner and cattle rancher in the country, amassing a fortune, which he augmented with profits from the state's monopoly on the yerba maté trade. Despite this, Paraguay prospered under El Excelentísimo (the Most Excellent One), as López was known: the population increased from about 220,000 in 1840 to about 400,000 in 1860. During his time in office, López strengthened national defense, abolished the remnants of the reductions, stimulated economic development, and improved relations with foreign countries. When López took office, Asunción had only one primary school. During his tenure, more than 400 schools were built for 25,000 primary students, and the state re-instituted secondary education. López's educational development plans progressed with difficulty, because Francia had purged the country of the educated elite, which included teachers. López loosened restrictions on foreign relations, boosted exports, invited foreign physicians, engineers, and investors to settle in Paraguay, and paid for students to study abroad. In 1853 he sent his son Francisco Solano to Europe to buy guns. López was worried about the possibility of a war with Brazil or Argentina, so he built an army of 18,000 soldiers with a reserve of 46,000, at that time the largest standing army in South America. Several highways and a telegraph linking Asunción with the massive Fortress of Humaitá were built. A British firm began building a railroad from Asunción to Paraguarí, one of South America's first, in 1858. On 22 September 1861, the railway station was opened in Asunción. Foreign experts helped build a foundry at Ybycuí and a large armory. Slavery had existed in Paraguay since the early colonial days. Settlers had brought slaves to work as domestic servants, but they were generally lenient about their bondage. Conditions worsened after 1700, however, with the importation of about 50,000 African slaves to be used as agricultural workers. Under Francia, the state acquired about 1,000 slaves when it confiscated property from the elite. López enacted a freedom of wombs law in 1842, which ended the slave trade and guaranteed that the children of slaves would be free at age twenty-five. After the Paraguayan War, the 1870 Constitution would end slavery completely. Foreign relations (''Harper's Weekly'', 16 October 1858) Despite being de facto independent since 1811 and having proclaimed a Republic in 1813, Paraguay formally declared independence only on 25 November 1842 and in 1844 adopted a new constitution. Afterwards the country started to gain official international recognition, despite López retaining the previous administration's mistrust of the surrounding states. Initially, the Paraguayan leader feared an attack by the Buenos Aires dictator Rosas. With Brazilian encouragement, López dropped Francia's policy of neutrality and began meddling in Argentine politics. Using the slogan "Independence or Death", López declared war against Rosas in 1845 to support what was ultimately an unsuccessful rebellion in the Argentine province of Corrientes. Although Britain and France prevented him from moving against Paraguay, Rosas established a trade embargo on Paraguayan goods. After Rosas was ousted in 1852, López signed a treaty with Buenos Aires that recognized Paraguay's independence, although the Argentine Confederation never ratified it. In the same year, López signed treaties of friendship, commerce, and navigation with France and the United States, and in the years after, managed to receive the recognition of Paraguayan independence from most of Europe. Francisco Solano López Francisco Solano López became the second and final ruler of the López dynasty. After his father's death on 10 September 1862, the Paraguayan Congress elected him president on 16 October 1862. Solano López consolidated his power by imprisoning his critics. The export of yerba mate and wood products maintained the balance of trade between Paraguay and the outside world. The Paraguayan government was protectionist, never accepting loans from abroad, and employed high tariffs against the importation of foreign products. This protectionism made the nation self-sufficient, while avoiding the debt incurred by Argentina and Brazil. Solano López is a controversial historical figure. George Thompson, an English engineer who worked for the younger López, called him "a monster without parallel". Solano López's conduct laid him open to such charges: his miscalculations and ambitions plunged Paraguay into a war with Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The war resulted in the loss of roughly half of Paraguay's population and almost erased the country from the map. During the war, Solano López ordered the executions of his own brothers and had his mother and sisters tortured when he suspected them of opposing him. Thousands of others also went to their deaths before firing squads or were hacked to pieces on Solano López's orders. ==Paraguayan War==

