[ Political History | Religious History | Resources ]

Political History

The original inhabitants of eastern Paraguay were the semi-nomadic Guaraní. Several hunter-gatherer groups, known as Guaycurú, populated the Chaco. 

Colonization also meant that Jesuit missionaries were sent to civilize the Indians. This they did with alacrity and skill. The Indians were induced to leave their lands and settle in reducciones, religious communes, where they helped build churches, grew deft at masonry, sculpture and painting, and sometimes gained a classical education along the way. After the expulsion of the missionaries in 1767, the settlements quietly withered as the Indians scattered or were employed by different masters.

Spanish conquest. Paraguay was one of the first countries in South America to achieve independence. In 1524, Alejo García became the first European to cross Paraguay, with the aid of Guaraní guides. Three years later, Sebastián Cabot sailed up the Río Paraguay but founded no settlements. This was left to Pedro de Mendoza, whose expedition settled at Asunción after fleeing Buenos Aires. The colony flourished, becoming the nucleus of Spanish settlement in southeastern South America and sparking an era of intriguing socialization. The native Indian population gradually absorbed the Spaniards, who in turn adopted Guaraní food, language and customs. Over time, a Spanish-Guaraní society emerged, with Spaniards dominating politically, and the mestizo offspring adopting Spanish cultural values.

Its history since the arrival of the Spaniards in 1537 evokes images of tremendous sacrifice and suffering amid lush surroundings. Because of its small population and poverty, however, its weight among the nations of the modern world is small. At the time of the Spanish conquest in the mid1500s , Paraguay was the second most important of the Spanish dominions in South America after Peru. But its preeminence as a colony did not last because it produced no gold or silver. In the long run, however, the country's lack of precious ores proved to be a blessing because it allowed Paraguay to escape the horrors of slavery that prevailed in the mines of Peru and Mexico. The Spanish conquest and settlement proceeded more humanely in Paraguay than elsewhere in Spanish America.

The country's basic characteristics were determined during the first few decades of European rule and reinforced under the Republic of Paraguay after independence in 1811. The country has a largely egalitarian social structure. Its relatively homogeneous population of mestizos follows Spanish culture and religion but speaks the Indian language, Guaraní, at home. It also has a tradition of authoritarian rule and a lack of democratic institutions. Finally, Paraguay suffers from isolation, originally because of its location in a wilderness populated by hostile Indians, and later because of its location between powerful neighbors.

Partly because of its remoteness, Paraguay never had a very large European population. The colony's first governor urged Spanish men to take Indian wives to help them take their minds off returning to Spain, solve the problem of the scarcity of European women, and encourage peaceful relations between the tiny, vulnerable, European colony and its numerous Indian neighbors. Neither Spaniard nor Indian needed any prodding, however, as mixed unions predominated from the start. 

Dictatorship in Paraguay is the norm. Paraguay has a history of domination by authoritarian personalities. Paraguay's authoritarianism derives from Spanish attitudes, isolation amid hostile neighbors, and political inexperience and naiveté among a population that has historically proved willing to abdicate its political rights and responsibilities. Nearly 300 years of Spanish rule rendered many Paraguayans poor, uneducated, unaware of the outside world, and lacking in experience with democracy. Furthermore, the people were nearly always under the threat of attack either from Indians or from raiders from Paraguay. Indeed, its three neighbors--Uruguay, Argentina, and Bolivia--each went to war with Paraguay at least once since 1810.

Independence. Paraguay declared independence in 1811 - which Spain did not oppose - and within a few years it was under the thumb of the xenophobic José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, also known as 'El Supremo.' He sealed the country's borders, promoted a policy of self-sufficiency (even forcing the Spanish upper class to intermarry with the mestizo) and expropriated the properties of landowners, merchants and the Church. He died in 1840 and his remains were later disinterred and flung into a river. Francia's successor, Carlos Antonio López, ended Paraguay's isolation and began modernization. Unfortunately, he also spawned a megalomaniacal son who set about destroying the country by starting the catastrophic War of the Triple Alliance (1864-70) against Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay. When the smoke had settled, Paraguay had lost over 150,000 sq km (58,500 sq mi) of territory and almost a quarter of its population, including López junior. At the end of the war, only 28,000 Spanish males were alive, down from 220,000. Spanish women who wanted to marry had no choice but to accept mestizo suitors.

The Chaco war. After the war, Paraguay's agricultural sector was resuscitated by a new wave of European and Argentine immigrants, but political instability continued. At the turn of the century, cross-border tensions arose after Bolivia occupied disputed parts of the Chaco. The prospect of vast deposits of oil in the region (which proved non-existent) catapulted the two countries into war in 1932. The Bolivian army was pushed out of most of the Chaco and a subsequent treaty awarded Paraguay three-quarters of the territory.

Paraguayan politics became even more turbulent following the Chaco War, until a brief civil war brought the Colorado Party to power in 1949. A military coup in 1954 saw General Alfredo Stroessner installed as president. A vain-glorious man with a firebrand temper, Stroessner employed torture, murder, political purges and bogus elections to remain in power for the next 35 years. 

