Over the years, Paul H. Lewis has been somewhat of a trailblazer in Paraguayan studies in the United States. His 1965 study on the Febrerista party was the first major English-language analysis of a modern opposition party in Paraguay. His insightful 1980 work, Paraguay Under Stroessner, was likewise the first to delve at length into the 1954-89 dictatorship. So it is again, in large part, with the present study, an incisive look at the Liberal period (1869-1940)—usually regarded as the terra incognita that lies between the classic era of the great dictators (Dr. Francia and the two Lopezes) and the advent of such modern authoritarians as Morínigo and Stroessner. Lewis shows conclusively that this period was far more important to the unfolding of subsequent Paraguayan history than has been previously demonstrated.
Lewis begins by carefully identifying and analyzing Paraguay’s political elite. He has compiled a list of 950 names that includes all individuals who were presidents, vice presidents, cabinet ministers, Supreme Court justices, and chiefs of police between 1869 and 1940, as well as all members of political clubs from 1858 on, founding members of the Liberal and Colorado parties, executive committees of both traditional parties, and veterans’ associations. Despite the inevitable wordiness that an analysis of such a list entails, the results are suggestive.
For example, the polemicists of both traditional parties have long held that their organizations owe their origins to differing positions taken on the Triple Alliance War—with the Liberal party (or rather its parent organizations) vehemently opposing the policies of Marshall López, and the predecessors of today’s Colorados just as vehemently supporting them. That portrayal is erroneous in every way. Lewis shows that nearly all the anti-López Legionnaires still active in politics in the 1880s held leadership roles in the Colorado party, whereas the executive committee of the Liberal party had only one former Legionnaire (along with nine war veterans who had served in the López army). This finding contradicts some commonly accepted understandings of Paraguayan politics.
For Lewis, however, family origins and generational links, rather than ideology, are the key factors in understanding the Liberal period. The Decoud family, for instance, dominated first a major faction within an exile group in Buenos Aires, then an important political club in postwar Asunción, and finally, through the person of José Segundo Decoud, the key political apparatus that propped up the Colorado regimes of the 1880s and 1890s.
As for generational disputes, these provided the motive for much of the partisan conflict of the Liberal Era. Decoud, Caballero, Patricio Escobar, Juansilvano Godoi—indeed, all the principal Paraguayan leaders of the late nineteenth century—belonged to the same young generation. Those who succeeded them in power likewise constituted a completely new generation. The pattern repeated itself once again in the 1930s. Using this pattern as a yardstick for overall change, Lewis speculates that Paraguayan politics undergoes a major shift every 30 years or so. Paraguay watchers therefore might well look to the late 1990s for the next significant shift.
The rich detail in Lewis’ study is both a strength and a weakness. Specialists will find in it an abundance of useful dates, names, political and family connections, and so on. At the same time, such a wealth of material sometimes confuses the reader. It also invites a good many quibbles. Why, for instance, does Lewis call the Solano López regime a “socialist state” (p. 29) when the early postwar governments maintained state monopolies and controlled huge tracts of public land exactly as López did? Why, in discussing Paraguayan exile organizations, does Lewis omit the name of Manuel Pedro de Peña, surely the first great Paraguayan publicist to attack his country’s government in a foreign press?
These, however, are minor points. Overall, Lewis deserves to be congratulated for having opened the door on Paraguay’s Liberal Era. We may hope that many new scholars will pass through it.