Solano López assessed the 1864 Brazilian intervention in Uruguay as a threat not only to Uruguay but also to Paraguay. Believing that preserving Uruguayan independence was crucial to Paraguay's future as a nation, he committed Paraguay to the aid of Uruguay. Despite López’ warning against intervening in Uruguay's internal conflict, Brazil invaded Uruguay in October 1864. On 12 November 1864, López ordered the seizure of a Brazilian ship in Paraguayan territorial waters. He followed this in March 1865 with an invasion of Mato Grosso in Brazil. When Argentina refused Solano López's request for permission for his army to cross Argentine territory to attack the Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul, Solano López declared war against Argentina. This set the stage for the May 1865 signing by Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance. Under the treaty, these nations vowed to destroy Solano López's government. Paraguay was not prepared for such a war. Its army lacked a structured officer corps and adequate reserves, and Paraguay itself lacked the industrial base to replace weapons and ammunition, and the Argentine-Brazilian alliance prevented Paraguay from receiving arms from abroad. Paraguay's population of about 450,000 was dwarfed by the Allied population of 11 million. Even after conscripting essentially every able-bodied male and forcing women to perform all nonmilitary labor, Solano López was unable to field an army as large as those of his adversaries. Despite victories on the northern front and on the defense of Humaitá, the war was a disaster for Paraguay. Paraguayan army units arrived in the Argentine province of Corrientes in April 1865. By July, more than half of Paraguay's 30,000-man invasion force had been killed or captured. By 1867, Paraguay had lost 60,000 men to casualties, disease, or capture, and another 60,000 people – slaves and children – were called to duty. As the Paraguayan fortunes wound down, López organized a wave of torture and executions against supposed conspirators to his rule, including most foreigners still in the country and his brothers. Many victims were stabbed to death in order to save ammunition, their bodies dumped in mass graves. By the end of 1868, the Paraguayan army had shrunk to a few thousand soldiers, many of them children and women. Cavalry units operated on foot for lack of horses. Infantry went out on canoes to try to take over ironclads. On 30 December, the Paraguayan Army was defeated at the Battle of Angostura and the Allies entered Asunción. Solano López held out in the northern jungles for another fourteen months, while the Paraguayan population endured another massacre under Solano López's orders, as well as more humiliating losses on the battlefield (e.g., the Battle of Piribebuy and the Battle of Acosta Ñu). Solano López's death on 1 March 1870 at the Battle of Cerro Corá marked the end of the Paraguayan War. Hundreds of thousands of Paraguayans had died. Paraguay endured a lengthy occupation by foreign troops which ended only in 1876 and had to cede large patches of territory to Brazil and Argentina. ==The postwar era==

Provisional government, 1869–70 With Solano López on the run, the country lacked a government. Pedro II sent his foreign minister José Paranhos to Asunción where he arrived on 20 February 1869, and began consultations with the local politicians. On 31 March a petition was signed by 335 leading citizens asking the Allies for a provisional government. This was followed by negotiations between the Allied countries who put aside some of more controversial points of the Treaty of the Triple Alliance and on 11 June an agreement was reached with Paraguayan opposition figures that a three-man provisional government would be established. On 22 July a National Assembly met in the National Theatre and elected a Junta Nacional of 21 men, which then selected a five-man committee to select three men for the provisional government. They selected Carlos Loizaga, Juan Francisco Decoud, and José Díaz de Bedoya. Decoud was unacceptable to Paranhos, who had him replaced with Cirilo Antonio Rivarola. The government was finally installed on 15 August under the continued Allied occupation, consisting of Colonel Carlos Loizaga as President of the Council, Sergeant Cirilo Antonio Rivarola as Secretary of the Interior, and José Díaz de Bedoya as Secretary of the Treasury. After Cerro Corá, the provisional government issued a proclamation in which it promised to support political liberties, to protect commerce and to promote immigration, but it did not last. In May 1870 José Díaz de Bedoya resigned and on 31 August 1870, Carlos Loizaga also did so. Cirilo Rivarola continued as sole president until the 1870 Constitution was ratified and remained president afterwards primarily due to Brazilian influence. Political conflicts The politics of the first post-war decade were heavily influenced by personal conflicts between former López loyalists and their more liberal opponents (centered around members of the Paraguayan Legion), but just as important was the backing of various politicians by Argentina and Brazil. The evacuation of foreign forces in 1876 did not mean the end of foreign influence. Both Brazil and Argentina remained deeply involved in Paraguay as a result of their connections with Paraguay's rival political forces. After Cirilo Rivarola resigned from the presidency in December 1871, Salvador Jovellanos came to power, backed by General Benigno Ferreira. After facing repeated revolts form López loyalists in 1873 and 1874, first Ferreira and then Jovellanos fled into exile. The next president, Juan Bautista Gill, was assassinated in 1877; in 1880, President Cándido Bareiro died from a stroke. At this point General Bernardino Caballero, the foremost amongst the surviving Lopizta commanders of the war, assumed the presidency in a coup and laid