The Paraguayan War: The Paraná Protocol

The Paraná Protocol

 
José Maria da Silva Paranhos (1819-1880)

Like those cubes that fit one inside the other, Brazil was included within the larger cube of British politics. Miter, in turn, would be the smallest hub of Brazilian diplomacy, as Captain Richard Burton himself would denounce.

Miter and his class did not enter into war, neither deceived nor naive. This general of pounds and surrenders, he knew that if war was declared “…. It would be an unprecedented event in South America, the most immoral in modern history. The Confederation has nothing to claim regarding the free navigation of the Paraguay River. Regarding the question of borders, it is not in the interest of the Republics of Silver to assist Brazil in its policy of invading foreign territory, betraying the cause of the Republic of Paraguay, our defense against the exaggerated pretensions of Brazil; and it would also be betraying our own cause, when similar issues may arise later between Brazil and the Argentine Republic.”

This was maintained by Miter against Urquiza, when he suspected that the Protocol of Paraná of December 14, 1857, which established the alliance between Brazil and the Confederation, to attack Paraguay, was about to be signed. The general's speeches and words are clarified politically in their historical context. Extracting from this quote by Miter a definitive meaning about his position favorable to Paraguay would be hermeneutically incorrect and historically false. Even the same representatives of Urquiza, in article 4 of the Paraná Protocol, had stated: “The war has only as its goal the free navigation of Paraguay in which the interest of the Confederation is secondary and remote due to its current lack of trade in those directions, would not be popular in his country, would not justify the Argentine Government before the national public opinion of abandoning the contemporary policy that has been prescribed until today, despite the serious damages that result from the deplorable system that the Paraguayan Government insists on.

“…That an alliance of the two States to draw their borders with Paraguay, a State weaker than either of them, would be odious and could seriously compromise the results that both promise to obtain.”.

Upon signing the Protocol of Paraná, on December 14, 1857, Paranhos gave the following “significant toast”: “I wish to see the closest union between the Empire and the Confederation realized, and that the glory of Caseros is not the only glory acquired.” in common for Brazil and the Argentine Nation.”

In a “confidential” from José Manuel Estrada to Wenceslao Paunero, dated December 24, 1868, it is clarified: “…The Government of Urquiza, which in 1857 was courting Brazil to bring it into an alliance against Buenos Aires and obtain loans, without which "He could not carry out what he called the war of reconstruction, that year he concluded a treaty with Mr. Paranahos in which he undertook to hand over the slaves who escaped from Brazil." This treaty was, effectively, another of those signed in Paraná on that occasion. Urquiza's “objectives” were exactly as described. For this reason, Pelham Horton Box rightly says “…in the agreements between Brazil, the Argentine Confederation and Uruguay, of 1856 and 1857, we already see the outline of the Triple Alliance of 1865.”

Miter would participate in the war, despite the position publicly held in 1857, because with it he consolidated his political alliance with the Brazilian Empire and ensured his triumph over the federals. With the alliance, on the other hand, the cycle begun with Urquiza, of financial-political dependence, with respect to Brazil, that is to say, England, was continued.

The price of the “repressive” tranquility of the provincial interior had been previously regulated by Baring Brothers, Rothschild and the Foreign Office. In Argentina, the livestock class, “exporter-importer”, urged Bartolomé Mitre. The newspaper of Melchor Rom – director of the Stock Exchange and one of the eminent representatives of that class – dreamed of the appropriation of Guaraní tobacco and yerba. His imagination as an economic speculator would cause the Paraguayan lands to be traveled, in his dreams, by Buenos Aires cattle.

Seduced by Mitrist rhetoric, a coincidental sublimation of their class interests, the young “autonomists” and “nationalists”, with aristocratic roots, would voluntarily enlist, commanded by their philosophy professors, to put an end to Paraguayan “barbarism”. “After the triumph of Paraguay,” said “La Nación Argentina” in December 1864, “the reign of barbarism will continue for us (…) As Argentines, then, and as enemies of barbarism and dictatorship, we hope that, if the Paraguayan government carries on the war is defeated by Brazil (...) no one can doubt the situation that awaits us if Paraguay triumphs."

After Curupaytí, Mitre's “nationalists” would be replaced by paid mercenaries or the unemployed. The mercenaries were Europeans, hired by Hilario Ascasubi in France. The couplings were made in Marseille and Bordeaux. Hundreds of men were embarked monthly on ships of the “Societé General des Transport Maritime”. The contracts were accompanied by a medical certificate of health of the mercenaries, and the statement of two witnesses, which proved that they knew how to handle weapons. All formalities were completed at the Argentine Consulate in Marseille or Bordeaux. The unemployed Argentines, in turn, were men who, destroyed by free trade the tasks of craftsmanship and industry that flourished under Juan Manuel de Rosas, were distressed and without work, forced to look for a “military” occupation.

All of them would go to carry out the bloody British plan on Guarani land.

