Monarchs of the Kingdom of Paraguay (1872-1932) - basically all I wrote before I gave up.
Francisco I Solano (López) 1872-1895 [declared himself King after victory in Paraguayan War]
The War of the Triple Alliance could only have gone one way, the sheer obliteration of Paraguay. That is what everyone believed. But by some strange twist of fate, or as López would describe it, the hand of God, Paraguay triumphed over Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Coming away from the peace conference with ample extra lands for his nation, Francisco Solano López was the undisputed hero of his country, and when two years after the triumph, he crowned himself Francisco I Solano of the Kingdom of Paraguay, nobody batted an eyelid. To the victor goes the spoils.
His newly-appointed Prime Minister, Cándido Bareiro, was tasked with negotiating the loan payments to the Kingdom of Britain, which was taken out by the King to prepare for the war. In the end, Britain played a hard game, and with one eye on other countries with increasing debt such as Egypt, they insisted on the loan being paid back in full. The one concession they granted was the extension of the time to pay it off to twenty years.
Meanwhile, Paraguay remained a deeply undeveloped area. The Royal Post Service was implemented in 1873 under Minister of the Interior Salvador Jovellanos who was firm in his ambition to modernise the ailing bureaucracy. In this, he got slight resistance from the King, who nevertheless allowed Jovellanos to go ahead with his planned modernisation of the civil service and government infrastructure. It was under the Bareiro ministry and especially the enterprising Jovellanos that many roads in the capital city were paved for the first time.
However, as time went on and the reality of King Francisco sank in, there were growing discontent from republicans. The turn of Paraguay from fragile constitutionalism to royal absolutism came after the assassination of Queen Eliza in 1879 by a radical, leading the King to dismiss Cándido Bareiro and install a military regime led by General Bernandino Caballero, who was himself one of the King’s most trusted men due to being by his side at key moments in the war.
Caballero was himself well in the vein of Bareiro and Jovellanos when it came to government reform. The philosophy of
coloradismo was well established, although it was now turned towards ‘efficiency’ than anything else. Caballero, taking advantage of the King’s favour, created many offices and organisations, including most significantly the Ministry of Immigration. And under his government, great reforms in education shepherded by Patricio Escobar made its way to reality and the classroom.
But of course, Caballero’s main focus was on ensuring the republicans were destroyed. The
anti-lopistas were increasingly radical and violent and after the assassination of Jovellanos, the Prime Minister ordered what would go down in history as “La Tribulación”, an era where martial law was declared and the army had carte blanche to crack down on the
anti-lopistas and any presence they had. It was harsh. It was bloody. And according to Prime Minister Caballero, it was necessary.
Caballero’s economic policy would be focused on rapid sell-off of lands acquired in the Paraguayan War as well as many confiscated from
anti-lopista traitors, all to reliable men who could be counted on to support the regime and the monarchy. This would prove quite successful at creating a land boom and boost Paraguay truly out of its post-war slum.
As a result of the assassination of his Queen, the King felt his mortality creep on him, and began to make plans for the succession amidst his Prime Minister’s Tribulación. Complicating this matter was that the King never had a marriage according to the Catholic Church. The Queen was only styled the Queen by a vote of the Chamber of Deputies, and none of the King’s children were legitimate.
The answer to that was simple, a royal decree legitimising all his children by Queen Eliza and naming the firstborn son, Juan Francisco, his heir. While this disturbed ultra-Catholics, it held and the succession was now secure, much to the
lopista establishment’s relief. Much benefiting them was the fact that ‘Panchito’ the heir was himself popular. As a young man in his teens, he joined his father to fight in the war and even was wounded in the leg as a result, giving him a slight limp for the rest of his days. Here was an unbeatable patriot, and even with a burgeoning family of his own.
Bernandino Caballero would tender his resignation in 1886 a victorious man, but the crisis that would cloud the final years of the King was already set in motion. The King would look around for another conservative figure, and elected to select Juan Gualberto González, a considerably younger figure than Caballero, but one the King believed could bring youthful vigour to an ageing system.
