By RONALD LEÓN NÚÑEZ*
Nationalism, through Stalinism, penetrated the thinking and influenced the program and political profile of the Paraguayan left, especially after the end of the Chaco War.
In Paraguay, collective memory has placed Carlos Antonio López on a pedestal. Unlike the dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia and his first-born and successor, Francisco Solano, the historical judgment of his legacy is less controversial. Celebrated as the “first constitutional president of Paraguay” and the “father of the first modernity”, he has passed down to posterity, above all, as a statesman[I].
We do not question the leading role played by the first López in the dual process of recognition of Paraguayan independence and consolidation of the national State.
His defense – journalistic, diplomatic and, by a hair’s breadth, also military – of the thesis that, since 1813, Paraguay had disassociated itself from Buenos Aires and constituted itself in fact and in law a republic “… free and independent of all foreign powers” is widely known, and his government is commonly associated with the idea of economic prosperity and modernization, and even with a supposed “golden age” of the nation.
On the other hand, it is common to point out the patrimonialism practiced by the López family. We share this interpretation. It is no exaggeration to argue that, during their almost three decades in power, this family was, without palliatives, “the State.”
However, the State is not an abstraction. Its conceptualization is a complex problem that divides the social sciences. It could not be otherwise. In class society, theoretical neutrality is a chimera. Therefore, it is useful to briefly explain the fundamental assumptions of the materialist conception of history, the theoretical-methodological model that we have adopted to define the so-called Lopista State.
When specifying concepts, it is essential to consider their material origin. In this sense, Marxist philosophy maintains: “The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas of each epoch […] The class that has at its disposal the means of material production has at the same time the means of spiritual production […] The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the ruling material relations, the same ruling material relations conceived as ideas.”[ii].
Thus, the dominant ideology presents the State as impartial, above the interests of classes and individuals, a harmless entity at the service of the common good.
The Marxist theory of the State, in turn, proposes, firstly, that the State has not always existed and will not always exist; it conceives of it in its historical dimension, denying it any immutable attributes.[iii]. The State – Engels writes – is the product of a certain degree of development of society, divided by irreconcilable antagonisms between classes with conflicting economic interests: “a power apparently situated above society and called upon to cushion the shock, to keep it within the limits of 'order' becomes necessary. And this power – born of society, but situated above it and increasingly divorced from it – is the State.”[iv].
The distinctive feature of the State is “the institution of a ‘public force’ that is no longer the armed people”, which acts as a gendarme of the power of the ruling classes, since the exploiters of the social surplus have always been a minority in society. The armed forces, therefore, hold the monopoly of the “legitimate” use of violence and become the mainstay of the State: “This public force exists in all States and is composed not only of armed men, but also of material accessories (prisons and coercive institutions of all kinds) that gentile society did not know”[v].
In another passage from his famous work on the State, Engels sums up its historical role: “Since the State arose from the need to cushion class antagonisms and since, at the same time, it arose in the midst of class conflict, it is, as a rule, the State of the most powerful class, of the economically dominant class, which also becomes, with its help, the politically dominant class, thus acquiring new means for the repression and exploitation of the oppressed class.”[vi].
In short, historical materialism defines the State as a specialized apparatus of coercion, both a product and a demonstration of the irreconcilable character of class contradictions, supported by “special detachments of armed men” indispensable to guarantee the power of the “politically dominant class” over the rest of society. The type of State, in turn, is defined by the class or class sectors that control it. Under capitalism, “modern State power,” according to scientific socialism, “is nothing more than a board of directors that manages the common affairs of the entire bourgeois class.”[vii].
A fundamental aspect of this definition, in political terms, is that the eventual succession of governments presented as “right” or “left”, or of more or less “progressive” parliamentary compositions, does not change the nature of the bourgeois State as a bastion of the capitalist mode of production. The class character of the State cannot be changed by elections controlled by the “politically dominant class” itself, but only by means of a social revolution.
The class character of the Lopista State
Based on this conceptual framework, we will provide elements to characterize the State led by Carlos Antonio López and his successor.
This requires an exposition of the character of the historical era of which our object of study is a part, in order to understand the totality that conditioned regional particularities.
Around 1840, the organizational, legal and military structure of the Paraguayan State, incipient in many aspects, managed, with great difficulty, to assert itself in a regional situation hostile to its political independence.
Its self-determination, like that of other nation-states in the Americas, was possible thanks to the combination of a dual process of anti-colonial revolution on a continental scale and subsequent or concomitant confrontations between propertied sectors for control of local power.
The impact of this situation on the former Intendancy of Paraguay imposed a dynamic that led, in 1813, to a definitive political rupture, both with the Spanish metropolis and with the centralist pretensions of Buenos Aires, the former capital of the viceroyalty, from which an independent republic emerged.
Paraguay's Year XIII, therefore, is a milestone in the formation of a national state whose class character, in our opinion, was essentially bourgeois; of course, not in the form we know it today, but in an embryonic state and with political-legal remnants of the colonial period.
This bourgeois nature, as in other cases, was conditioned by a historical period marked by the seizure of power by a rising bourgeoisie, mainly in Europe. The era of bourgeois-democratic revolutions, between the last quarter of the 1848th century and XNUMX[viii], took the form, in the Americas, of what we can call “anti-colonial bourgeois-democratic revolutions”.
In the former European colonies, the achievement of national self-determination took on a bourgeois meaning, insofar as it was a precondition for liberating the productive forces repressed by centuries of colonization and, with this, bringing better material conditions to pave the way for changes, more or less belated, in the social relations of production which, in the context of the 19th century, could only be those that would serve as the basis for bourgeois society.
Thus, the anti-colonial revolutions in the Americas, by the nature of their historical task, were a variant of the European bourgeois-democratic revolutions, considered classical.
On the other hand, these were essentially political revolutions, not socio-economic ones, since the native landowning sectors, although they confronted the Iberian empires after much hesitation, did not seek to change the social structure or the situation of the working classes, marked by the exploitation of their labor force and all sorts of hardships. It was not, therefore, a struggle between the exploited and the exploiters, but between sectors of the landowning classes for state power.