the foundations of the two-party system, remaining one of the most influential politicians until the 1904 Liberal revolution. The political rivalry between future Liberals and Colorados started already in 1869 before the war was over, when the terms Azules (Blues) and Colorados (Reds) first appeared, though they were only officially established in 1887. Both parties had former López supporters and Paraguayan Legion veterans in their ranks. The Colorado Party dominated Paraguayan political life from the mid-1870s (despite still not existing formally then) until 1904, when Liberals took over. This ascent of Liberal Party marked the decline of Brazilian influence, which had supported the Colorados as the principal political force in Paraguay, and the rise of Argentine influence. The Colorados dismantled the pre-war economic system. Desperate for cash because of heavy debts incurred in London in the early postwar period, the Colorados lacked a source of funds except through the sale of the state's vast holdings, which comprised more than 95% of Paraguay's total land. Caballero's government sold much of this land to foreigners in huge lots. While Colorado politicians raked in the profits and themselves became large landowners, peasant squatters who had farmed the land for generations were forced to vacate and, in many cases, to emigrate. Electoral violence provoked a Liberal revolt in 1891; then Lieutenant Colonel Juan Bautista Egusquiza, who commanded the capital's troops and was responsible for fighting off the revolt, gained massive political capital and, in 1894, overthrew Caballero's chosen president, Juan Gualberto González. Egusquiza startled Colorado stalwarts by sharing power with the Liberals, a move that split both parties. Ex-Legionnaire Ferreira along with a wing of the Liberals joined the government of Egusquiza, who left office in 1898 to allow a civilian, Emilio Aceval, to become president. Liberals who had opposed compromising with their Colorado enemies boycotted the new arrangement. Caballero, also boycotting the alliance, plotted to overthrow civilian rule and succeeded when Colonel Juan Antonio Escurra seized power in 1902. This victory was Caballero's last, however. In 1904 Ferreira, with the support of the Liberals and part of the Colorados, invaded from Argentina. After four months of fighting, Escurra surrendered on 12 December 1904, and handed power to the Liberals. ==Liberal era, 1904–36==

The Liberal Revolution of August 1904 began as a popular movement, but Liberal rule quickly degenerated into factional feuding, military coups, and civil wars. Political instability was extreme in the Liberal era, which saw twenty-one governments in thirty-six years. On 25 November 1906 Benigno Ferreira was elected to the presidency. The Liberals had disbanded Caballero's army when they came to power and organized a completely new one. Nevertheless, by 1910 army commander Colonel Albino Jara felt strong enough to stage a coup against President Manuel Gondra. Jara's coup backfired as it touched off an anarchic two-year period in which every major political group seized power at least once and led to the Civil War of 1912. The radicales again invaded from Argentina, and when the charismatic Eduardo Schaerer became president, Gondra returned as Minister of War to reorganize the army once more. Schaerer became the first president since Egusquiza to finish his four-year term. The new political calm was shattered, however, when the radicales split into Schaerer and Gondra factions. Gondra won the Presidential election in 1920, but the schaereristas undermined his power and forced him to resign. Another full-scale civil war between the factions broke out in May 1922 and lasted fourteen months. The gondristas beat the schaereristas decisively and held on to power until 1936. Laissez-faire Liberal policies had permitted a handful of hacendados to exercise almost feudal control over the countryside, while peasants had no land and foreign interests manipulated Paraguay's economic fortunes. The Liberals, like the Colorados, were a deeply factionalized political oligarchy. Social conditions deteriorated during the Great Depression of the 1930s. The country clearly needed reforms in working conditions, public services, and education. ==Chaco War==

A dispute with Bolivia over the Chaco, brewing for decades, would erupt in the 1930s. Wars and poor diplomacy had prevented the settling of boundaries between the two countries. Although Paraguay de facto held the Chaco, the country did little to develop the area. Aside from scattered Mennonite colonies and nomadic Indian tribes, few people lived there. Bolivia's claim to the Chaco became more urgent after it lost its sea coast (the Atacama region) to Chile during the 1879–84 War of the Pacific. Left without any outlet to the sea, Bolivia wanted to absorb the Chaco and expand its territory up to the Paraguay river in order to gain a river port. In addition, oil had been discovered there by Standard Oil in the 1920s, and people wondered whether an immense pool of oil was lying beneath the entire area. While Paraguayans were busy fighting among themselves during the 1920s, Bolivians established a series of forts in the Paraguayan Chaco. In addition, they bought armaments from Germany and hired German military officers to train and lead their forces. Frustration in Paraguay with Liberal inaction boiled over in 1928 when