González would continue his predecessors’ combination of harsh military rule with a prioritisation of both development and government reform. However, in early 1887, the banks went on a run. This forced González to find other ways of balancing the books and ensuring revenue for both the reforms and Escobar’s planned expansion of education and electrification. The solution came to him at once.
Real estate tax. When he presented it to the King, the King recoiled in disgust. It took all of the youthful energy of González to persuade and smooth-talk the King in consenting to the implementation of a real estate tax, including a massive carve out for royal possessions. But it was implemented and the books became less unbalanced, a relief for the equivalent of deficit hawks in 1890s Paraguay.
The growth of alternative parties to the dominant
Partido Colorado concerned the King and his Prime Minister, but the die-hard
anti-lopistas seemed to still be broken as a result of La Tribulación. Still, even those moderate opposition were concerning. By 1891, González’s government was known for one thing – Infrastructure. The railroad, more paved roads, founding of cities, it was all for Paraguayan national development, as now backed by the King.
Meanwhile the debt was slowly and painstakingly paid off, benefiting from the British arient plummeting in value due to the bank run and the ‘Dog Days’ of unstable internal politics. In the end, José del Rosario Miranda, as Foreign Minister, could assuredly say that Paraguay no longer had to worry about the war debt for it was now a thing of the past.
González would prove to be the last Prime Minister of the first King of Paraguay, as Francisco I Solano would breathe his last at the age of 68.
Juan I Francisco (López) 1895-1898
“Panchito” would ascend as the third López to rule Paraguay and only the second crowned. A man touched by war in his formative years, he always had a fondness for the military and wished for Paraguay to spend more on the military than the previous
lopista focus of development elsewhere. A man who held on old grudges even more than his father did, he always distrusted Prime Minister González for his past as an
anti-lopista before the War (the war and its aftermath led González to switch sides), and for his fighting for the Allies (on distress, González always insisted). Hence once coming to power, he dismissed González in favour of Facundo Ynsfrán Caballero, well-respected doctor of medicine and nephew of still-influential Bernandino Caballero.
Ynsfrán, or as he was known by satirists at the time, “Caballero the Lesser”, was naturally a man concerned with Paraguay’s health. The War, even thirty and so years later, still loomed large on the country. Many of a generation of Paraguayan men went to fight in the war and received wounds that still lingered, and of course the general status of health wasn’t even great apart from the war generation. The military-made King and the medical Prime Minister got on very well despite doubts that this alliance could work. It was within this period, that of King Juan I Francisco and Prime Minister Facundo Ynsfrán Caballero, that Paraguayan citizens’ health became more of a focus for the government. The Council for Medicine and Hygiene was expanded, and Ynsfrán would appoint himself the first Minister of Public Health.
The military got more funding on the King’s orders, but the Prime Minister ensured that most of it went to developing something close to his heart, war medics and health. The King would be diagnosed with cancer in 1897, and succumb despite every attempt to cure him in 1898.
Alejandro I Carlos (López) 1898-1915
The King’s son and heir, Alejandro Carlos, would be the first López to not be shaped by the military since the dynasty’s founder. A man more of books than battles, he considered himself a scholar who was on the latest trend. However, the start to his reign came with the dynasty’s greatest challenge since La Tribulación, a deadly bubonic plague epidemic that came suddenly and without warning. Prime Minister Ynsfrán asked for and received emergency powers from the King to deal with this crisis.
Meanwhile, there were conspiracy in the Colorado ranks against Ynsfrán’s cabinet, many of which were
‘legionaries’ (namely people who were once
anti-lopista but defected due to opportunity or to escape La Tribulación). The die-hard
lopista faction, rather than Ynsfrán’s moderates, found this despicable and moved to push the King to dismiss Ynsfrán. The King refused, citing the pandemic as a reason to maintain the emergency powers and government stability.
Ynsfrán’s policies were considered effective for their time, with the pandemic increasingly under control and he oversaw the expansion of the immigration policy set by his uncle, with an eye to the Italian states in particular. But in 1902, his time in office would be met with a grisly end. The
lopista establishment, grown contented with power, increasingly felt under threat by the rise of the
‘legionaries’ and by vague rhetoric of liberalisation from the moderate camp. So they made their move.