Of course, this distinction between social and political revolution should not be interpreted in a rigid or deterministic sense. Although every social revolution, by its magnitude, is also political, not every political revolution is social. However, political revolutions, more or less belatedly, can bring about changes in economies and societies.[ix].
The bourgeois essence of the national State, despite the colonial remnants and the marginality of legally “free” social relations, must be understood on a historical scale, that is, as a product of the dynamics imposed by the totality of the world economy and politics, dominated by an ascending bourgeoisie that, through trade, cannons, or both, imposed the dominance of capital in every corner of the planet.
Productive forces
So-called historical revisionism, from both the right and the left, overestimates the development of the productive forces of pre-war Paraguay. There is a wealth of literature that supports the myth of a 19th century “powerhouse Paraguay” capable of competing economically with its neighbors and even with the United Kingdom due to its unique industrial development.
In works that claim to have a Marxist approach, it is possible to read, among other bizarre statements, that “the Lópezes were undermining the world order”, since Carlos Antonio López's policy had placed Paraguay “… on the same level as the most developed countries in Europe”[X]; the small republic would be in a position to “… become the economic leader of the region with the United States”[xi], an unusual fact that would have disturbed the international division of labor.
We will not enter into that debate here. It is enough to point out that, despite the modernization program and the technical progress achieved since the 1850s, XNUMXth-century Paraguay never established itself – nor could it have done so, given the backwardness of the productive forces inherited from the colonial period – as an industrial or military power.
Although the Paraguayan economy in 1864 had strengthened in relation to 1840, its place in the international division of labor never ceased to be that of producer and exporter of raw materials and tropical products and consumer of foreign, mainly British, manufactures and technologies.
The López project never sought to change this. On the contrary, its objective was to maximize the export capacity of local primary products and combat international obstacles to this trade. Although they launched a modernization program with clearly defined objectives, the Paraguayan economy maintained its primary character, that is, agrarian and extractive. In 1860, yerba mate, tobacco and raw hides, in that order of importance, represented 91% of exports.[xii]. As in Dr. Francia's time, the export hub, although dominant, was combined with a rural subsistence economy, based on rudimentary techniques.
“State power does not float in the air”
The phrase is from Marx[xiii] and refers to the fact that every superstructure is supported by a certain socioeconomic formation. If Marxist analysis defines classes by the place they occupy in the social economy and, above all, by their relationship of ownership of the means of production, the nature of the State is inseparable from the relations of property and production that this apparatus protects and sustains.
In this sense, a brief discussion is in order about the production relations that structured the Paraguayan economy around 1840.
For most of the 19th century, the national state, although we attribute to it an essentially bourgeois historical character, was not based on a strictly capitalist socioeconomic formation, that is, an economy in which legally “free” wage labor was hegemonic. On the contrary, during the Francia and López regimes, wage labor was marginal and coexisted with an unequal combination of non-capitalist relations of production—based on extra-economic coercion. Pre-capitalist relations of production not only survived independence, but their process of erosion, although constant due to the dynamics of the world economy and the absence of rebellions by the exploited classes, was slow, gradual, and belated.
This was, roughly speaking, the physiognomy of the social structure on which the weak national State operated in 1841, when the Consulate composed of Carlos Antonio López and Mariano Roque Alonso came to power. They had received a state machine modeled by Dr. Francia, to a certain extent heir to the Revolution and the Colony, which, although it had guaranteed national independence with an uncompromising policy, had legitimized the new while preserving much of the old.
With the death of El Supremo[xiv], urgent problems threatened the nation, among them the international recognition of independence; the definition of borders and their eventual military defense; freedom of navigation to the ocean for local commerce; the granting of freedom of navigation of common rivers to other flags passing through Paraguayan territory.
The first López, first as preponderant consul and, from 1844, as constitutional president, took on these and other challenges. To do so, he relied on a state under construction, with modest but balanced public finances, which Francia largely allocated to strengthening the armed forces to defend his government and the socioeconomic order internally and to protect critical points on the borders.[xv].
It can be said that, although in a much more elitist way, the López family maintained the essential elements of the dictator Francia’s statist economic policy. However, unlike their predecessor, they governed during a period of commercial “bonanza” that lasted little more than a decade and allowed for remarkable economic growth – compared to the levels achieved up until 1840.
Thus, under new objective conditions, the model of capitalist accumulation was sustained on the basis of protectionism and economic regulation, and not on free trade (Decree on Customs Regulation and Customs Tax, 1842); on monopolies and state-owned companies (Decree declaring yerba mate and timber for shipbuilding as state property, 1846).[xvi] instead of large foreign investments; in the balance of public finances, without external debt; and, mainly, in the nationalization of land and the leasing of part of it to direct producers.
Francisco Doratioto confirms what was said above: “In the mid-90th century, the Guarani State owned almost 80% of the national territory and practically controlled economic activities, as around XNUMX% of internal and external trade was state property.”[xvii].
Regarding the policy of leasing public lands, Bárbara Potthast observes: “During the government of Carlos Antonio López […] this system of leasing continued. López established mandatory rules for setting the rent, which could not exceed 5% of the value of the land, and introduced a procedure for the legal transfer of lots to users.”[xviii].
However, among his first measures was the reestablishment of tithing and anata media, taxes on crops and livestock that disproportionately affected small and medium-sized rural producers. This was partly due to the fact that the López family had relied socially on the large landowners and merchants, the sector of the ruling class to which they belonged, and which came to control the state machinery, although without definitively breaking with the small landowners or annulling the measures of their predecessor.
Although the success of the statist model, contradictory to the laissez faire hegemonic, was unlikely in the long term, these elements suggest that there was a nascent national bourgeoisie with intentions of inserting itself and gaining space in the international market independently, although, as we have already pointed out, without modifying the model based on primary exports.
The outcome of the Battle of Caseros imposed a change in the region and placed this statist policy in another context. The official recognition of Paraguay's independence by the new Argentine government and the guarantees of free navigation and trade by the
Paraná opened up prospects for productive and commercial development that Francia could hardly have imagined. If we compare the 9.084 arrobas of yerba exported in 1839, at the twilight of the dictatorship of El Supremo, with the 254.513 of 1861[xx] – 28 times more –, the leap is qualitative.
