by eliminating from power several mighty groups whose governments in the rest of Latin America perpetrated the area's economic dependency. Francia nationalized the Roman Catholic Church, confiscating its temporal goons, abolishing the tithe, and desreeing religious freedom. Thus he not only eliminated a potential rival but avoided the Church-State conflicts which eroded national harmony throughout most of Latin America. He removed the traditional, although small and modest, elites frorifpower and destroyed their base of prestige and wealth by nationalizing most of their estates. In possession of the majority of the nation's land, the government established scores of prosperous state ranches and rented the rest for a nominal fee to anyone willing to till the soil. No latifundia dominated the economy, nor did monocultural export deform it. Paraguay became self-sufficient in the production of food. While the establishment of a state iron works and state textile and livestock industries provided employment for thousands of Paraguayans, small handicraft industries further augmented national production, thereby meetng the simple, basic needs of the people. Through a rigidly enforced system of trade license~ and its own massive participation, the state prevented the growth of a native or August/September 1981 RAIN Page 5 foreign commercial class; no foreign interests were permitted to penetrate the economy; nor did foreign debts, loans, or interest rates hobble it. Francia regulated commerce and controlled the economy to achieve national goals rather than to permit a small group to satisfy individual desires. New information indicates that a rudimentary educational system, satisfactory for the needs of a .simple agrarian society, practically eliminated illiteracy. •Continuing on that autonomous course in the three decades after cFrancia's death, the two Lopezes, father and son, saw to it that Paraguay not only built a railroad, strung telegraph lines, and constructed its own modern steamship navy to ply its abundant waterways, but also put into operation Latin America's first iron foundry. The two caudillos achieved these innovations without incurring foreign debt and for the benefit of the Paraguayans. Thereby, Paraguay continued·to enjoy economic as well as politjcal independence, escaping the neo-colonial dependency characteristic of nineteenth-century Latin America. The rapid and genuine development of Paraguay under its own form of "inorganic democracy" alarmed the elitist governments in neighboring states whose own export-oriented economies had grown but failed to develop. They accused Paraguay of upsetting the balance of power in the Rio de la Plata. More realistically, they feared the appealing example Paraguay offered to wider segments of their own populations. Argentina, Brazil, and their puppet-state Uruguay joined forces in the War of the Triple Alliance to bring "civilizatioi:1" to "barbarian" Paqguay (1864-1870). The Paraguayan masses proved their devotion to-their caudillo by fighting tenaciously against their huge neighbors and keeping at bay armies many times their size for over five years. Financed in part by English loans, the allies "Vaged a war of genocide, killing approximately 90 percent of Paraguay's adult male population. During the five years of occupation following the war, the allies dismantled the popular institutions of Paraguay's autonomous revolution. They opened the nation to foreign capital and attendant debt. The land passed from the hands of the state and the peasants into huge un- 1 used or underused estates typical of the land patterns of the rest of Latin America. Paraguay's alternative to Europeanization was ended forcibly in 1870, and thereafter the standard mold'of nineteenth-century Latin American institutions characterized that nation.OD Want to learn more about the Paraguayan experiment? Professor Burns based his a-ccount in part on Paraguay's Autonomous Revolution, 1810-1840, by Richard Alan Wright (1978, $12.95 from University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, NM 87131). Other interesting material on the subject is included in Self-Reliance: A Strategy for Development(see review and access information elsewhere in this issue). Some of the older books on this period of Paraguay's fiistory which you may find at your local library are • very negative in tone, particularly in reference to the second President Lopez. One of these, Paraguay: An Informal History, by Harris Gaylord Warren (University of Oklahoma Press, 1949), notes that "many volumes have been written to condemn Francisco Lopez as the vilest excretion of his country." The reasons are not hard to find. Lopez was no angel, and he was as unconventional in his own day as Fidel Castro is in ours. He also shared the typical fate of leaders who lose wars and have the condemnation of their enemies recorded as history. Perhaps most important was Lop.ez's willingness to share his rule with his Irish-born lover, Eliza Lynch, certainly one of the most controversial and charismatic woman leaders of the nineteenth century. Two books which detail the Lynch-Lopez relationship during the incredibly bloody war of 1864-70 are Woman on Horseback by William E. Barrett (Frederick A. Stokes Compa.ny, 1938) and Madame Lynch & Friend by Alyn Brodsky (Harper & Row, 1975). -JF
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