the Bolivian army established a fort on the Paraguay river called Fortín Vanguardia. In December of that year, Paraguayan major (later colonel) Rafael Franco led a surprise attack on the fort, and succeeded in destroying it. The routed Bolivians responded quickly by seizing two Paraguayan forts. Both sides mobilized but the Liberal government felt unprepared for war so it agreed to the humiliating condition of rebuilding Fortín Vanguardia for the Bolivians. The Liberal government also provoked criticism when it forced Franco, by then a national hero, to retire from the army. As diplomats from Argentina, the United States, and the League of Nations conducted fruitless "reconciliation" talks, Colonel José Félix Estigarribia, Paraguay's deputy army commander, ordered his troops into action against Bolivian positions early in 1931. When war formally broke out in July 1932, the Bolivians were confident of a rapid victory. Their country was richer and more populous than Paraguay, and their armed forces were larger, had a superior officer corps, and were well-trained and equipped. However, the highly motivated Paraguayans knew the geography of the Chaco better than the Bolivians and easily infiltrated Bolivian lines, surrounded outposts, and captured supplies. Long supply lines, poor roads, and weak logistics hindered the Bolivian campaign. The Paraguayans proved more politically cohesive than the Bolivians, at least initially, as President Eusebio Ayala and Colonel (later Marshal) Estigarribia worked well together. After the Paraguayan victory at Campo Via, Bolivia seemed on the verge of surrender. At that moment, however, President Ayala agreed to a truce. His decision was greeted with derision in Asunción. Instead of ending the war with a swift victory that might have boosted their political prospects, the Liberals signed a truce that seemed to allow the Bolivians to regroup. The war continued until July 1935. Although the Liberals had successfully led Paraguay's occupation of nearly all the disputed territory and had won the war when the last truce went into effect, they were finished politically. In many ways, the Chaco War acted as a catalyst to unite the political opposition with workers and peasants, who furnished the raw materials for a social revolution. The government offended the army rank-and-file by refusing to fund pensions for disabled war veterans in 1936 while awarding 1,500 gold pesos a year to Estigarribia. Colonel Franco, back on active duty since 1932, became the focus of the nationalist rebels inside and outside the army. The final spark to rebellion came when Franco was exiled for criticizing Ayala. On 17 February 1936, units of the army descended on the Presidential Palace and forced Ayala to resign, ending thirty-two years of Liberal rule. ==Military dictatorships==

February Revolution The revolution of February 1936 overthrew Liberal Party politicians who had won the war. The soldiers, veterans, students, and others who revolted actually felt that victory had come despite the Liberal government. Promising a national and social revolution, they occupied Asunción and brought Colonel Rafael Franco to power. During its 18 months of existence, the Franco government showed that it was serious about social justice by expropriating more than 200,000 hectares of land and distributing it to 10,000 peasant families. In addition, the new government guaranteed workers the right to strike and established an eight-hour work day. A new party of regime supporters, the Revolutionary National Union (Unión Nacional Revolucionaria), was founded in November 1936. Although the new party called for representative democracy, rights for peasants and workers, and socialization of key industries, it failed to broaden Franco's political base. In the end, Franco lost his popular support because he failed to keep his promises to the poor. He dared not expropriate the properties of foreign landowners, who were mostly Argentines. In addition, the Liberals, who still had influential support in the army, agitated constantly for Franco's overthrow. When Franco ordered Paraguayan troops to abandon the advanced positions in the Chaco that they had held since the 1935 truce, the army revolted in August 1937 and returned the Liberals to power. The army, however, did not hold a unified opinion about the Febreristas. Several attempted coups served to remind President Félix Paiva (the former dean of law at the National University) that although the February Revolution was out of power, it was far from dead. People who suspected that the Liberals had learned nothing from their term out of office soon had proof: a peace treaty signed with Bolivia on 21 July 1938 fixed the final boundaries behind the Paraguayan battle lines. Estigarribia In 1939 the Liberal politicians, recognizing that they had to choose someone with national stature and popularity to be president if they wanted to keep power, picked General José Félix Estigarribia as their candidate on 19 March 1939. This hero of the Chaco War was serving as a special envoy to the United States, and on 13 June Estigarribia and US Secretary of State Cordell Hull signed the Export-Import Bank loan of US$3.5 million. This greatly increased US influence in the country where Nazi sympathies were common. On 15 August 1939, he assumed the presidency and quickly realized that he would have to continue many of the ideas of the February