According to Williams, between 1851 and 1859, the value of foreign trade grew from 572 thousand pesos to four million[xx]. In the 1850s, there were significant surpluses in the trade balance, despite large imports of arms, machinery and luxury goods for the local oligarchy. While in 1853 the surplus was 57.049 pounds, in 1860 the positive balance reached 161.202 pounds[xxx]. This, in addition to a protectionist customs policy, made it possible to finance the modernization program without external loans, and to pay high salaries to foreign specialists.[xxiii] and the maintenance of military spending.
In this new scenario, the strengthening of a Paraguayan bourgeois sector determined to reap the benefits of the export boom was inevitable. This sector of the landowning class was led by the López family and a handful of military leaders and state bureaucrats, many of whom were relatives of the ruling family. The years of commercial marginality seemed to belong to a past that no wealthy Paraguayan landowner wanted to relive. Consequently, the backdrop to the economic and political measures of the two Lopezes would be the exploitation – mainly by the state clique – of the new economic opportunities.
Modernization in whose service?
Thus, part of the revenue generated by foreign trade was invested in two strategic objectives: (i) increasing export capacity through state monopolies and tariff protectionism; (ii) strengthening the country militarily in the face of its neighbors' territorial ambitions; in other words, defining borders to guarantee the domestic market. In both cases, the oligarchy, not the common people, would reap the bulk of the benefits.
In the 1850s, Carlos Antonio López hired around 200 foreign technicians – engineers, machinists, doctors, etc. – most of them British, to launch new state-owned enterprises that would basically serve these purposes. Thus began an “extensive modernization program.”[xxiii] through the import of technology and know-how, which included major infrastructure works: iron foundry, arsenal, shipyards, railway, telegraph, as well as roads, an improved dock and new buildings in the capital. In the military field, the fortification of Humaitá stood out.
Although in the context of the 1850s and 1860s the economic measures and the modernization program were oriented in a capitalist direction, the leap in production was achieved through an increase in the extraction of the social surplus obtained through pre-capitalist social relations – slaves of the Republic, free labor of prisoners and soldiers of the army, “aid” from native peoples, etc. –. These archaic social relations coexisted with forms of legally “free” labor present in certain state enterprises, which received a certain boost with the dissolution of indigenous peoples in 1848 (Decree declaring free citizens of the native Indians of the entire Republic, 1848).[xxv], related to the increased demand for labor required by foreign trade and the need to strengthen the army. Thus, “modern” Paraguay was built through the most retrograde and merciless forms of exploitation of the working masses.
The 1846 census records almost 15.000 Paraguayans classified as “aggregates” or “people in the service of others”, not counting black slavery, which, between enslaved and freed people, comprised approximately 3% of the total population.[xxiv]. Although black slavery in Paraguay never reached the socioeconomic weight observed in the southern United States or in Brazil, the national oligarchy, which included the López and, before that, Francia, owned slaves.
The 1846 census reveals that 176 individuals owned ten or more slaves or freedmen. Only three owned 40 or more slaves. The owner of the largest number recorded, 43 slaves, was Juan Bernardo Davalos, a landowner from Bobi. In total, this handful of owners owned 2.583 slaves and 186 freedmen: a third of the former and 36% of the latter throughout the republic. The Catholic Church, strengthened by the first López, owned hundreds of other slaves. On the other hand, state repression always targeted Afro-descendants. It is estimated that 23% of prisoners in Asunción were brown in 1819, 17% in 1847 and 39% in 1863.[xxv].
Due to their leading position in the state, the López family were the main landowners, participated advantageously in domestic and foreign trade, controlled financial operations and held the main political, ecclesiastical and military positions. Francisco Solano had a partnership with his brothers Pedro and Buenaventura Decoud to sell yerba mate in Buenos Aires and other places.[xxviii]. Vicente Barrios and Saturnino Bedoya, Don Carlos' sons-in-law, operated yerba mate plantations and sold their produce to the state. The latter, who was general treasurer during the war, was also the owner of one of the capital's main commercial houses.[xxviii]. A figure from 1854 gives an estimate of the private profits obtained from the appropriation of social surplus: on yerba mate farms, 0,15 pounds were paid per arroba, which was sold for 1,60 pounds in Buenos Aires[xxix].
With an iron fist, the López family made and unmade all kinds of deals and speculations. In addition to the activities related to usury, the women of the family bought damaged banknotes at an 8% discount and exchanged them for their real value at the Ministry of Finance.[xxx].
Without further ado, the López patriarch ordered the transfer of important state-owned properties to members of his family. His sons Francisco Solano, Venancio and Benigno received state properties in Ignacio Caliguá, San Joaquín and San Ignacio, respectively; Vicente Barrios became the owner of the Salado public estate.[xxxii]. There are records of cases in which the López family purchased land and livestock from the State to expand their private properties; transferred public livestock to their farms; sold or exchanged their livestock with the State.[xxxi]. It would be childish to suppose that, given the extent of the family's control over the state, anyone could oppose its business dealings.
The claims of Irishwoman Elisa Alicia Lynch[xxxii], Solano López's best-known companion, in Asunción after the war, speak of the gigantic properties that the marshal-president transferred to her as if they were private property. In 1875, through dubious titles, she demanded the return of 32 rural and urban properties that totaled almost nine million hectares of land, 60% of which were on Paraguayan soil and the rest in territories annexed by Argentina and Brazil[xxxv].
What is certain is that the patrimonialism and nepotism that prevailed in the López's Paraguay would make today's scandalous discretionary management of public affairs pale. Corruption, patronage, clientelism, the "law of mbarete” (law of the strongest), hateful practices that, with good reason, so outrage the majority of the current population, have part of their roots in the “golden age” of the López’s Paraguay, although nationalists try to deny or mitigate this fact.
The López business dealings not only show the class character of their governments, but also the “normal” evolution of a national bourgeoisie that, as it consolidated, became more reactionary, antidemocratic and abusive in its control of public assets.
