Brazilian entry to Asunción
Makeshift hotels, inns, restaurants, entertainment venues, public dance halls, shops, stores, and sweet shops sprang up overnight, all thriving on the proceeds extracted from the 30,000 allied soldiers and countless tourists, opportunists, and curious onlookers who eagerly flocked to witness the downfall of a once-mighty nation.
These invaders stormed houses, competing to seize the most valuable spoils. It is astonishing how the efforts of generations could be obliterated in mere hours. As the day wore on, the streets became littered with furniture discarded as houses were set ablaze. In the afternoon, ships from Argentina appeared along the Paraguay River, eager to purchase the looted goods. Soldiers thronged the docks, bartering their ill-gotten gains for gold, leading to arguments and scuffles. The ships remained anchored, awaiting more plunder, while the soldiers continued their relentless pillaging. By nightfall, the fires from the ravaged neighborhoods cast an eerie glow on the thick black clouds overhead.
Men concealed their loot wherever they could, stuffing their saddlebags, cloaks, the interiors of their boots, and helmets with gold, silver, and precious metals. The following day, they advanced to another section of the city, setting it ablaze as well. They had already ransacked government offices, embassies, opulent residences, and humble abodes alike. It was then that the refugees began to return.
Most of these returnees were young women and girls or children left behind by the men who had perished on the battlefield. These vulnerable individuals ventured back to the city driven by hunger and the faint hope of finding shelter. However, the invaders pounced on them, subjecting them to physical assault, public humiliation, and sexual violence in the streets. They mercilessly raped these women, with lines of ten, twenty, or even thirty men taking turns on a single victim. The desperate cries of these victims echoed throughout the city, and there was no corner or alley in Asunción where a woman was safe from harassment. Those who resisted were ruthlessly killed on the spot.
The horrors did not cease with the onset of night, nor did they relent with the arrival of a new day. The tormentors only relented when the victims, drained of life and devoid of the strength to resist any longer, met their end with a look of bitter resignation on their faces.
And then the thirst for gold is revived again and the officials look greedily at the cemeteries of Asunción. Under his orders, the soldiers dig everyone up. Those who have a ring or chain are stripped without respect. The rest, they leave lying everywhere; bones and more bones piled up everywhere, restlessly dead, warming in the sun.
The Brazilian minister in Asunción himself, José da Silva Paranhos, who later received the title of Viscount of Rio Branco, seized the immense treasure from the National Archives of Paraguay which, after his death, he donated to the National Library of Rio de Janeiro, the catalog of the Rio Branco collection, which contains the public archives of Paraguay taken at the end of the war, consists of a thousand pages divided into two volumes. The collection consists of fifty thousand documents on the early history of Paraguay, Portuguese infiltration, questions of limits and dates, and facts about the history of the Río de la Plata. It would also contain the act of the Foundation of the City of Asunción in 1537 and all the archives of the Jesuit Missions with the first geographical map of Paraguay, established before 1800 by the famous Spanish geographer Félix de Azara.
For three days the city was robbed by the imperial hosts, who did not spare the temples or the tombs, in their barbarous eagerness to increase their booty. Admiral Delfino de Carvallo himself - Baron del Pasaje - directed the looting, accumulating on the decks of his ships the pianos and fine furniture that adorned Paraguayan aristocratic homes. And when there was nothing important to steal, they even took the doors, windows and marbles of the López palace (2) and many houses and public buildings. In a word, Asunción, according to General Garmendia, "suffered the fate of the vanquished of distant times, the victor entering it by sack."
Many children were torn from their mothers' arms to end up sold as slaves on the plantations of Brazil. Everyone is running for their lives, and the once-populous Paraguayan capital is left deserted. “It was pitiful to see the city completely devoid of human beings,” says Brazilian colonel José Luis Da Silva.
The National Archive of Paraguay, with centuries of history inside, burns in flames. “El Paraguayo” from Asunción, in its edition of October 10, 1945, thus recalled the burning and looting of such vital documentation. “The archives of Paraguay were looted by the invaders during the War of the Triple Alliance. We lack many documents, even to reconstruct our history, and we can affirm that when our Archive was stripped, all those documents that could compromise the historical version that was forged were selected to take away all hope of vindication”.
Like the headquarters of the Archive, houses and public buildings are also looted, one by one, carefully and without haste. “The officers made use of the houses and things” points out the aforementioned Brazilian colonel.
The Argentine army camped five kilometers from the city, in Trinidad. And to be worthy of his ally, he turned the temple of that town into a stable, setting up a stable on the very grave of Carlos Antonio López. Soon the tombstone disappeared under the dung of the spirited steeds of the officers, substituting the noise of neighing for the voices of the organ and the prayers of the believers.
Just like "in the distant times" when Asia spread its barbarism, like a bloody shroud, over dying Europe. Breaking in and turning Christian churches into dunghills was the great pleasure of the men of the North. And no other was the delight of those terrible warriors, at whose step the earth trembled, led by the Scourge of God.
History repeats itself. Man is within men. Humanity advances, but has not yet finished leaving the cave. Ferocity boils in the depths of instinct, and there are moments when the beast that has crouched for centuries, dominated, but not defeated, leaps to the surface.
