34 - Paraguay

Summary

Modern Paraguay begins with the Chaco War (1932–5), which has been studied by many Paraguayan and Bolivian historians, usually in a polemical fashion. An objective study, in English, is David Zook, The Conduct of the Chaco War (New Haven, Conn., 1960). Also of interest from the Paraguayan perspective are the memoirs of the victorious commander-in-chief José Félix Estigarribia, The Epic of the Chaco: Marshal Estigarribia’s Memoirs of the Chaco War, translated and edited by Pablo Max Ynsfrán (Austin, Tex., 1950). On the postwar peace negotiations with Bolivia, see Leslie B. Rout, Jr., Politics of of the Chaco Peace Conference, 1935–1939 (Austin, Tex., 1970). See also Gustavo A. Riart, El Dr. Luis A. Riart y la defensa del Chaco (Asunción, 1987); Agustín Blujaki, ‘Presencia de la iglesia católica durante la Guerra del Chaco’, Estudios Paraguayos (December 1984); Leandro Aponte Benitez, La aviación paraguaya en la Guerra del Chaco (Asunción, 1985); Ramiro Escobar, Ráfagas de metralletas, sangre en los pajonales: Guerra del Chaco (Asunción, 1982); Lorenzo Livieres Guggiari, El financiamiento de la Guerra del Chaco, 1924–1935: Un desafío al liberalismo economico (Asunción, 1983).

The February Revolution of 1936 also generated much polemical literature. The essential English-language work on the revolution, and the Febrerista party that grew out of it, is Paul H. Lewis, The Politics of Exile (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1968). The most complete defence of Colonel Franco’s government is by his foreign affairs minister, Juan Stefanich, whose four-volume Capitulos de la revolucion paraguaya was published while Stefanich was in exile in Buenos Aires during 1945 and 1946.