Empress of Paraguay

BY JOHN HAGAN

How Irishwoman ELIZA LYNCH became the world’s largest female landowner, helped destroy Latin America’s wealthiest country, and later became its national heroine.

It was an overcast May night in 1961, when Teofilo Chammas scaled the walls of Paris’ Pere Lachaise cemetery and made for the Martin family tomb. Chammas, new to the grave robbing business, had already bribed some of the cemetery staff to ensure that the crypt would be open. The tomb contained five coffins, one of which belonged to Dona Eliza Alicia Lynch-Lopez. Carefully, Chammas removed her skeletal remains and hastily made his escape. Eliza Lynch was going ‘home’ to Paraguay. Despite previously bankrupting the nation and being responsible for the slaughter of half of the male population, Eliza was about to be acclaimed its national heroine. Eliza Alicia Lynch was born in Charleville, County Cork, to affluent parents. On the death of her father (June 1835), Eliza was sent to live with her maternal uncle, the venerable Archbishop of Dublin. During her childhood years, Ireland was in the grip of the devastating potato famine, and in order to flee its ravages, the Lynch family decamped to Paris, where Eliza’s older sister, Corinne, was already living. But Paris too harboured its own dangers, including high unemployment, expensive food and violent street demonstrations. For Eliza, there arose a way out. On 3 June 1850, her fifteenth birthday, she married forty year old, Xavier Quatrefages, a French army vet. It was a union which saved Eliza from the grinding poverty into which the rest of her family had been plunged. Soon, Quatrefages was posted to Algiers, but despite the charm and delight of the Arabian nights, Eliza tired of it, and her husband, whom she referred to as ‘a minor pest’. After three years of marriage, she left him to elope with an aristocratic young Russian cavalry officer. Later, both returned to Paris where they set up home in the fashionable Saint Germain district. Unfortunately, the relationship was fleeting and the teenage Eliza soon found herself alone and without support. She resorted to the only lucrative career open to her – prostitution. Blessed with a Junoesque figure, flowing blonde hair and ready smile, she soon made a reputation for herself as a noted courtesan, attracting many rich and generous lovers. Eventually, Eliza found herself in the salon of Princess Mathilde Bonaparte, and, it was here in 1854, she met the man whom she described as ‘the love of my life’. Francisco Solano Lopez, son of the President of Paraguay, was in Paris on a diplomatic mission recruiting engineers to construct South America’s first railroad. Francisco, who scandalized the French with his garish wardrobe and bad breath, is overwhelmed by Eliza’s beauty and charm, while she is attracted to him because of his wealth, status, and the security he seemed to offer. Despite Eliza becoming pregnant, Lopez returned home, but left his mistress enough money to to join