Political superstructure – the dictatorship of a family
There is a long debate about whether the López regime was a dictatorship or not. Nationalism generally rejects this definition in various ways. Liberalism, on the other hand, denounces the absence of formal democratic guarantees – especially the obstacles to free trade – and the “authoritarianism” of the period 1813-70, which it considers a “historical setback”, often suggesting that the last decades of Spanish colonialism would have been better.
In fact, there are many liberal authors who fall into anachronism when measuring the degree of political freedom in 19th century Paraguay by the standards of contemporary democracies, when they do not reproduce the fallacy that Paraguay was the only or most cruel dictatorship in the region, hiding or attenuating the atrocities of the oppressive regimes of monarchical and slave-owning Brazil or of Argentina unified by Buenos Aires by fire and sword.
If the López's defense of “strong power” through nationalism seeks to justify dictatorships and militarism in the present, the “democratic” liberal rhetoric conceals a rejection of the statist and protectionist economic model, which has been opposed as harmful by this current since the 19th century.
Marxist theory, in turn, does not minimize the importance of defining the political regime, that is, the specific legal-institutional combination through which state power is materialized, but analyzes its historical context from a class perspective. In this sense, it is undeniable that the López family led, perhaps, the strongest class dictatorship in Paraguayan history. It was not, as some authors linked to the left argue, a “progressive” dictatorship in which the material well-being of the people and external threats justified possible “abuses” by the government.
On the contrary, a regime that denied all democratic freedoms only worsened the conditions of exploitation of workers, preventing them from expressing themselves politically and resisting socially. The reason was, ultimately, economic. The smooth running of the López business required a people obedient to its “supreme” dictates.
In 1843, the Police Department was created, responsible for internal repression and regulating social life through the Police Regulations. In 1845, the first López reorganized the National Army through a law that created the Army of the Line, the National Guard and the Navy, thus strengthening the backbone of the State.
Marxism cannot support or justify a police and despotic regime in which the masses had no democratic guarantees. First, because a more democratic project, at that time, would not have been “unprecedented”. At the end of the 18th century, there were experiments that, although limited by their bourgeois character, promoted programs based on the radicalization of formal democracy. From this point of view, the Paraguay of the López would not even be an “advanced” case of bourgeois democracy, much less a “proto-socialist” one, as we will discuss. Second, because a Marxist historical interpretation, interested in understanding the past in order to respond to the problems of the present, cannot hesitate to denounce the ideological justification of authoritarianism and militarism that emanates from the glorification of this dictatorship.
The facts speak for themselves. For the general congresses of 1813 and 1814, “a thousand deputies” were summoned, elected in the towns by male suffrage, without a census criterion. In 1816, the summons was restricted to 250 representatives, who anointed Francia as Perpetual Dictator. Until his death, Francia would not convene another national congress. The congress of 1844 approved the “Law Establishing the Political Administration of the Republic of Paraguay,” which limited subsequent congresses to 200 deputies and added the condition that they be “proprietors.” In 1856, a reform reduced representation in the congresses to 100 deputies, narrowing the palace circle, since both those elected and those elected had to be property owners.
This brief summary shows the continuous decline of institutional political representation since 1816. If in 1845 the salary of a rural primary school teacher was 100 pesos per year and a bonus of 24 cows[xxxiv] and the constitutional text of 1844 required “a capital of eight thousand pesos” to exercise full political rights, it is indisputable that the working classes had no voice and did not decide anything.
There were several justifications for this dictatorial hardening. In his 1854 report, Carlos A. López insisted on the need for property as an “essential requirement” in view of the “very serious evils” that universal suffrage entailed: the people would not be prepared for the “regular and moderate use of rights that they did not yet know” and “without a strong power, there is no justice, no order, no civil or political liberty.”[xxxiv].
The facts show that, in Paraguay, political control was concentrated in that nucleus of 100 property-owning deputies, led by the López family and linked by an umbilical cord to the affairs of the State. Power, although congresses were formally convened, remained unipersonal and absolute. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this was the most powerful oligarchy in the history of Paraguay.
In the reform of 1856, Don Carlos also made sure to legally pave the way for his son Francisco Solano to succeed him. The congress that met on October 16, 1862, merely ratified his claim.
A year earlier, The Weekly had launched an aberrant campaign in favor of a constitutional monarchy. In one edition, the country's official newspaper declared: “… constitutional monarchy and democracy are the same.”[xxxviii].
Strictly speaking, there was never a change from a republican regime to a monarchical regime. However, this official campaign shows not only the degree of concentration of power in Paraguay before the war, but also that the regime considered this idea. In 1863, the “Supreme Government” went so far as to print and distribute an adaptation of the Catechism of Saint Albert[xxxviii], an unequivocal apology for absolute monarchy with its known divine foundation.
This regime based on the power of one man showed its limitations when the noose of international hostilities began to close in. The bourgeois state, due to its backwardness and the fear of the Lópezes of promoting cadres who could overshadow them, showed a dramatic lack of competent personnel in the diplomatic corps and in the military officer corps. This further weakened the Paraguayan position at the outbreak of the Guasu War.
Of course, recognizing the oligarchic and dictatorial character of the López governments does not mean denying the material progress made by the republic until 1864 or their individual role in defending national self-determination, a historically progressive task. It implies understanding that, although the defense of independence before and during the War against the Triple Alliance was a shared objective of the oligarchy and the common people, both faced this danger on the basis of opposing class interests. The fundamental theoretical flaw of the nationalist left lies in the denial of this premise.
In their eagerness to argue with those who justified the Triple Alliance, the majority of the Paraguayan left adopted the main postulates of bourgeois nationalism as their own, in the form of revisionism.
The nationalist cancer in the Paraguayan left
At the beginning of the 1932th century, bourgeois nationalist ideology experienced a dizzying intellectual and political strengthening, driven by the calamitous post-war situation that was later combined with the chauvinist campaign that preceded the war with Bolivia (35-XNUMX). The Paraguayan left could not resist this pressure and, over time, adopted the multi-class logic and the postulates of the so-called “historical revisionism”.