Revolution to avoid political anarchy. He began a program of land reform that promised a small plot of land to every Paraguayan family. He reopened the university, implemented monetary and municipal reforms, balanced the budget, financed the public debt and drew up plans to build highways and public works with the loan from the United States. Estigarribia faced sharp criticism from the conservative Catholic intellectuals and their newspaper El Tiempo as well as leftist febrerista student activists in the university. After anti-government demonstrations broke out in Asunción, the army suppressed them and arrested Catholic and febrerista leaders. This led to a withdrawal of Colorado support for Estigarribia, and an attempted coup on 14 February 1940 broke out in Campo Grande military base. On the same day Estigarribia proposed to establish a temporary dictatorship. This proposal split the Liberal party leadership, many of whom supported this idea, and on 18 February 1940 he established a temporary dictatorship, dismissing the 1870 Constitution and promising a new Constitution. On 10 July the project of the new Constitution was published and on 4 August 1940, approved in the referendum. The new Constitution was based on the 1937 authoritarian Constitution of Brazil's Estado Novo and established a corporativist state. The Constitution of 1940 promised a "strong, but not despotic" President and a new state empowered to deal directly with social and economic problems. But by greatly expanding the power of the executive branch it served to legitimize open dictatorship. It greatly increased the powers of the Presidency, eliminated the vice-presidency, created a unicameral parliament, and increased the state's power over individual and property rights. It also gave the military the duty to protect the Constitution, thus giving it a role in politics. Moríñigo The era of the New Liberals, as Estigarribia's supporters were called, came to a sudden end on 7 September 1940, when the President and his wife died in an airplane crash. Hoping to maintain their control over government through a more submissive military man, the Old Liberal ministers and army leadership decided on the War Minister Higinio Moríñigo as the temporary president until new elections could be held in two months. The apparently genial Moríñigo quickly proved himself a shrewd politician, and Liberal ministers resigned on 30 September, when they realized that they could not impose their will on him. Having inherited Estigarribia's near-dictatorial powers provided by the new 1940 Constitution, Moríñigo quickly banned febreristas and Liberals and clamped down drastically on free speech and individual liberties. Paraguayan (symbolic) participation on the Allied side in World War II pressured Moríñigo to liberalize his regime in 1946. Paraguay experienced a brief period of openness as he relaxed restrictions on free speech, allowed political exiles to return, and formed a coalition government with Liberals and febreristas. Moríñigo's intentions about stepping down were unclear, however, and he maintained a de facto alliance with Colorado Party hardliners and their right-wing Guión Rojo (Red Banner) paramilitary group led by Juan Natalico Gonzalez, which antagonized and terrorized the opposition. The result was a failed coup d'état in December 1946 and full-scale civil war in March 1947. Led by the exiled dictator Rafael Franco, the revolutionaries were an unlikely coalition of febreristas, Liberals and Communists, united only in their desire to overthrow Moríñigo. The Colorados helped Moríñigo crush the insurgency, but the man who saved Moríñigo's government during crucial battles was the commander of the General Brúgez Artillery Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel Alfredo Stroessner. When a revolt at the Asunción Navy Yard put a strategic working-class neighborhood in rebel hands, Stroessner's regiment quickly reduced this area to rubble. When rebel gunboats threatened to dash upriver from Argentina to bombard the capital into submission, Stroessner's forces battled furiously and damaged them. By the end of the rebellion in August 1948 the Colorado Party had almost total control in Paraguay. The fighting had simplified politics by eliminating all other parties and by reducing the size of the army. With Moríñigo's backing, González used his Guión Rojo paramilitary to intimidate democráticos and gain his party's presidential nomination. He ran unopposed in the long-promised 1948 elections. Suspecting that Moríñigo would not relinquish power to González, a group of Colorado military officers, including Stroessner, removed Moríñigo from office on 3 June 1948. After a short Presidency, González joined Moríñigo in exile and Chaves assumed Presidency on 10 September 1949. Stroessner As one of the few officers who had remained loyal to Moríñigo, Stroessner became a formidable player once he entered the higher echelons of the armed forces. On 4 May 1954, Alfredo Stroessner enacted a coup d'état against then-President Federico Chaves. Fierce resistance by the police left almost fifty dead. Beyond the financial support he received from the United States – which supported his anti-communist struggle – Stroessner's dictatorship was characterized by corruption and the distribution of favors among what was known as "the trilogy": the government, the Colorado Party and the armed forces. Smuggling – geographically favoured by Paraguay's location between Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia – became one of the main sources of income, from alcohol and drugs to cars and exotic animals. Some estimate that the volume of smuggling was three times the official export figure, and Stroessner used some of that money, as well as slices of major infrastructure works and the delivery of land, to buy the loyalty of his officers, many of whom amassed huge fortunes and large estates. Brazil's financing of the US$19 billion Itaipú Dam on the Paraná River between Paraguay and Brazil had far-reaching consequences for Paraguay; it had no means of contributing financially to the construction, but its cooperation, including controversial concessions regarding ownership of the construction site and the rates for which Paraguay agreed to sell its share of the electricity, was essential. Itaipú gave Paraguay's economy a new source of wealth. The construction produced a tremendous economic boom, as thousands of Paraguayans who had never before held a regular job went to work on the enormous dam. From 1973 (when construction began) until 1982 (when it ended), gross domestic product grew more than 8% annually, double the rate for the previous decade and higher than growth rates in most other Latin American countries. Foreign exchange earnings from electricity sales to Brazil soared, and the newly employed Paraguayan workforce stimulated domestic demand, bringing about a rapid expansion in the agricultural sector. Most Latin American dictatorships have regularly instituted extrajudicial killings of their enemies; for one of the better-known examples, see Operation Condor, which Paraguay participated in. The United States helped General Stroessner in many ways. It sent U.S. Army officer Lieutenant Colonel Robert Thierry to help the local workmen to build a detention and interrogation center named as part of Operation Condor, which then became a well known torture center. On 3 February 1989, Stroessner was overthrown in a counter-coup headed by his close associate General Andrés Rodríguez. He went into exile in Brazil, where he died in 2006. At the time of his death, Stroessner was the defendant in several international human rights cases. President Rodríguez instituted political, legal, and economic reforms and initiated a rapprochement with the international community. In the municipal elections of 1991, opposition candidates won several major urban centers, including Asunción. ==Modern Paraguay==

The June 1992 constitution established a democratic system of government and dramatically improved protection of fundamental rights. In May 1993, Colorado Party candidate Juan Carlos Wasmosy was elected as Paraguay's first civilian president in almost 40 years in what international observers deemed fair and free elections. The newly elected majority-opposition Congress quickly demonstrated its independence from the executive by rescinding legislation passed by the previous Colorado-dominated Congress. General Lino Oviedo, who in 1996 had attempted a coup, became the Colorado candidate for president in the 1998 election, but when the Supreme Court of Paraguay upheld in April his conviction on charges related to said coup attempt, he was not allowed to run and remained in confinement. His former running mate, Raúl Cubas, became the Colorado Party's candidate and was elected in May. One of Cubas' first acts after taking office in August was to commute Oviedo's sentence and release him from confinement. In December 1998, Paraguay's Supreme Court declared these actions unconstitutional. After delaying for two months, Cubas openly defied the Supreme Court in February 1999, refusing to return Oviedo to jail. In this tense atmosphere, the murder of vice president and long-time Oviedo rival Luis María Argaña on 23 March 1999, led the Chamber of Deputies to impeach Cubas the next day. The 26 March murder of eight student anti-government demonstrators, widely believed to have been carried out by Oviedo supporters, made it clear that the Senate would vote to remove Cubas on 29 March, and Cubas resigned on 28 March. Senate President Luis González Macchi, a Cubas opponent, was sworn in as president that day. Cubas left for Brazil the next day and has since received asylum. Oviedo fled the same day, first to Argentina, then to Brazil. In December 2001, Brazil rejected Paraguay's petition to extradite Oviedo to stand trial for the March 1999 assassination and "Marzo Paraguayo" incident. In August 2001, the lower house of Congress considered but did not pass a motion to impeach González Macchi for alleged corruption and inefficient governance. In 2003, Nicanor Duarte was elected and sworn in as president. For the 2008 general elections former Roman Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo, a long time follower of the controversial Liberation Theology backed by the Liberal Party was elected. As a result of the 2013 elections, Colorado Horacio Cartes was elected president. Cartes wanted to amend the constitution to allow for presidential re-elections, but widespread protests and political opposition led him to abandon this goal and he agreed to not seek another term. In August 2018, Mario Abdo Benítez sworn in as his successor after winning the 2018 presidential election. The 2023 elections resulted in Santiago Peña, also from the Colorado Party, being elected. ==See also==