him in Paraguay. Eliza arrived in the country’s capital, Asuncion, in October 1855, and two months later gave birth to a son, Juan Francisco, the first of seven children she would have with Lopez. After some initial culture shock, Eliza settled down, establishing herself as a social trendsetter who seemingly delighted in confronting and appalling the local society ladies, who dubbed her ‘La Concibuna Irelandesa’. She refused to ride sidesaddle, introduced French cultural practices and customs (including the construction of a ‘French style’ theatre), mixed with visiting dignitaries and local diplomats, and seemingly exerted undue influence on her husband. In 1862, on the death of his father, Francisco was anointed President. Although he and Eliza never married, she was considered the nation’s ‘First Lady’ - the most powerful woman in Paraguay. By 1865, Eliza, assisted by Francisco, owned several large ranches and 26 urban properties, and, over the next few years, through largely questionable means, acquired nearly 22 million acres of territory to become the world’s largest female landowner. Nine years after her arrival in Paraguay, Eliza was involved in a war which radically altered her life and the status of her nation. Over a border dispute, Brazil and Argentina invaded Uruguay in 1864, causing Paraguay to believe it would lose contact with the Atlantic Ocean and become landlocked. Fearing an attack by Paraguay, Uruguay joined Brazil and Argentina to confront Paraguay in what became known as ‘The War of the Triple Alliance’. Although he had little military training, Francisco Lopez fancied himself to be a general of Napoleonic acumen and stature. The war began well for him, with the Paraguayan Army invading Brazil in 1864 to defeat its army in the Battle of Mato Grosso. The next year, an Argentine newspaper published a less than flattering biography of Eliza, and, urged on by her, on 14 April 1865 (the day John Wilkes Booth assassinated Abraham Lincoln), Francisco invaded Argentina to capture the city of Corrientes. It was an action which united Argentina and Brazil in a common cause – to defeat Paraguay. In order to raise funds for the war, Lopez resorted to kleptocracy. Horses and cattle were taken from local farmers, houses were ransacked and banks raided to fund the war. For her part, Eliza proposed that the ladies of Asuncion might like to donate their jewelry to aid the war effort. However, it is reported that most of these ornaments ended up, ‘in, if not on, Madame’s chest’. Ever loyal, Eliza followed Francisco, through the entire war, frequently leading a group of militant women (‘Las Residentas’), comprising of soldiers wives, mistresses, daughters and others, in support of the army on the battlefield. Often pregnant and usually wearing the uniform of a Paraguayan colonel, Eliza appeared quite fearless. When not playing her grand piano during battles, she openly strode about urging on the half-starved, poorly equipped, and ill led Paraguayan troops, while Francisco cowered in shelter. On 1 March 1870, at the Battle of Cerro Cora, Francisco and his son, Panchito, were killed and Eliza captured, reputedly fleeing through the jungle in a ball-gown. She was brought back to the battlefield where, while a prisoner of the Brazilians, she dug the graves of her son and husband with her bare hands. Now completely defeated, Paraguay sued for peace by paying the price of ceding 50,000 square miles of territory to Argentina and Brazil and continuing to pay Brazil reparations until well in to the 1930s. But the real cost of the war, was the death and destruction wreaked on Paraguay. Of a population of some 1,200,000 at the beginning of the conflict, only 200,000 women and 28,000 males survived. Most of those who died did so, not from gunshot wounds sustained on the battlefield, but from disease, ill health, starvation and persecution by the increasingly demented, Francisco. The women of Asuncion demanded that Eliza be returned to face the music. She had robbed them of their jewelry, seen them flogged, imprisoned and starved, and was responsible for the deaths of their husbands, sons and brothers. They pleaded that Madame Lynch ‘should not be allowed to leave with the property of those she had robbed to spend in another country’. Following this entreaty, the provisional government of Paraguay passed a law confiscating all of Eliza’s land and riches. Eventually, the Brazilians sent Eliza into exile with her remaining four sons aboard the City of Limerick, which was bound for Europe. While she might have lost an empire, Eliza was not exactly penniless, as, during her years in power, she

had stashed substantial amounts of jewelry, gold and money abroad; a horde which enabled her to purchase a fine house near London’s Hyde Park and live in some style. In 1874, Eliza again settled in Paris, and a year later, at the invitation of the new President of Paraguay, she returned ‘to answer the charges made against me and to confront my enemies at the very seat of their power’. According to Eliza, she received a rapturous welcome in Asuncion, but in reality the greeting was vitriolic, and she was again forced back to Paris. Eventually, her funds ran out, and by the time she died of stomach cancer (25 July, 1886), she was almost penniless. Initially, Eliza was buried in a very small plot in Montmartre cemetery before being dug up, in May 1900, and moved to the Martin family tomb to be reinterred with her sister, Estelle. From the early 1930s Paraguay has been ruled by various Fascist dictators, including Alfredo Stroessner who, like his predecessor, turned to the country’s ‘national hero’ Francisco Lopez in order to legitimize his own dictatorial power. The battle of Cerro Cora was considered to have been a national victory, and a cult surrounding Eliza slowly evolved. In schools, pupils were taught that Madame Lynch was a heroine who had led children into battle against the enemies of the state. By 1970, a century after the disastrous War of the Triple Alliance, Eliza’s reputation was completely restored, with Paraguay now able to laud her exploits and celebrate her memory. Thanks to the nocturnal efforts of Teofilo Chammas, Eliza’s remains arrived to great national acclaim at the dockside in Asuncion, on 25 July 1961, the seventy fifth anniversary of her death. Paraguay’s President, General Stroesser, proclaimed to the rapturous crowd and assembled government members, that the occasion would be honoured as a ‘Day of National Heritage’. On a huge mausoleum in the national cemetery, a plaque was unveiled as ‘a tribute by the people, government and armed forces of the nation to Eliza Alicia Lynch, who selflessly accompanied the greatest hero of the nation, Marshal Francisco Solano Lopez, until his sacrificial death at Cerro Cora’. Atop the shrine was erected a huge life-sized statue of Eliza; a fitting resting place for an Empress officially declared to be Paraguay’s ‘Joan of Arc’. Eliza’s remarkable life and deeds are recounted in numerous books, plays and a ballet. Even Eva Peron (Evita), while an aspiring Argentinean actor, once played Eliza on South American radio. In 2014, an autobiographical film, ‘Eliza Lynch: Queen of Paraguay’, starring Irish actor, Maria Doyle Kennedy, was premiered at the Jameson International Film Festival in Dublin.

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