Under the general editorship of Robert Wesson, the Hoover Institution and Praeger began the Politics in Latin America series, “intended to provide a factual background for the political affairs of Latin America” (p. vii). The present volume is the third study in the series, following those on Central America and Panama. The editor, unfortunately, strains mightily at the truth in stating: “Small, poor, largely Indian in race, Paraguay is one of the South American countries most similar to Central America; Stroessner has long been the nearest counterpart to Somoza” (p. vii). Author Lewis, of course, is too well acquainted with Paraguay to fall into such errors.
Beginning with a short but perceptive analysis of Paraguay’s political culture, Lewis cruises swiftly through history from 1537 to 1870 in a single chapter—a formidable task that allows a brief mention of Jesuit missions, the Comunero revolt, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, Carlos Antonio and Francisco Solano López, and the Paraguayan War. In agreement with recent works by Richard Alan White and John Hoyt Williams, the author labels the Paraguay of Francia and the two López the “Socialist State.” The seven decades from 1870 to 1940 are covered in an extremely brief review of “The Rise and Fall of Paraguayan Liberalism.” The remaining six chapters are a description of Alfredo Stroessner’s rise to power, his government, power base, policies, and opponents, and concludes with an excellent analysis of Paraguay’s political experience in its Latin American context.
The book’s title implies that Paraguay has moved from socialism to liberalism to dictatorship. The regimes of Francia and the two Lopez did have many things in common with the most oppressive socialist states. Only by accepting a narrow definition can the first Colorado era (1878– 1904) and the Liberal turmoil (1904-40) be characterized as liberalism. The difficulty comes from applying to Paraguay labels derived from European political thought.
Lewis is at his best in dealing with Stroessner, whose dictatorship he treated more fully in Paraguay under Stroessner (1980). He finds that the stronato closely approximates “Juan Linz’s model of an ‘authoritarian regime ’” (p. 127), and, hedging his bets, predicts that “future Paraguayan governments will tend to go more socialist in direction than the stronato has; … But it would be equally predictable that Paraguayans, … will revert under the stress of change to the familiar authoritarian traditions of their past” (p. 130).
Based upon good coverage of the best secondary literature and Lewis’s own extensive research on Paraguayan politics since 1937, this book offers a convenient, well-written, and fast-moving analysis of the Paraguayan condition, valuable to the scholar and to all visitors to Paraguay. It is, in brief, an excellent explanation of why this fascinating country is unique.