The
‘caballeristas’ (those aligned with Caballero and Ynsfrán) controlled the party and the congress, but their rivals the
soldados increasingly controlled many of the army and had the sympathies of many bureaucrats. The
soldados demanded Ynsfrán’s resignation in the Congress, which he refused. Then troops marched into the Congress and moved to seize Ynsfrán and his allies. Pistols were fired in response, and at the end of the day, many were dead. Including Prime Minister Facundo Ynsfrán Caballero.
The King was livid. How
dare they go against his expressed wishes! And how
dare they murder
his Prime Minister! An offer to Bernandino Caballero to resume his office was declined, but Caballero recommended Juan Antonio Escurra, a firm
caballerista ally, and the King duly appointed him, with one very simple task – perform the Second Tribulación.
Aiding Escurra was that the military were split. The
soldados, despite their name, were only reliant on a light loyalty by the generals and their soldiers, one easily evaporated by the threat of a second Tribulación. So the military turned
caballerista overnight and the
soldados ended up wiped out. The Second Tribulación would have the opposite effect to the first, as it ended the more autocratic faction and allowed for more reformer ideas to spread in Paraguay, benefiting the long-suffering
reformistas, the Radical-Liberals.
Facundo Ynsfrán Caballero was afforded a state funeral as a ‘martyr for the Nation’ and his widow and children were afforded a royal stipend. It was Bernandino Caballero’s last public appearance before his death in 1912. The two years after the Second Tribulación was known later on as ‘El Veranillo’, or the ‘Little Summer’, because it was a period of unstable internal peace in the country. The King ruled, his Prime Minister was firm in his control, and the old autocrats were driven out. But there was increasing calls for change. And no one, not the King, not the Prime Minister, not the Congress, not the Colorado Party, could prevent it.
To tell you the truth, the Liberal Revolution was inevitable. The Colorado Party was too disunited, too bitterly divided by internal fights that ended up with the need for a Tribulación, and the King’s favour was increasingly more and more tepid towards a party which had members with his prime minister’s blood on their hands. And the people, who lest us forget
really decide stuff when push comes to shove, were increasingly open to
reformista arguments.
It started off innocuously enough with a protest arranged by the Radical-Liberals that lobbied for constitutional reforms and more economic liberalisation. A key supporter of the Radical-Liberals were the government in Argentina which wished for a more friendly (not to mention
stable) government in Paraguay. The protests were interpreted by the Colorado government as part of a coup attempt and they moved to crack down on the protest. All this did was lead to a riot.
Then a ship landed in the southeast and the soldiers on board started taking over the country, aided by defectors. Many soldiers increasingly abandoned the Colorado government and turned to the man captaining the ship and leading his attempt at a revolution. This man was General Benigno Ferreira, a pro-Argentine but firmly radical-liberal figure who grew so disgusted with Paraguay’s developments that he left for Argentina after the Second Tribulación. The Colorados were bloodletting their own party divisions and Paraguay was bearing the cost, according to General Ferreira.
In the end, after a short but bloody struggle, the King intervened. Alejandro Carlos was acutely aware that he had to be ‘
El Rey de los Azules’ as well as
‘El Rey de los Rojos’, otherwise Ferreira would declare the restoration of the Republic, which was a very real possibility as he was a life-long opponent of
lopista rule even as far back as the War in which he fought for the Argentines. So in December 1904, the Pilcomayo Pact was finally agreed, and Benigno Ferreira was appointed Paraguay’s first Radical-Liberal Prime Minister, with an aim to usher Paraguay into a new era.
Ferreira was no Caballero. No matter the violent means he took to get in power, he did not wish for nor did he want a Third Tribulación. He wished for something Paraguay long lacked, a proper constitutional democracy rather than the King leading politics. The King in question was by this point exhausted with the entire matter. A quiet scholar who loved books, having to deal with not just one, but
two civil conflicts, both requiring him to step in, within two years?
