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Paraguay The War of the Triple Alliance
Solano López accurately assessed the September 1864 Brazilian
intervention in Uruguay as a slight to the region's lesser powers.
He was also correct in his assumption that neither Brazil nor
Argentina paid much attention to Paraguay's interests when they
formulated their policies. But he concluded incorrectly that
preserving Uruguayan "independence" was crucial to Paraguay's
future as a nation. Consistent with his plans to start a Paraguayan
"third force" between Argentina and Brazil, Solano López committed
the nation to Uruguay's aid. When Argentina failed to react to
Brazil's invasion of Uruguay, Solano López seized a Brazilian
warship in November 1864. He quickly followed this move with an
invasion of Mato Grosso, Brazil, in March 1865, an action that
proved to be one of Paraguay's few successes during the war. Solano
López then decided to strike at his enemy's main force in Uruguay.
But Solano López was unaware that Argentina had acquiesced to
Brazil's Uruguay policy and would not support Paraguay against
Brazil. When Solano López requested permission for his army to
cross Argentine territory to attack the Brazilian province of Río
Grande do Sul, Argentina refused. Undeterred, Solano López sent his
forces into Argentina, probably expecting local strongmen to rebel
and remove Argentina from the picture. Instead, the action set the
stage for the May 1865 signing by Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay
(now reduced to puppet status) of the Treaty of the Triple
Alliance. Under the treaty, these nations vowed to destroy Solano
López's government.
Paraguay was in no sense prepared for a major war, let alone a
war of the scope that Solano López had unleashed. In terms of size,
Solano López's 30,000-man army was the most powerful in Latin
America. But the army's strength was illusory because it lacked
trained leadership, a reliable source of weapons and matériel, and
adequate reserves. Since the days of El Supremo, the officer corps
had been neglected for political reasons. The army suffered from a
critical shortage of key personnel, and many of its fighting units
were undermanned. Paraguay lacked the industrial base to replace
weapons lost in battle, and the Argentine-Brazilian alliance
prevented Solano López from receiving arms from abroad. Paraguay's
population was only about 450,000 in 1865--a figure lower than the
number of people in the Brazilian National Guard--and amounted to
less than one-twentieth of the combined allied population of 11
million. Even after conscripting for the front every able-bodied
man--including children as young as ten--and forcing women to
perform all nonmilitary labor, Solano López still could not field
an army as large as those of his rivals.
Apart from some Paraguayan victories on the northern front, the
war was a disaster for Solano López. The core units of the
Paraguayan army reached Corrientes in April 1865. By July more than
half of Paraguay's 30,000-man invasion force had been killed or
captured along with the army's best small arms and artillery. The
war quickly became a desperate struggle for Paraguay's survival.
Paraguay's soldiers exhibited suicidal bravery, especially
considering that Solano López shot or tortured so many of them for
the most trivial offenses. Cavalry units operated on foot for lack
of horses. Naval infantry battalions armed only with machetes
attacked Brazilian ironclads. The suicide attacks resulted in
fields of corpses. Cholera was rampant. By 1867 Paraguay had lost
60,000 men to casualties, disease, or capture, and another 60,000
soldiers were called to duty. Solano López conscripted slaves, and
infantry units formed entirely of children appeared. Women were
forced to perform support work behind the lines. Matériel shortages
were so severe that Paraguayan troops went into battle seminude,
and even colonels went barefoot, according to one observer. The
defensive nature of the war, combined with Paraguayan tenacity and
ingenuity and the difficulty that Brazilians and Argentinians had
cooperating with each other, rendered the conflict a war of
attrition. In the end, Paraguay lacked the resources to continue
waging war against South America's giants.
As the war neared its inevitable denouement, Solano López's grip
on reality--never very strong--loosened further. Imagining himself
surrounded by a vast conspiracy, he ordered thousands of executions
in the military. In addition, he executed 2 brothers and 2
brothers-in-law, scores of top government and military officials,
and about 500 foreigners, including many diplomats. He frequently
had his victims killed by lance thrusts to save ammunition. The
bodies were dumped into mass graves. His cruel treatment of
prisoners was proverbial. Solano López condemned troops to death if
they failed to carry out his orders to the minutest detail.
"Conquer or die" became the order of the day.
Solano López's hostility even extended to United States
Ambassador Charles A. Washburn. Only the timely arrival of the
United States gunboat Wasp saved the diplomat from arrest.
Allied troops entered Asunción in January 1869, but Solano López
held out in the northern jungles for another fourteen months until
he finally died in battle. The year 1870 marked the lowest point in
Paraguayan history. Hundreds of thousands of Paraguayans had died.
Destitute and practically destroyed, Paraguay had to endure a
lengthy occupation by foreign troops and cede large patches of
territory to Brazil and Argentina.
Despite several historians' accounts of what happened between
1865 and 1870, Solano López was not wholly responsible for the war.
Its causes were complex and included Argentine anger over Antonio
López's meddling in Corrientes. The elder López also had infuriated
the Brazilians by not helping to overthrow Rosas in 1852 and by
forcing Brazilian garrisons out of territory claimed by Paraguay in
1850 and 1855. Antonio López also resented having been forced to
grant Brazil free navigation rights on the Río Paraguay in 1858.
Argentina meanwhile disputed ownership of the Misiones district
between the Río Paraná and Río Uruguay, and Brazil had its own
ideas about the Brazil-Paraguay boundary. To these problems was
added the Uruguayan vortex. Carlos Antonio López had survived
mainly with caution and a good bit of luck; Solano López had
neither.
Data as of December 1988
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