Uruguay, converted into a political appendage of Brazilian-Mitrista diplomacy, after its national defeat, would participate through Venancio Flores in the war. The 5,000 men that he will send to their deaths will justify the geometric increase in his public debt, due to the measured “efforts” of the Baron of Mauá and the London bankers. The convention of October 12, 1851, had determined that the Eastern Republic of Uruguay was obliged to apply all its resources to the payment of the Brazilian debt. But, from this obligation, at the request of Brazil itself, the loans that Uruguay had obtained in London had been excluded. This requirement would be repeated in the protocol of 1867, and conclusively demonstrates the total dependence of Brazilian Banking on the English one. The credits of the Brazilian Empire were, in reality, British credits, which could not be settled with English money. León de Palleja, despite his position as an allied officer, would express the authentic Uruguayan thought: “I was not a supporter of this (war); Everyone knows my ideas in this regard, but I consider it a stupid war to wage between Orientals and Paraguayans. Nations of identical origin and causes; although by different means, they are destined to maintain a common policy and to be sisters and not enemies…”

The war seemed an irrational fact, but the world was experiencing the transformation of the export of merchandise into the export of capital, and South America was the favorable victim of that transformation, deeply “rational” for British interests.

Cotton, free navigation, loans, limits, commercial profits, industrial destruction, political power, ambition and fear, marked the war of the Double Alliance, between Financial Capital and local oligarchies. Drama of American characters, with a hidden protagonist and author: England, revealed, through the few traces left in its lethal path.

Faced with this plexus of interests and relationships, the Paraguayan people, with their statesman at the helm. The armed people, defending their economic freedom, their protectionist tariff, their closure of rivers, their agricultural production, their industry, their railroad, their telegraph.

But above all, sovereign Paraguay, defending the balance of the Río de la Plata, that is, the “American Union”, against the attack prepared by the foreign power.

Anticipating what would happen, Rosas had written to Carlos Antonio López a dozen years ago: “that he hoped for his happiness and for God to preserve him without admitting foreigners, who are bad locusts.”
Felipe Varela, director of the “American System” would say of the War, in an ephemeral moment of truce:

“… The war with Paraguay was an event already calculated, premeditated by General Mitre (...) The Argentine provinces, however, have never participated in these feelings, on the contrary, those people have contemplated, groaning, the defection of the President, imposed by the bayonets, on the Argentine blood, of the principles of the American Union, in which they have always looked to the safeguarding of their rights and their freedom, taken in the name of justice and the law”.

And that thought would be the fraternal echo of the high Paraguayan patriotic expression, synthesized in the doctrine of the balance of the Río de la Plata, which Francisco Solano López proclaimed, with just pride before all his people.

Full text of the Paraná Protocol

On the fourteenth day of the month of December, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-seven, in this city of Paraná, the Plenipotentiaries of the Argentine Confederation, doctors Don Santiago Derqui and Don Bernabé López, and the Plenipotentiary of YE. the Emperor of Brazil, Counselor José María da Silva Paranhos, agreed to record in writing the results of their conferences, on the means that their respective Governments should use to obtain from the Republic of Paraguay a satisfactory solution to the pending issues, which they say regarding common river navigation as well as the declarations that the same Plenipotentiaries made in the name of both Governments, presupposing the case that war becomes inevitable to achieve that goal that is of such interest to both countries and to civilization and commerce in general.
It was agreed at the same time that this document must be kept in the most complete confidentiality and is intended only to inform the two Governments of the circumstances and dispositions that each of them has towards the Republic of Paraguay, taking into account that , in any case they can mutually bring together all the good offices inherent to the benevolent and close relations that so happily exist between them and the peoples whose destinies they preside over.
Being an obligation contracted by the Empire of Brazil and the Argentine Confederation, in the Alliance Agreements of 1851, confirmed and again stipulated in the Treaty of March 7, 1856, and in the river Convention of November 20 of the present year, the invitation and use of all means within the reach of each of the two Governments so that the other coastal States and especially the Republic of Paraguay, adhere to the same principles of free navigation as well as the means of making them effectively useful, said Plenipotentiaries agreed:

1. In that the Government of the Argentine Confederation, based on the aforementioned stipulations and the special conditions that exist between it and that of the Republic of Paraguay, for the free transit enjoyed by the Paraguayan flag in the waters of the Paraná, belonging to the same Confederation and by the Treaty of July 29, 1856, will demand of said Republic that for its part it opens the Paraguay River to all flags and adopts in relation to common transit the franchises and means of Police and inspection that are generally used and found stipulated in the River Convention of November 20 between the Confederation and the Empire of Brazil.
2. In that the Government of the Confederation as well as that of Brazil will maintain said claim with the greatest possible effort, being however free to each of them to ensure that their claims reach the point of leaving diplomatic channels and compromising the state of peace. in which they find themselves with that neighboring State, given that the Government of the Confederation and the Imperial Government are not yet in agreement on the hypothesis of resorting to war.
   
3. In that, to make possible, as both Governments so desire, a peaceful solution to the pending issues with the Republic of Paraguay, regarding river navigation, both may stop insisting on the general concession and ultimately limit their claims, to that the Paraguayan Government effectively guarantees all its freedom of transit to its respective flags, according to the means indicated in the river Convention of November 20 of this year, each Government invoking its perfect right to this free transit, in view of the treaties in force between them and that of that Republic. 
4. In that, the claim of the Government of the Confederation will be made in a way that coincides with the special mission that the Government of H.M. The Emperor of Brazil now sends to the Republic of Paraguay with the demand that in the same sense and at the same time direct the Government of the Eastern State of Uruguay.

Sources

• Efemérides – Patricios de Vuelta de Obligado
• Peña, R. O. y Duhalde. E. – Felipe Varela – Schapire editor – Buenos Aires (1975).
• www.revisionistas.com.ar