In doing so, it buried two principles of Marxism: class independence, since patriotism paralyzes any independent action by the exploited and, in practice, subordinates the proletariat to the “nation”, at the top of which is the bourgeoisie; and proletarian internationalism, since, although Marxism supports certain national causes in oppressed countries, it is not a nationalist current, because it always proposes a policy that promotes the protagonism of the workers and conceives national revolutionary processes as links in the struggle for socialism on a global scale.
The political cost of this theoretical mistake was high: a large part of this “progressivism” ended up resigning itself to the innocuous role of uncritical follower of the most superficial patriotic interpretations, adhering to the personality cult of Dr. Francia and the López family.
With this approach, among other things, the myth of egalitarianism and the “popular” character of Francia’s “plebeian dictatorship” were constructed, in which an “indisputable social consensus” would reign.[xxxix]. This thesis, presented by certain works that claim to be based on Marxism as the “silent precursor of Latin American socialism”, without any factual basis and anachronistic, was not limited to Francia, but also covered the López regime.[xl].
Thus, contrary to all the facts we have presented in this article, the “López project” is defined as “… an egalitarian and centralized regime”, a phase of the alleged “… agrarian socialism during the independent period (1814-1870)”[xi]. It goes so far as to describe Solano López, perhaps the richest and most powerful individual in Paraguayan history, as “sympathetic to the interests of the peasant and popular classes”, which led him to defend “the interests of the peasant class”[xliii]. Complete nonsense.
It is common, in this type of literature, to postulate the existence of a “people’s State” in order to, based on this concept – which does not exist among the analytical categories of Marxism – reproduce the well-known nationalist axiom: “… there was no separation between López and the people (…) López and the Paraguayan people were a unit”[xiii].
In left-wing circles, there are other definitions that postulate the existence of a “model sui generis of an Independent People's State” until 1870, or of a “People's State forged in the Francoist period and which continued, with its own nuances, in the López period”[xiv]. These formulations have the same theoretical content and the same political objective: to claim the presence of a benefactor State for the working people in the 19th century, guided by a “great man”, and the need to support, today, any experience presented as analogous.
In this and other works we have tried to show that not even Lopez had anything in common with the “popular” and “anti-imperialist” figure that the nationalism inherent in Stalinist-Maoist dogma and dependency theory popularized with particular force between the 1950s and 1970s.
However, it is worth briefly addressing some elements that can clarify the origin of this nationalism that permeated the analysis and political profile of most of the Paraguayan left.
A “party of order and democracy”
The main propagator of the patriotic vision on the left was Stalinism, represented in the country by the Paraguayan Communist Party (PCP), an organization that, between 1936 and 1947, approximately, held hegemony in the workers' movement and among left-wing political forces.[xlv].
Patriotism took hold in Paraguayan society in the late 1920s. In December 1928, in the face of the Paraguayan attack on Fortim Vanguardia, the PCP avoided putting into practice the anti-war propaganda dictated by the Comintern, a fact that provoked an external intervention in the party and the expulsion of Lucas Ibarrola, its secretary-general.[xlv].
In an internal document from 1934, in the midst of the Chaco War and in the process of reorganizing that party, the South American Secretariat of the Comintern, then under the tutelage of the Argentine Communist Party (PCA), criticizes the “nationalist deviation” of the PCP, at the same time as exposing its own nationalism:
“We had serious disagreements with them [the Paraguayan communists] on many issues: the theory of the “golden age” in Paraguay’s past, industrialization supposedly [alleged] of the country before the war of the 70s, and that the country was recolonized after the defeat in that war, mainly with the help of Argentina. We think this is false. Linked to this was the theory of “schwanz-imperialismus”[xlv] Argentine, because Argentina played an important role as an intermediary and had strong interests in the quebracho and quebracho extract industries, in yerba mate, etc., which in turn led to false conceptions of Argentina’s role in the war. We also had differences of opinion with them in the judgment of the role of the Francia and López dictatorships, a discussion that has much in common with ours in relation to the figure of Rosas […]”[xlviii].
It should be noted that, while the PCP showed itself to be an adherent of the postulates of bourgeois nationalism as early as 1934, the PCA rejected the criticisms that, we assume, the Paraguayans made of the penetration of the Argentine bourgeoisie into the local economy and its oppressive role. The PCA denied any “colonizing” role of Argentina in the post-war period. In other words, each communist party defended the nationalism of its own country.
In 1935, two events would renew the enthusiasm and expectation of the Paraguayan Stalinists to “break their isolation”. First, the end of the Chaco War freed them from the uncomfortable anti-war line. Then, the policy of the “popular front”, proclaimed by the VII Congress of the Comintern, allowed the CP not only to deepen its agreements with reformist currents, but, above all, to support “progressive” bourgeois and petty-bourgeois sectors with the justification of promoting the anti-fascist struggle and a supposed “anti-imperialist national revolution”.[xlix].
Moscow’s consecration of class collaboration as a strategy and the need for communist parties to take up “…the banner of the struggle for democracy and the national interests of their countries”[l] was the theoretical-political basis of the PCP's support for the anti-communist government of Colonel Rafael Franco in 1936. A support that, manifesting a kind of “political masochism”, remained firm, despite the relentless repression imposed by that government.
Rafael Franco was the definitive rehabilitator of Solano López and, although his government was composed of several tendencies and went through oscillations, we know that the colonel did not hide his sympathy for fascism. Proof of this are statements such as the following: “My admiration for Germany and the brilliant leader of its revolution, Mr. Hitler, one of the purest moral values of post-war Europe, is not new to me” (Pátria newspaper, 1936, p. 7). In March 1936, on the other hand, Decree-Law 152 stated: “the Liberating Revolution of Paraguay has the same nature as the totalitarian social transformations of contemporary Europe, in the sense that the Liberating Revolution and the State are already one and the same thing”.
In 1939, with the same campist logic, which distinguishes supposedly “patriotic and progressive” sectors in the national bourgeoisie from other “anti-national and reactionary” sectors, the PCP also supported the government of José Félix Estigarribia, capitulating, in the same act, to North American imperialism. Without blushing, the Paraguayan Stalinists welcomed: “… the undoubted contact that the president-elect has with Roosevelt’s Pan-Americanist policy, based on borrowing and expressed in progressive declarations and promises to govern democratically, confirms the correctness of our current position. The Communist Party is a party of order and democracy, which fulfills a patriotic duty by saving our nationality from the shameful embarrassment of fascism and the oligarchy.”[li].