This is how peoples who called themselves Christians and men who invoked altruistic sentiments of humanity, fell into crime, reproducing, through an ancestral movement of inborn barbarism, acts that are repugnant to our conscience and that seemed already far from history. And all that was still nothing. The war was just about to enter a really wild period.
Meanwhile, Marshal López was preparing to resume the resistance. When he returned to occupy the old camp of Cerro León, after his last defeat, he had no more strength than his omnipotent will. All Paraguayan defensive power was concentrated in his person, a moral fortress more fearsome than the artillery walls of Humaitá. To no avail, the Duke of Caxías declared the war over.
The twenty thousand victorious soldiers, entrenched in Asunción, knew very well that as long as the Paraguayan president remained standing, the fight was not over.
When Count D'Eu, who came to replace the Duke of Caixas, arrived in Asunción, he found a great demoralization of the allied troops. The solemn Te Deum commanded to be sung by Caixas, celebrating the end of the war, had fallen into immense ridicule. The discouragement was general.
Benigno López Palace (Asunción, 1869). Source
No Brazilian boss had wanted to take responsibility for a single initiative. And, meanwhile, López grew at a distance. From one moment to the next, a surprise was expected, believing him capable of extracting resources from nothing. And there Juan Bautista Alberdi had time to say in Europe that at that time Paraguay had its “second and most powerful army in what are called its mountains. They are the Andes –he added- of the new Chacabuco and the new San Martín, against the new Bourbons of America”.
In the battle of Lomas Valentinas the invalids and children had fought, loading the cannons with pieces of stone and even with earth. Three months after that defeat, Paraguay again had an army of thirteen thousand men, relatively well armed and equipped.
The wounded of the last battle threw themselves by the hundreds into the immense estuary of Ypecuá, crossing it, with water up to their necks, for three days, without eating, and joining Solano López in Cerro León. And all those who could still walk or carry a rifle rushed from the farthest reaches of the republic to surround the unfortunate hero who was holding the Paraguayan flag.
Weapons abandoned on the battlefields are collected, another arsenal is assembled, iron is cast, cannons are drilled, gunpowder and paper are manufactured, a newspaper is published, schools start operating again, the compulsory primary education law is in force, children Soldiers attend classes. And the Ybycuí foundry and the Caacupé arsenal worked tirelessly to arm that strange army, taking advantage of the scandalous indecision of the more than prudent victor. Despite Asunción having fallen, the war was not yet over.
References
(1) On February 22, 1869, at 4:00 p.m., Francisco Solano López issued an edict ordering the evacuation of Asunción, it was then that all the Asunción families that still had some jewelry and metal money, ran to deposit them in the legation of the United States of America, in charge of Minister Carlos A. Washburn as well as in the consulates of France and Italy.
(2) The Palacio de los López is the seat of government of the Republic of Paraguay, since the official office of the President of the Republic is located there. It is one of the most beautiful and emblematic buildings of the Paraguayan capital, Asunción. Its location is on Paraguayo Independiente street, between Ayolas (before Paraná) and O'Leary (before Paso de Patria). Located in the center of Asunción, overlooking the bay, this building was built by order of President Carlos Antonio López, to serve as a residence for his son, General Francisco Solano López, hence the fact that the name of the building is "Palace of the Lopez". Its works began in 1857 under the direction of the English architect Alonso Taylor.
In the first half of the 19th century, Lázaro Rojas gave his baptismal godson Francisco López the property where the palace is located. After his famous trips to Europe, Francisco Solano brought several architects and engineers with him, who helped develop works of progress in the country. By order of Carlos Antonio López, President of the Republic since 1842, one of these works was the residence of his son. The construction, planned by the Hungarian Francisco Wisner, began directed by the English architect Alonso Taylor in 1857.
The materials for the construction of the palace came from various places in the interior of the country, stones from the quarries of Emboscada and Altos, wood and obrajes from Ñeembucú and Yaguarón, bricks from Tacumbú, cast iron pieces in Ybycuí, etc.
Various European artists came to Paraguay to be in charge of decorating the building. Artists such as the English engineer Owen Mognihan who was in charge of sculpting the necessary figures to create a palatial environment, the Italian Andrés Antonini who came to Paraguay exclusively to design and establish the marble staircase of the Palace that connects to the second floor, the painter Julio Monet, French, who painted the ceiling with floral decorations and figures.
By 1867, the time of the War of the Triple Alliance, the Palacio de los López was almost finished, although finishing details were lacking for its conclusion. The decoration was made of bronze statuettes and furniture imported from Paris, and large and decorated mirrors for the halls of the Palace. During the seven years that the Brazilians occupied Asunción, the Palace served as their forces' headquarters. After they abandoned it, the building was left in a state of abandonment. It was during the government of Juan Alberto González that the great restoration works of the Palace began, which lasted only two years. The building ended up regaining its former glory.
Source
- Efemérides – Patricios de Vuelta de Obligado
- Estragó, Margarita Durán – Homenaje al pueblo de Patiño, en el centenario de su fundación (1909- 2009)
- O’Leary,Juan E. – El mariscal Solano López
- Rivarola Matto, J. Bautista – Diagonal de sangre: la historia y sus alternativas en la Guerra del Paraguay.
Brazilian entrance to Asunción
