Through South America

by Harry Weston Van Dyke

It is a matter of wonder to this day how the Jesuit Fathers, even taking into consideration their unquenchable zeal and marvelous energy and determination, ever succeeded in reaching so isolated a territory and in traversing it in every direction, as they did, in pursuit of their campaign. Even to-day it is well-nigh impossible to reach the heart of the region—the great cataract of Guayra, which, hundreds of miles from the habitations of man, isolated by jagged mountains, fiercely swirling waters and the wild tangle of underbrush that make headway through the awesome tropical forest very difficult, constitutes one of the most majestic of nature’s wonder-works in South America. Situated about a hundred miles up the Paraná River from the better known Iguazú Falls, the Guayra cataract lies on the frontier with Brazil. A volume of water twice as large as that which thunders over Niagara is forced through a gorge two hundred feet wide from a stream two and a half miles in width. The roar of its plunge of fifty-six feet to the lower levels, adds the essential note to this tremendous symphony of primeval nature. Outside the Arctic regions, one explorer declares, no part of the world is less accessible than the Paraná above the Great Cataract.

After the expulsion of the Jesuits the Paraná basin reverted to forest and the nation pursued its checkered career in the section drained by the Paraguay. This river intersects the republic from north to south and is navigable through its entire course by ocean steamers, which pass up from Buenos Aires through the Paraná, and past Corrientes, where the two great streams join forces.

On the left bank of the Paraguay, at the point of its confluence with the equally great Pilcomayo, the traveler comes to the ancient city of Asunción, the capital of the country. Here was the seat of the colonial authority over Plata settlements until Buenos Aires grew into importance. It has a population of 52,000, and is now thriving and prosperous, rapidly taking on the cosmopolitanism that characterizes the other ports of South America. The capital, and indeed the whole country has but recently entered into a new life, a life as sharply contrasted with its period of political storm and stress as the transition was sudden.

For, during the first sixty years after the country had attained its freedom from Spain, Paraguay’s progress was stifled by a succession of tyrants—remarkable men, all three of them, but men who, as a result of their rule, well-nigh cost her her national existence. The first of these, Dr. José Rodríguez Gaspar Francia, had been the dominating figure in the revolutionary junta, and afterward, with his confrère, General Yegros, had been appointed Consul and invested with the supreme power. “He was a lawyer,” Dawson tells us, “who had become a sort of demigod to the lower classes by his fearless advocacy of their rights, and inspired almost superstitious reverence by his reputation for learning and disinterestedness.” A year later, the historian continues—

“He forced Yegros out, and, with general consent, assumed the position of sole executive, and, in 1816, was formally declared supreme and perpetual dictator. For the next twenty-five years he was the government of Paraguay. History does not record another instance in which a single man so dominated and controlled a people. A solitary, mysterious figure, of whose thoughts, purposes, and real character little is known, the worst acts of his life were the most picturesque and alone have been recorded. Although the great Carlyle includes him among the heroes whose memory mankind should worship, the opinion of his detractors is likely to triumph. Francia will go down to history as a bloody-minded, implacable despot, whose influences and purposes were wholly evil. After reading all that has been written about this singular character, my mind inclines more to the judgment of Carlyle. I feel that the vivid imagination of the great Scotchman has pierced the clouds which enshrouded the spirit of a great and lonely man, and has seen the soul of Francia as he was. Cruel, suspicious, ruthless, heartless as he undeniably became, his acts will not bear the interpretation that his purposes were selfish or that he was animated by mere vulgar ambition....

“He absorbed in his own person all the functions of government; he had no confidants and no assistants; he allowed no Paraguayan to approach him on terms of equality. When he died, a careful search failed to reveal any records of the immense amount of governmental business he had transacted during thirty years. The orders for executions were simply messages signed by him and returned to be destroyed as soon as they had been carried out. The longer he lived, the more completely did he apply his system of absolutism, the more confident he became that he alone could govern the people for their good. He adopted a policy of commercial isolation, and intercourse with the outside world was absolutely forbidden. He neither sent nor received consuls nor ministers to foreign nations. Foreign vessels were excluded from the Paraguay River and allowed to visit only one port in the southeastern corner of the country. He was the sole foreign merchant. The communistic system inherited from the Jesuits was developed and extended to the secular parts of the country.... Dreading interference by Spain, Brazil, or Buenos Aires, he improved the military forces and began the organization of the whole population into a militia. His policy, however, was peaceful....