Thus, the enormous influence that the PCP exercised in the workers' movement was not channeled into a policy of class independence and intransigent opposition to bourgeois governments and dictatorial regimes, but towards conciliation and, with it, the defeat of the Paraguayan proletariat.
An “authentically national party”
On the opposite side of the internationalism of Marxist theory, a document from 1941 proves that Paraguayan Stalinism kept its patriotic conceptions intact. The PCP defined itself as an “authentically national party”, “legitimate heir and continuator of the struggles and revolutionary aspects of the Guaranís, the communeros, the revolutionary people of May 1811 and their heroes, the governments of the López family, the people in arms in defense of their nation in 1865, the heroic struggles of the workers and peasants”.[liiii].
A few years later, on March 1, 1945, the PCP published a manifesto saluting Solano López: “Paraguayans! The Communist Party pays its fervent homage to Marshal López, an intrepid soldier and great patriot who died in defense of national independence…”. The nationalist narrative, in which even workers’ strikes were “patriotic,” was nothing more than a theoretical justification for the policy of class conciliation, that is, for the strategic alliance with “democratic” and “patriotic” bourgeois sectors, in opposition to equally bossy sectors, but denounced as “sellouts,” “legionaries,” “enemies of the Fatherland and democracy,” and presented as antagonists of the first bourgeois camp.[iii].
The “Nazi-conspirator clique”[book] had “usurped” positions in the army and police from the government of Higinio Morínigo (1940-1948), institutions that, according to the PCP’s campista analysis, could change their reactionary nature if they were controlled by a more “democratic” faction.
The solution proposed by Paraguayan Stalinism was to bet on the growth of a “democratic unity movement”, explicitly interclass, which would be expressed in the signatories of a petition in favor of a constituent process.
Although the PCP attributed “the main responsibility” for the country’s dramatic situation to General Morínigo, one of the most brutal dictators in Paraguayan history, it immediately toned down its accusations, demanding that the regime “profoundly rectify its repressive policy” and break with the “Nazi clique” – a kind of “principal enemy”, according to the PCP –; if it did so, the “communists” guaranteed that the government “would have the firm support of the working class, of all democratic forces, civil and military”.
This policy of class conciliation, in line with the strategic line of popular fronts enshrined by the VII Congress of the Comintern in 1935, is revealed in the political solution proposed by the PCP for the country, always with the aim of “worthily honoring the memory of Marshal López”:
Compatriots: Today, as in 1870, it is more urgent than ever for all progressive forces to unite, without distinction between opponents and government supporters, civilians and military, to […] participate in the organization of a Government of National Conciliation capable of ensuring the military and economic defense of the country, alleviating the critical situation of hunger and misery, guaranteeing frank, loyal and total cooperation with the United Nations, and normalizing the country through a Free and Sovereign National Constituent Assembly.[lv].
These are just a few examples of how nationalism, through Stalinism, penetrated the thinking and influenced the program and political profile of the Paraguayan left, especially after the end of the Chaco War.[lv].
Although the PCP lost almost all of its influence after the Civil War of 1947, it managed to bequeath to the workers’ movement and the left a theoretical distortion of the Marxist conception of the state, an analysis and a concrete policy of conciliation with the bourgeoisie, and the systematic abandonment of revolutionary internationalism. Thus, the subsequent generations of intellectuals and activists who awakened to political life and joined the social struggle were shaped by the narrow, polyclass logic of chauvinism.
*Ronald Leon Núñez he holds a doctorate in history from USP. Author, among other books, of The War against Paraguay under debate (Sundermann). [https://amzn.to/48sUSvJ]
Translation: Marcos Margarido.
References
ARROM, J. The popular revolution of the 19th century in America. Criticism of Nuestro Tiempo, 17, 1997.
CARDOZO, E. El Imperio del Brasil y el Río de la Plata: Antecedentes y estallido de la Guerra del Paraguay. Asunción: Intercontinental, 2012.
CASTELLS, C. The Paraguayan Communist Party (1930-1935): clandestine rearticulation, anti-war militancy and construction of a hegemony within the labor movement. Paraguay Magazine from Social Sciences, 13, 2023, p. 26-48.
_______ . Veterans and comuneros: the historical memory of Paraguay in the retina of anarchism of the first decades of the 20th century. Paraguayan Studies Magazine, 41(2), 2023, 94-123.
CORONEL, B. López, anti-imperialist hero: historical essay. HISTEDBR Online Magazine, Campinas, n. 59, 2014.
DORATIOTO, F. Cursed War: New History of the Paraguayan War🇧🇷 São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002.
ENGELS, F. The origin of the family, private property and the State. Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels, 2006.
HERKEN KRAUER, JC Economic process in Paraguay by Carlos Antonio López: the vision of the British Consul Henderson (1851-1860). Paraguayan Magazine of Sociology, 54, 1982, p. 81-116.
HOBSBAWM, E. The age of revolutions: 1789-1848. Rio de Janeiro: Peace and Land, 2013.
JEIFETZ, V.; SCHELCHKOV, A. (Org.). The Communist International in Latin America in documents from the Moscow archive. Buenos Aires: Ariadna Ediciones, 2018.
KOSSOK, M. The bourgeois content of the independence of Latin America. Secuencia - Magazine of history and social sciences, n. 13, 1989, pp. 144-162.
KRAAY, H.; WHIGHAM, T. I die with my country. War, State and society. Paraguay and the Triple Alliance. Asunción: Time of History, 2017.
LEON NÚÑEZ, R. Approximation to a Marxist conception of the lower State and the López regime. In: TELESCA, I. (coord.). A State to arm. Approaches to state construction in nineteenth-century Paraguay. Buenos Aires: SB, 2024, pp. 53- 70.
_______ . The myth of doctor Francia's egalitarianism. ABC Color. El Suplemento Cultural, 22/09/2019. Available at: https://www.abc.com.py/edicion- press/suplementos/cultural/2019/09/22/el-mito-del-igualitarismo-del-doctor- france/>, consulted on 26/10/2024.
