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Paraguay The Chaco War and the February Revolution
When war finally broke out officially in July 1932, the
Bolivians were confident of a rapid victory. Their country was
richer and more populous than Paraguay, and their armed forces were
larger, had a superior officer corps, and were well-trained and
well-equipped. These advantages quickly proved irrelevant in the
face of the Paraguayans' zeal to defend their homeland. The highly
motivated Paraguayans knew the geography of the Chaco better than
the Bolivians and easily infiltrated Bolivian lines, surrounded
outposts, and captured supplies. In contrast, Indians from the
Bolivian high plateau area, known as the Altiplano, were forced
into the Bolivian army, had no real interest in the war, and failed
to adapt to the hot Chaco climate. In addition, long supply lines,
poor roads, and weak logistics hindered the Bolivian campaign. The
Paraguayans proved more united than the Bolivians--at least
initially--as President Eusebio Ayala and Colonel (later Marshal)
Estigarribia worked well together.
After the December 1933 Paraguayan victory at Campo Via, Bolivia
seemed on the verge of surrendering. At that moment, however,
President Ayala agreed to a truce. His decision was greeted with
derision in Asunción. Instead of ending the war with a swift
victory that might have boosted their political prospects, the
Liberals signed a truce that seemed to allow the Bolivians to
regroup. The war continued until July 1935. Although the Liberals
had successfully led Paraguay's occupation of nearly all the
disputed territory and had won the war when the last truce went
into effect, they were finished politically.
In many ways, the Chaco War acted as a catalyst to unite the
political opposition with workers and peasants, who furnished the
raw materials for a social revolution. After the 1935 truce,
thousands of soldiers were sent home, leaving the regular army to
patrol the front lines. The soldiers who had shared the dangers and
trials of the battlefield deeply resented the ineptitude and
incompetence they believed the Liberals had shown in failing to
prepare the country for war. These soldiers had witnessed the
miserable state of the Paraguayan army and were forced in many
cases to face the enemy armed only with machetes. After what they
had been through, partisan political differences seemed irrelevant.
The government offended the army rank-and-file by refusing to fund
pensions for disabled war veterans in 1936 while awarding 1,500
gold pesos a year to Estigarribia. Colonel Franco, back on active
duty since 1932, became the focus of the nationalist rebels inside
and outside the army. The final spark to rebellion came when Franco
was exiled for criticizing Ayala. On February 17, 1936, units of
the army descended on the Presidential Palace and forced Ayala to
resign, ending thirty-two years of Liberal rule.
Outside Paraguay, the February revolt seemed to be a paradox
because it overthrew the politicians who had won the war. The
soldiers, veterans, students, and others who revolted felt,
however, that victory had come despite the Liberal government.
Promising a national and social revolution, the Febrerista
Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Febrerista--PRF)--more
commonly known as the Febreristas--brought Colonel Franco back from
exile in Argentina to be president. The Franco government showed it
was serious about social justice by expropriating more than 200,000
hectares of land and distributing it to 10,000 peasant families. In
addition, the new government guaranteed workers the right to strike
and established an eight-hour work day. Perhaps the government's
most lasting contribution affected national consciousness. In a
gesture calculated to rewrite history and erase seven decades of
national shame, Franco declared Solano López a national hero sin
ejemplar (without precedent) because he had stood up to foreign
threats and sent a team to Cerro Corá to find his unmarked grave.
The government interred his remains along with those of his father
in a chapel designated the National Pantheon of Heroes, and later
erected a monument to him on Asunción's highest hill.
Despite the popular enthusiasm that greeted the February
revolution, the new government lacked a clear program. A sign of
the times, Franco practiced his Mussolini-style, spellbinding
oratory from a balcony. But when he published his distinctly
fascist-sounding Decree Law No. 152 promising a "totalitarian
transformation" similar to those in Europe, protests erupted. The
youthful, idealistic elements that had come together to produce the
Febrerista movement were actually a hodgepodge of conflicting
political tendencies and social opposites, and Franco was soon in
deep political trouble. Franco's cabinet reflected almost every
conceivable shade of dissident political opinion, and included
socialists, fascist sympathizers, nationalists, Colorados, and
Liberal cívicos. A new party of regime supporters, the
Revolutionary National Union (Unión Nacional Revolucionaria), was
founded in November 1936. Although the new party called for
representative democracy, rights for peasants and workers, and
socialization of key industries, it failed to broaden Franco's
political base. In the end, Franco forfeited his popular support
because he failed to keep his promises to the poor. He dared not
expropriate the properties of foreign landowners, who were mostly
Argentines. In addition, the Liberals, who still had influential
support in the army, agitated constantly for Franco's overthrow.
When Franco ordered Paraguayan troops to abandon the advanced
positions in the Chaco that they had held since the 1935 truce, the
army revolted in August 1937 and returned the Liberals to power.
The army, however, did not hold a unified opinion about the
Febreristas. Several attempted coups served to remind President
Félix Pavia (the former dean of law at the National University)
that although the February Revolution was out of power, it was far
from dead. People who suspected that the Liberals had learned
nothing from their term out of office soon had proof: a peace
treaty signed with Bolivia on July 21, 1938, fixed the final
boundaries behind the Paraguayan battle lines. In 1939 the
Liberals, recognizing that they would have to choose someone with
national stature to be president if they wanted to hold onto power,
picked General Estigarribia, the hero of the Chaco War who had
since served as special envoy to the United States. Estigarribia
quickly realized that he would have to adopt many Febrerista ideas
to avoid anarchy. Circumventing the die-hard Liberals in the
National Assembly who opposed him, Estigarribia assumed "temporary"
dictatorial powers in February 1940, but promised the dictatorship
would end as soon as a workable constitution was written.
Estigarribia vigorously pursued his goals. He began a land
reform program that promised a small plot to every Paraguayan
family. He reopened the university, balanced the budget, financed
the public debt, increased the capital of the Central Bank,
implemented monetary and municipal reforms, and drew up plans to
build highways and public works. An August 1940 plebiscite endorsed
Estigarribia's constitution, which remained in force until 1967.
The constitution of 1940 promised a "strong, but not despotic"
president and a new state empowered to deal directly with social
and economic problems
(see Constitutional Development
, ch. 4). But
by greatly expanding the power of the executive branch, the
constitution served to legitimize open dictatorship.
Data as of December 1988
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