“As he grew older he became more solitary and ferocious. Always a gloomy and peculiar man, absorbed in his studies and making no account of the ordinary pleasures and interests of mankind, he had reached the age of fifty-five and assumed supreme power without marrying.... His severities against the educated classes increased; he ordered wholesale executions and seven hundred political prisoners filled the jails when he died. He feared assassination and occupied several houses, letting no one know where he was going to sleep from one night to another, and, when walking the streets, kept his guards at a distance before and behind him. Woe to the enemy or suspect who attracted his attention! Such was the terror inspired by this dreadful old man that the news that he was out would clear the streets. A white Paraguayan literally dared not utter his name. During his lifetime he was ‘El Supremo,’ and, after he was dead, for generations he was referred to simply as ‘El Defunto.’... He did not rise by any sycophantic arts. Indeed, he never veiled the contempt he felt for the party schemers and officials around him. When he had supreme power in his hands, he used it for no selfish indulgences. His life was austere and abstemious; but, though parsimonious for himself, he was lavish for the public.... In his manners and life, he was absolutely modest; he received any one who chose to see him. If he was terrible, it was to the wealthy and powerful; the humblest Indian received a hearing and justice. During his reign Paraguay remained undisturbed, wrapped in a profound peace; the population rapidly increased, and, though commerce and manufactures did not flourish, nor the new ideas that were transforming the face of the civilized world penetrate, food and clothing were plentiful and cheap and the Paraguayans prospered in their own humble fashion.”

Following the reign of Francia came a long period of open intercourse with the neighboring states and foreign countries under the dictatorship of Carlos Antonio Lopez, and some measure of progress was made, but still there was no development of republican institutions. His death made room for his son Francisco, who was a man of thirty-five at the time of his accession, and, having spent some time in Europe, had returned permeated with the vices of the great capitals and a consuming ambition for military renown. A very different character of man morally, he is said to have been, from the first of his line. He is described as vain, licentious, gluttonous, and unscrupulous to the last degree, though good-looking and an eloquent speaker. “He began his reign like a Mohammedan sultan,” says Dawson, “ridding himself of his father’s most trusted counselors, imprisoning and executing the most intelligent and powerful citizens.... He ordered his best friends to execution; he tortured his mother and sisters and murdered his brothers. The only natural affection he ever evinced was a fondness for a woman he had picked up in Paris, and for her children. He seems to have treated her well to the last, but his numerous other mistresses and their children he heartlessly abandoned.”

He soon raised an army of more than eighty thousand, the largest that had ever been assembled since the conquest, and, by assuming the aggressive in certain boundary disputes with Brazil and Argentina and interfering in civil disturbances that were going on in Uruguay, involved the country in war with these three powers, which, alarmed at his Napoleonic aspirations, promptly formed an alliance for the purpose of resisting him. This war lasted five years and for Paraguay was one long succession of appalling disasters. Before the first battle was fought her population numbered more than 1,300,000; when Lopez was finally defeated and killed in 1870, but 221,079 remained, of whom only 28,746 were men. “No modern nation has ever come so near to complete annihilation,” says Dawson. “Not less than 225,000 Paraguayan men—the fathers and bread-winners, the farmers and laborers—had perished in battle, by disease or exposure or starvation. One hundred thousand adult women had died of hardship and hunger, and there were less than 90,000 children under fifteen in the country. The surviving women outnumbered the men five to one; ... but the integrity of Paraguay and her continuance as an independent power had been mutually guaranteed by Brazil and Argentina when they began the war against Lopez, and neither of them could afford to let the other take possession of her territory, so the country was left substantially intact.”

Asunción shows on its face the two phases—the modern business houses, residences and public service improvements of the new era, and the ruined districts and wrecks such as those of cathedral, presidential palace and old public buildings that emphasize the lessons of the old. To-day the visitor looks with a shudder at the ruins of the uncompleted mausoleum in which the last tyrant expected his remains to rest and at the two-million-dollar palace where, in rooms hung with rare laces and crimson satin, his unspeakable orgies were held; he turns with relief toward the modernism now beginning to be apparent which proves the substantial worth of a people which can arise from such a past and prosper. The survivors of the old régime have been severely tested for fitness to enjoy the fruits of their well-favored country.