_______ . Between the new and the old: Reflections on the character of Paraguayan independence in the Latin American context (1811-1840). History Project: Journal of the Postgraduate Studies Program in History, no. 74, 2022, 67-94.
LOPEZ, CA Messages from Carlos Antonio López. Asunción: Imprenta Nacional, 1931. MAESTRI, M. Paraguay: the peasant republic: 1810-1865. FCM Publisher, 2015.
MARX, K. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels, 2003. MARX, K.; ENGELS, F. communist manifesto. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2019.
_______ . The German ideology. Montevideo: Ediciones Pueblos Unidos; Barcelona: Ediciones Grijalbo, 1974.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF SPANISH. History of the Communist Party of Spain. Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1960. Available at:
<https://www.filosofia.org/his/1960hpce.htm>. Accessed on 22/07/2024.
COMMUNIST PARTY OF PARAGUAY. Bulletin of the Central Committee. February 1941. Centro de Documentación y Archivo para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (“Archivo del Terror”), 00055F0924.
_______ . PCP Manifesto. March 1, 1945. Centro de Documentación y Archivo para la Defense de los Derechos Humanos, 00055F1681/82.
PASTOR, C. The fight for the land in Paraguay. Asunción: Intercontinental, 2008.
POTTHAST, B. Between the invisible and the painterly: Paraguayan women in the peasant economy (Siglo XIX). Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, 40, 2003.
RODRÍGUEZ ALCALÁ, G. Francia y López. In: Soler, L., et al. (Coordination). Anthology of contemporary Paraguayan critical thought. CLACSO, 2015, p. 15.
SCAVONE, R. Preliminary study. In: SCAVONE, R. (Org.). Controversies surrounding the government of Carlos Antonio López in the Buenos Aires press [1857-1858]. Asunción: Time of History, 2010.
SEIRFERHELD, A. Nazism and Fascism in Paraguay. Aftermath of the Second World War 1936-1939. Asunción: Editorial Histórica, 1985.
TELESC, I. (coord.). A State to Arm. Approaches to state construction in nineteenth-century Paraguay. Buenos Aires: SB, 2024.
_______ . Pueblos de Indians and land in Paraguay by Carlos Antonio López 2018.
Available in:https://bit.ly/3IT2352>, consulted on 16/03/2024.
THOMPSON, G. The Paraguayan War. Asuncion: Servilibro, 2010.
WHIGHAM, T. What the river came to. State and commerce in Paraguay and Corrientes [1776- 1870]. CEADUC, 2009.
WHITE, RA The First Popular Revolution in America: Paraguay 1810-1840. Asunción: Carlos Schauman Editor, 1989.
WILLIAMS, J.H. The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic: 1800-1870. Texas: University of Texas, 1979.
Notes
[I] For an extensive debate on this subject, see: LEÓN NÚÑEZ, R. Aproximación a una marxista del Estado lower el régimen de los López. In: Telesca, I. (coord.). A State to Arm. Approaches to state construction in nineteenth-century Paraguay. Buenos Aires: SB, 2024, pp. 53-70.
[ii] MARX, K; ENGELS, F. The German ideology. Montevideo: Ediciones Pueblos Unidos; Barcelona: Ediciones Grijalbo, 1974, p. 50.
[iii] The State is a fundamental issue for Marxists and the central theme of classic texts of this theoretical-political current, such as The origin of the family, private property and the state, by Friedrich Engels, and The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, by Karl Marx. The work that best explains the essence of the Marxist theory of the State is The State and the Revolution, by VI Lenin.
[iv] ENGELS, F. The origin of the family, private property and the State. Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels, 2006, pp. 183-4.
[v] Ditto, p. 184.
[vi] Ditto, p. 185.
[vii] MARX, K.; ENGELS, F. communist manifesto. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 2019, p. 52.
[viii] See: KOSSOK, M. The bourgeois content of the independence of Latin America. Secuencia-Magazine of history and social sciences, n. 13, 1989, pp. 144-162; HOBSBAWM, E. The age of revolutions: 1789-1848. Rio de Janeiro: Peace and Land, 2013.
[ix] LEÓN NÚÑEZ, R. Between the new and the old: Reflections on the character of Paraguayan independence in the Latin American context (1811-1840). History Project: Journal of the Postgraduate Studies Program in History, no. 74, 2022, 67-94.
[X] CORONEL, B. López, anti-imperialist hero: historical essay. HISTEDBR Online Magazine, Campinas, n. 59, 2014, p. 13.
[xi] Ditto, p. 9.
[xii] HERKEN KRAUER, JC Economic process in Paraguay by Carlos Antonio López: the vision of the British Consul Henderson (1851-1860). Paraguayan Magazine of Sociology, 54, 1982, p. 81-116.
[xiii] MARX, K. The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. Madrid: Fundación Federico Engels, 2003, p. 109.
[xiv] One of the ways in which José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia became known.
[xv] This, according to Marxist conception, should not be a surprise. The armed forces are the main institution of any state. Therefore, the importance attributed to them by Francia was not accidental. The importance of the “special detachments of armed men” is visible in the fact that the salaries of regular troops consumed, on average, 64% of the revenues during his government. See: WHITE, R.A. The First Popular Revolution in America: Paraguay 1810-1840. Asunción: Carlos Schauman Editor, 1989, pp. 122, 238-40.
[xvi] By this decree, Carlos Antonio declared that all yerba mate and timber suitable for export, including those grown on private lands, were the property of the state. The exploitation of these crops was only possible with a government license, obtained through a type of bidding process, and their trade became a state monopoly. See: WILLIAMS, J.H. The Rise and Fall of the Paraguayan Republic: 1800- 1870. Texas: University of Texas, 1979, p. 132.
[xvii] DORATIOTO, F. Cursed War: New History of the Paraguayan War. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2002, p. 44.
[xviii] POTTHAST, B. Between the invisible and the painterly: Paraguayan women in the peasant economy (Siglo XIX). Jahrbuch für Geschichte Lateinamerikas, 40, 2003, p. 207.