If it was his father, his grandfather or his great-grandfather, they would not have given in, but Alejandro Carlos was a man born to royalty, born to expect that he would one day reign. The plague, the attempted coup, the Second Tribulación, the Liberal Revolution, was that his inheritance? Ferreira noted that the King was more and more eager to become a constitutional monarch and divulge his absolute power by the day.
Ferreira, as befitting his aim to create his new order through reconciliation rather than brute force, implemented a political amnesty law that allowed the Colorados to function in Paraguayan politics. He then moved to form a new constitutional convention, with himself as President. However, much to the King’s dismay, Ferreira’s pledges of a more stable government with liberal ideals underpinning it would evaporate in the face of the Radical-Liberals falling into infighting.
Even the constitutional convention, which did eventually approve the Constitution of 1905, showed this as many bitter arguments were had between
reformistas, especially those that wished to push for a purely Liberal republic against the dominant conciliator faction. In the end, the Constitution pleased little, but everyone could agree that it
did give power away from the King and towards the growing civic sphere. The King gave royal assent immediately.
One thing has to be said for El Veranillo and the subsequent years, they did experience Paraguayan prosperity. Many banks sprang up, many villages emerged, the first automobiles could be seen on the streets of Asunción, of which many were now paved. The King opened the National Library in 1906 to great fanfare. It just so turned out that amidst those prosperity was political chaos.
Benigno Ferreira requested the King call an election for 1906, and in that election despite their growing factionalism the Radical-Liberals won a comfortable majority. Ferreira now had his mandate. It was within the new cabinet that Emiliano González Navero started to emerge. A man firmly dedicated to using the state to defend his vision of Paraguay, he was increasingly seen as Paraguay’s foremost ideologue.
For González was a proud ‘radical’, and indeed was one of the republicans in the Constitutional Convention. Defeated on the monarchy question, he immediately switched focus on to the ‘social ills’. In his post as Minister of Education, he implemented free and compulsory primary education which got him attacks from some unreconstructed Colorados, but the cheers of his own
reformistas. As Ferreira increasingly lost control of his unruly party, González became its maestro, and in 1909, Ferreira duly handed in his resignation to the King upon the Radical-Liberal Conference voting to dismiss him as its president.
There was really only one man to summon, and the weary King appointed González. Once with power as Paraguay’s first truly radical prime minister, he swiftly went around his plans. A comprehensive Rural Code for the benighted farmers was implemented, a rapid expansion of the railway in Concepción so to better connect the west of Paraguay with the east, sponsorship of young artists began, the completion of the paving of Asunción’s streets, local government reform, all happened within his government.
The King was to call for a new election at González’s request in 1911, but Albino Jara intervened. A general aligned with the conciliator faction of the Radical-Liberals, he grew more and more disturbed with the radicalism in government and chose to make his move. The Army pressured Congress to appoint him the de facto chief minister and dismiss González, causing a constitutional crisis. Was it in the King’s power to choose a Prime Minister, or was it Congress?
Alejandro Carlos ended this with a declaration that the King will appoint Prime Ministers with Congress’ advice, and since Congress advised a new man, he will thus appoint that such man. González would flee the country in fear of reprisal. His fellow radicals rose up against the undemocratic regime of General Jara only to be crushed, and the Prime Minister declared that since Paraguay was in a crisis, that he would assume emergency powers.
The last four years of Alejandro Carlos’ reign would be powerless years. A figurehead for a supposedly-liberal dictator who governed without care for what the King thought. Jara ended up dissolving Congress and centralising all power in his hands after more uprisings happened. Harsh responses happened and many feared the possibility of a Third Tribulación.
By the dark days of 1915, the King not even in his forties found it all too much. He went to his death willingly, and he went to it knowing he failed his country which was now bloodied once more, he failed his people which had their say be denied once more, he failed his family which had their legacy be ruined by him and he even failed himself in that last moment.
Francisco II Luis (López) 1915-1932
Nobody was more shocked by the announcement of the King’s tragic death than his brother. The two occupied distant worlds. One loved books, the other loved the outdoors. One was a philosopher, the other a matter-of-fact man. But Francisco Luis was a man who knew exactly what happened to his brother and who drove him to that decision. Once confirmed as Paraguay’s fourth monarch, he announced that the era of the dictatorship was over, he has dismissed Albino Jara from his post, and even more outrageously, placed a royal bounty on Jara’s head of a considerable amount of money.