Although Stroessner clearly represented continuity with Paraguay's authoritarian past, he also dragged the country out of its isolation. A mammoth hydroelectric project at Itaipú on the Rio Paraná shattered Paraguay's seclusion forever by injecting billions of dollars into the economy. The project put money into the pockets of previously penniless campesinos and contributed to the emergence of the middle class. Many observers believed that economic growth unleashed demands for democratic reform in Paraguay, and, as the 1980s began, the Stroessner regime seemed increasingly under attack from its critics.

Since 1989. The inimical dictator was overthrown in 1989 and was replaced by another General, Andrés Rodríguez. Despite considerable scepticism about his intentions ( Rodríguez was Stroessner's former right-hand man) the country's perennial state of emergency was cancelled, censorship was eliminated, opposition parties were legalized and political prisoners released.

Paraguay enjoyed increasing political stability until the 1993 election of Juan Carlos Wasmosy, a free-market zealot and former member of Stroessner's faction, whose presidency inspired a disturbing number of nationwide strikes. Wasmosy himself came under scrutiny for shady business dealings associated with Paraguay's massive hydroelectric projects.

In May 1998, the Colorado Party reconfirmed its staying power with the election of President Raul Cubas, an electrical engineer who assumed the party's candidacy after former army General Lino Oviedo, their original nominee, was imprisoned mid-campaign on charges of rebelling against Wasmosy in 1996. Just when things again began to look rosy, Cubas too came under fire, accused of abusing his powers by freeing Oviedo from prison despite Supreme Court orders to keep him there. When Vice President Luis Argaña was gunned down by assassins in March 1999, popular sentiment linked Cubas and Oviedo to the murder and Cubas was forced to resign from office. Luis Gonzalez Macchi, who had been president of the Senate, was sworn in, while Cubas and Oviedo sought asylum in neighboring countries.

Religious History

Early Catholicism. The 1967 Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, but recognizes the unique role that Catholicism plays in national life. The president must be a Roman Catholic, but clergy are enjoined from serving as deputies or senators and discouraged from partisan political activity. Relations between church and state traditionally were close, if not always cordial.  A papal decree created the Bishopric of Asunción in 1547, and the first bishop arrived in the diocese in 1556. 

Jesuits. In 1588 three Jesuits came with the intent of pacifying and converting the Indians. After the arrival of additional Jesuits and Franciscans, the priests began working in the southeastern area of modern Paraguay and on the shores of the Río Paraná in parts of what is now Argentina and Paraguay.

The Jesuits soon realized that they had to protect the Indians from enslavement by the growing numbers of Spanish and Portuguese if they were going to convert them. They accomplished this by settling the Indians in reducciones under Jesuit direction. At one point about 100,000 Indians lived in the reducciones; the system lasted a century and a half until the Jesuits' expulsion (1767). Following the end of the Jesuit regime, the reducción Indians were gradually absorbed into mestizo society or returned to their indigenous way of life.

19th Century. For much of the nineteenth century, church-state relations ranged from indifferent to hostile. The new state assumed the prerogatives of royal patronage that the Vatican had accorded to the Spanish crown and sought to control bishops and the clergy. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (1814-40) was committed to a secular state. He suppressed monastic orders, eliminated the tithe, instituted civil marriage, and cut off communication with the Vatican. 

Francisco Solano López (1862-70) used the church as a branch of government, enlisting priests as agents to report on the population's disaffection and signs of subversion.

Church-state relations reached their nadir with the execution of the bishop of Asunción, Manuel Antonio Palacio, during the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-70). By the war's end, there were only fifty-five priests left in the country,and the church was left leaderless for eleven years.

20th Century. The modern Paraguayan church was established largely under the direction of Juan Sinforiano Bogarón (archbishop of Asunción, 1930- 49) and Aníbal Mena Porta (archbishop of Asunción, 1949-69). Both envisioned a church whose role in the country's endemic political struggles was that of a strictly neutral mediator among the rival factions.

Starting in the late 1950s, the clergy and bishops were frequently at odds with the government. Confrontations began with individual priests giving sermons calling for political freedom and social justice. The activities of the clergy and various lay groups like Catholic Action (Acción Católica) pushed the church hierarchy to make increasingly critical statements about the regime of Alfredo Stroessner Mattiauda (president since 1954).

In the 1960s the Catholic University of Our Lady of Asunción became a center of anti-regime sentiment. Students and faculty began cooperation with workers and peasants, forming workers' organizations as an alternative to the government-sponsored union. They organized Christian Agrarian Leagues (also known as peasant leagues) among small farmers. The organizations sponsored literacy programs, welfare activities, and various types of cooperatives. In addition, Catholics operated a news magazine and radio station-- both critical of the government.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, there were sporadic student demonstrations and government crackdowns. The church criticized the lack of political freedom and the government's human rights record. The government's principal countermeasures included expelling foreign-born clergy and periodically closing the university, news magazine, and radio station. In response, the archbishop of Asunción excommunicated various prominent government officials and suspended Catholic participation at major civic and religious celebrations.

Top of Page