[xx] WHIGHAM, T. What the river came to. State and commerce in Paraguay and Corrientes [1776-1870]. CEADUC, 2009, p. 192.
[xx] WILLIAMS, JH, op. cit., p. 171.
[xxx] HERKEN KRAUER, JC, op. cit., p. 35.
[xxiii] While a rural schoolteacher earned £100 a year (about £20), the salaries of foreign technicians and machinists ranged from £144 to £200 a year, almost double what was paid in London. At the top, the Scotsman William Whytehead, the state's chief engineer, received an annual salary of £600, which was doubled in 1861, plus other benefits. George Barton, head of the military sanitary service, received £500 a year, plus a horse, house, servants, and other perks. By the end of 1863, the Scottish doctor William Steward was earning £800 a year (WILLIAMS, JH, op. cit., pp. 181–3).
[xxiii] KRAAY, H.; WHIGHAM, T. I die with my country. War, State and society. Paraguay and the Triple Alliance. Asunción: Tiempo de Historia, 2017, p. 28.
[xxv] On the social consequences of this decree, see: TELESCA, I. Pueblos de Indians and land in Paraguay by Carlos Antonio López. 2018. Available at:https://bit.ly/3IT2352>, consulted on 16/03/2024.
[xxiv] WILLIAMS, JH, op. cit., p. 116.
[xxv] Same, pp. 116-21.
[xxviii] RODRÍGUEZ ALCALÁ, G. Francia y López. In: Soler, L., et al. (Coordination). Anthology of contemporary Paraguayan critical thought. CLACSO, 2015, p. 15.
[xxviii] WHIGHAM, T., op. cit, p. 132.
[xxix] SCAVONE, R. Preliminary study. In: SCAVONE, R. (Org.). Controversies surrounding the government of Carlos Antonio López in the Buenos Aires press [1857-1858]. Asunción: Tiempo de Historia, 2010, p. 15.
[xxx] WHIGHAM, T.,, op. cit., pp. 132-3; THOMPSON, G. The Paraguayan War. Asunción: Servilibro, 2010, p. 24.
[xxxii] PASTOR, C. The fight for the land in Paraguay. Asunción: Intercontinental, 2008, p. 145.
[xxxi] RODRÍGUEZ ALCALÁ, G., op. cit., pp. 552-4.
[xxxii] After Paraguay's defeat in the war against the Triple Alliance, Elisa Lynch, who never married Solano López, was banished from the nation by the newly created provisional government. After five years, under promises from then Paraguayan president Juan Bautista Gill that she would be respected, she decided to return to Paraguay to settle there and claim her former properties.
[xxxv] RODRÍGUEZ ALCALÁ, G., op. cit., p. 553.
[xxxiv] WILLIAMS, JH, op. cit., p. 125.
[xxxiv] LOPEZ, CA Messages from Carlos Antonio López. Asunción: Imprenta Nacional, 1931, pp. 94-100.
[xxxviii] CARDOZO, I. El Imperio del Brasil y el Río de la Plata: Antecedents and outbreak of the Paraguayan War. Asunción: Intercontinental, 2012, p. 125.
[xxxviii] The Royal Catechism of José Antonio de San Alberto, published in 1786, preached religious obedience to the Hispanic monarchy. It was the metropolis' response to the Tupac Amaru uprising.
[xxxix] MASTER, M. Paraguay: the peasant republic: 1810-1865. FCM Editora, 2015, pp. 114, 124. For further discussion of this topic, see: LEÓN NÚÑEZ, R. The myth of doctor Francia's egalitarianism. ABC Color. El Suplemento Cultural, 22/09/2019. Available at: https://www.abc.com.py/edicion- press/suplementos/cultural/2019/09/22/el-mito-del-igualitarismo-del-doctor-francia/>, consulted on 26/10/2024.
[xl] COLONEL, B., op. cit., p. 19.
[xi] Same, pp. 7-8.
[xliii] Same, p. 15
[xiii] Ditto, p. 5.
[xiv] ARROM, J. The popular revolution of the 19th century in America. Criticism of Nuestro Tiempo, 17, 1997.
[xlv] CASTELLS, C. The Paraguayan Communist Party (1930-1935): clandestine rearticulation, anti-war militancy and construction of a hegemony within the labor movement. Paraguay Magazine from Social Sciences, 13, 2023, p. 26-48.
[xlv] Ditto, p. 31.
[xlv] Schwanz: tail, in German.
[xlviii] JEIFETZ, V.; SCHELCHKOV, A. (Org.). The Communist International in Latin America in documents from the Moscow archive. Buenos Aires: Ariadna Ediciones, 2018, pp. 261-262.
[xlix] CASTELLS, C., op. cit., p. 45.
[l] COMMUNIST PARTY OF SPANISH. History of the Communist Party of Spain. Paris: Éditions Sociales, 1960. Available at:https://www.filosofia.org/his/1960hpce.htm>. Accessed on 22/07/2024.
[li] SEIRFERHELD, A. Nazism and Fascism in Paraguay. Aftermath of the Second World War 1936-1939. Asunción: Editorial Histórica, 1985, p. 194. In a shameful manner, on May 1, 1940, the PCP, through its great union influence, organized a massive march of around 40 thousand workers who paraded through the streets of Asunción reiterating their support for Estigarribia.
[liiii] COMMUNIST PARTY OF PARAGUAY. Bulletin of the Central Committee. February 1941. Centro de Documentación y Archivo para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (“Archivo del Terror”), 00055F0924.
[iii] COMMUNIST PARTY OF PARAGUAY. PCP Manifesto. March 1, 1945. Centro de Documentación y Archivo para la Defense de los Derechos Humanos, 00055F1681/82.
[book] The PCP refers, among others, to Lieutenant Colonel Victoriano Benítez Vera and Colonels Bernardo Aranda and Pablo Stagni, members of the so-called War Front, a Nazi group in the army.
[lv] Ibid.
[lv] CASTELLS, C. Veterans and comuneros: the historical memory of Paraguay in the retina of anarchism of the first decades of the 20th century. Paraguayan Studies Magazine, 41(2), 2023, 94-123.
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