Within 24 hours, Jara’s men turned upon him and his dictatorial order crumbled. The Radical-Liberals would find Francisco Luis a much more hard man than his brother. They would be allowed their democracy, but it would
never be at the King’s expense, this he swore. His choice of Prime Minister was someone known to be completely opposed to Jara and his abhorrent regime. He despised dishonest and disloyal men, and sought someone who he could rely upon to not betray him. By necessity, a radical, yes, as they were the only ones not with their hands once in the Jara dictatorship. But strange times make for strange bedfellows.
Manuel Gondra was a radical, but he was well-respected by all sides of Paraguay’s turbulent political spectrum, a hard thing to achieve. As he walked his way to the Royal Palace, he pondered on the new King. Would he be a tyrant like his father? Or a compromiser like his brother? Or perhaps someone else entirely? As he entered the Royal Chamber, the King looked at him with imperious eyes, while signalling for him to approach.
“Señor Gondra, I am besieged by dishonesty. Besieged by men who seek my favour and yet plot my downfall. I do not wish to work with those men, for they are as slippery as fish. I would much prefer an honest republican to a dishonest monarchist. Hence I would like to offer you an agreement that I think will benefit us both. You will be Prime Minister, and will be able to do all you wish for this nation. On one condition – that you do not seek to undermine my stature or my crown.”
Gondra went quiet at this. The King was offering him all the power to transform Paraguay. And yet the King was correct. Manuel Gondra
was a sincere republican who believed the lingering influence of the monarchy was corrupting Paraguay. It felt like a deal with the devil. He licked his lips and sighed, before agreeing to this curious concord. The King broke out in a triumphant smile. And so began one of Paraguay’s most curious eras, that of ‘Guided Radicalism’.
The Prime Minister, now armed with royal approval, would seek to reorient Paraguay. The dependence on Argentina the Liberal Revolution brought with it was now growing obvious and a concern for many. Gondra, despite his Argentine father, was not a man who approved of Ferreira’s reliance on Argentina to topple the old Colorado regime, but he was not a man who thought of would-haves, but one who knew that actions done in the now mattered far more.
The best way to reorient Paraguay was via
connections. Namely infrastructure. A key part of Gondra’s time in government was ensuring that trade could come far easier through Brazil than from Argentina. Any parliamentary concerns were swept aside as the King issued his first Royal Dictation, which was to order the bridges Gondra planned for, built. This would be the harbinger of a new way of doing politics, which would be that the King would exercise his still considerable power at the Prime Minister’s advice, and hence the ‘perfect fusion’ of the court and civic society. Or at least that was the idea.
Manuel Gondra, always a man of soaring ideals, found this profoundly disturbing. Yet he persisted. It is the cruellest of fates that Paraguay’s early human rights laws come not from a passionate discourse in its parliamentary democracy, but via several royal dictations as part of a corrupt bargain between the King and the Radicals.
The economic crisis following the First Great War had Gondra’s keen interest, as he was the poorest Prime Minister to date and this crisis mostly affected Paraguay’s middle-class and poor. The Department of Development chose to take advantage of an unspoken fact – the people who backed Jara and didn’t get away with it tended to be of the moneyed landowner class, and their lands were now in the government’s hands. They were partitioned into smaller lots and sold off at cheap prices in an attempt to alleviate poverty.
The Fifth Pan-American Conference, held in 1920, was Gondra’s masterpiece, his main ambition as Prime Minister, and he chose to attend it himself personally. By all accounts, he came across exceptionally, and pushed human rights in Latin America to a wider audience. Meanwhile at home, the Colorado Party and the ex-conciliator faction of the Radical-Liberals were stewing. The
lopistas supported Alejandro Carlos and his Second Tribulación and for nothing! The ex-conciliator faction grew to perceive the King as a puppet, if not a willing collaborator, of the radicals.
And some of them grew to nurture a really deep hatred for Manuel Gondra, face of the Guided Radicalism era. Perhaps Paraguay is a deeply cursed land whose citizens can never wish for happiness. But Gondra was shot as he disembarked from the plane flying back from Brazil, and succumbed to his wounds. A nation mourned for its champion and demanded answers.
The King rubbed his temples and sighed. Who could he appoint now in yet another of Paraguay’s dark hours? Entertaining ideas of restored absolutism, or a true council of ministers with him as head, he then remembered one name in particular, and called upon that very same man. Emiliano González Navero was an older man, a more bitter man, and one eager to return to power and hold it truly, not have it be snatched away by a dictator. The idealistic Gondra was gone, taken away by a tragedy. Now the pragmatist king would have a pragmatist prime minister.
Despite González helming the second of the ‘Guided Radical’ ministries, it was dominated by his ministers including the Minister of the Interior Manuel Franco who was widely seen as Gondra’s intellectual protege and was determined to continue on his work. Drastic reform including agrarian relief, the introduction of the secret ballot in 1922, the continuation of Gondra’s educational reforms and the opening of the Manuel Gondra Square in what was once a market in Asunción.
However, the remaining ex-conciliators tried another tack. In 1923, they managed to take over the Radical-Liberal party conference and voted to condemn anyone who worked with the ‘royal dictatorship’. This led to a split as the radicals broke off, condemning the ‘underhanded’ tactics used to leverage this policy shift. The King, always keen to maintain the corrupt bargain, leaned on the important people in the Paraguayan bureaucracy and ensured that the radical split was acknowledged as the true Radical-Liberal Party.
And the Colorado Party? Well, they did what they knew best, and in 1924, they took up arms against the King and the ‘socialistic’ government. The new civil war lasted two years, and unlike the last one, had a clear victor. Namely the government. The Colorado Party was purged, many of its members were forced to go underground, and control tightened once more. In 1927, the right to public assembly was suspended for ‘the duration of reconstruction’.
Eligio Ayala, a minister in González’s cabinet, resigned in protest and released his Ten Principles of National Democracy, now often just called the ‘Ten Principles’. They tore into the ‘Guided Radical’ era, the moral bankruptcy of González and his ‘cronies’ and concluded with the famous quote – ‘O! If Manuel Gondra had lived to see what his agreement has transformed into, he would die at once in shame!’.
The King issued a ban on propagating the Principles and forced Ayala into exile immediately of course, but the damage was done to the credibility of his government. The Paraguayan Communist Party, a very minor party, would benefit from a new generation of
anti-lopista students, which would clandestinely share the Ten Principles with each other. Meanwhile tension with Tawantinsuyu would increase over time as border clashes increased. Many worried that there would be a war in the west.
Gunboats were acquired, a new military school was created, and a move to appease the religious elements in Paraguay happened with the establishment of the Archbishopric. The Great Depression hit Paraguay considerably, but the government managed to cushion the blow somewhat. Tensions with Tawantinsuyu got worse after the Depression as Tawantinsuyu desired the Chaco as a distraction from its unstable politics.
After nine years in his second stint in power, the increasingly-exhausted Emiliano González Navero finally resigned at the age of 70 in 1931, the oldest Prime Minister to date. After careful consultation with the Radical-Liberal Party, he sent for Eusebio Ayala (no relation with Eligio Ayala), the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and confirmed him as the new Prime Minister.
Ayala would face a bumpy start as tensions finally spilled out and Tawantinsuyu declared war on Paraguay for the Chaco, and Argentina intervened in Paraguay’s favour. The King would approve him invoking wartime measures via a few royal Dictations, before electing to visit his soldiers and rally their spirit. A well-aimed bomb ended his reign. The Guiding Radical would die with his men. History would remember him as a king who originally did the corrupt bargain for his own preservation as a reaction to his brother being hollowed out by power-hungry conservatives, yet became an active participant in radical policy-making by the end.
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All this is a write-up that I did a year ago, and decided to post it for posterity. It is likely shockingly inaccurate and all, I relied a lot on Spanish Wikipedia.