Thomas Whigham

The Iron Works of Ybycui: Paraguayan Industrial Development in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Paraguay, by the mid-nineteenth century, was alone among the South American nations in its policy of internal development and economic autonomy. Exemplifying this were the many independent efforts at modernizing the country and its economy, including the building of a railway, telegraph system, and perhaps most importantly, an iron foundry. Although many foreign advisers were hired for these projects, ultimate control and direction rested in the hands of the Paraguayans themselves. Elsewhere throughout the continent a new British-dominated neocolonial order had taken firm root. Britains diplomatic ventures at this time centered on the formation of alliances with such American metropolises as Lima and Buenos Aires. These compacts were built upon mutual interests in reconstructing the splintered Viceroyalties into viable political units under basically British hegemony. “The nail is driven,” wrote Foreign Secretary Canning in 1824, “Spanish America is free, and if we do not mismanage our affairs sadly, she is English.”

Inter-American Notes

Between 16-18 April, 2008 the Universidad de Montevideo hosted the first of what promises to be a regular series of international conferences focusing on “Nuevas Perspectivas sobre la Historia Paraguaya.” This year’s presentations mostly dealt with the historical, literary, and cinematographic interpretations of the 1864-70 Triple Alliance War. Thomas Whigham (University of Georgia) opened with a paper that described how the war served as a catalyst in spurring a popular Guaraní-based nationalism in Paraguay. Juan Manuel Casal (Universidad de Montevideo) then examined the role played by Uruguay during the fighting, stressing how the Oriental contribution to the war effort should be understood in terms of ongoing friction between the Blanco and Colorado Parties in the Banda Oriental. Jerry W. Cooney (emeritus, University of Louisville) provided an analysis of U.S.Paraguayan diplomacy during the 1800s that showed how personal foibles shaped, and often twisted, what ought to have been correct relations into something rather more frustrating for both sides. In her presentation, Liliana Brezzo (CONICET, Argentina) discussed the development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries of a specifically Paraguayan historiography on the war, with a classic Liberal The Americas 65:2 October 2008, 247-251 Copyright by the Academy of American Franciscan History

Some Reflections on Early Anglo-paraguayan Commerce

Scholars of the British experience in Latin America have given considerable attention to the adventures of the two Scottish merchants John Parish Robertson and his brother William, who visited Paraguay between 1811 and 1814. The image of the taciturn Dictator Jose Gaspar de Francia attempting to use the two British subjects to establish commercial links with Europe has appeared in virtually all histories of the period. Francias failure in this regard, we are frequently told, ushered in a period of self-imposed isolation for Paraguay. Few foreigners, merchants or otherwise, were permitted to breech the barriers set up by the Dictator and Paraguay quickly took on the reputation of an “inland Japan.” That these barriers were not as absolute as the traditional portrayal would suggest has been established only in the last fifteen years. With few exceptions, the historical accounts have assumed that, with the departure of the Robertsons, British merchants lost all interest in Paraguay. In fact, however, a strong desire to “open” the trade of that country characterized the British mercantile community of Buenos Aires throughout the life of the Dictator and, on one occasion at the very end of Dr. Francias reign, a concerted effort was made by certain Britons to reintroduce British commerce to Paraguay.

Silva Paranhos and the construction of a post-Lopista Paraguay

Abstract The Paraguayan or Triple Alliance War is generally known for its terrible destructiveness and loss of life, essentially unequalled in the history of modern Latin America. What is less well known are the efforts made to create a new regime as the government (and army) of Marshal Francisco Solano López was breathing its last in the eastern forests of Paraguay. The following article discusses the events surrounding this process of nation-building, noting how a key Brazilian diplomat had the unenviable task of defending his own country’s geopolitical interests while attempting to put the Paraguayan Humpty-Dumpty back together in 1869–70. Here it is argued that he succeeded with the first but only partially with the second.

The Guarani under Spanish Rule in the Rio de la Plata (review)

ages. They often cultivate products simultaneously or substitute one product for another. This realization, which is developed in several of the other chapters, is one of the important contributions of the volume. The commercial history of coffee can no longer be interpreted in terms of a single, repeated pattern of product introduction, investment, market expansion, and labor exploitation. The importance of varied contexts, of different options taken by producers, processors, distributors, and consumers, must now be at the center of the investigator’s concerns—not just with regard to coffee but to most global commodities. The second group of essays, about peasants in coffee production, bears a similar signiacance. Though not wholly displacing the conventional emphasis on plantation production and forced labor, these contributions analyze the complex relationships that have existed among peasant producers, large-scale growers, and processors, even in areas (such as Guatemala) in which plantations are traditionally supposed to be dominant. Two chapters on Nicaragua are particularly interesting. Elizabeth Dore, focusing on the Diriomo area, shows how a peasant culture of patriarchy, intersecting with a system of landowner patriarchy supported by national law, structured debt peonage and labor by women. Julie Charlip, writing about the Carazo region, paints a different picture, of a dynamic coffee economy of small farmers taking advantage of investment opportunities. The assumption that globalized commodity production normally leads to the proletarianization of peasant labor turns out to be questionable, at best. A anal set of contributions connects coffee production with politics and state-building. Chapters by Andreas Eckert and Kenneth Curtis address the politics of colonial coffee growing in Africa (particularly in areas of Tanzania), analyzing interaction between the policies of colonial authorities (often continued by postcolonial states), white plantation owners, and peasant coffee growers. Again, these chapters display the complexity of coffee production in the context of global history and the global economy. At the end, the editors not only reinforce the (by this time obvious) point that simplistic generalizations about “worldwide” processes of modernization and globalization are no longer tenable but also offer a number of more limited, but useful, inferences from the collection as guides for future research.

The World of Tupac Amaru: Conflict, Community, and Identity in Colonial Peru (review)

THOMAS WHIGHAM In South America, the agure of Túpac Amaru has always been controversial. Some have seen him as an inveterate butcher who turned against a legitimate regime for selash and ignoble reasons. Many more see him as a heroic revolutionary who challenged an exploitative system in the name of Indian rights. It is little surprise that modern guerrilla movements in Uruguay, Peru, and elsewhere should name themselves for this man. The one thing that these opposed images have in common is their lack of historicity. Polemicists have portrayed Túpac Amaru as the symbol of unyielding principles rather than a person of oesh and blood who lived within a particular social environment. In this lively and insightful study, Stavig tells all about this environment. Though his work is only peripherally biographical, it is nonetheless fascinating as background reading. Colonial Peruvian society, it seems, had many levels of complexity expanding outward from the village plaza into evermore complicated circles of involvement between native and nonnative peoples and the state. Stavig presents the provinces of Quispicanchis and Camas y Canchis as being typical in this regard, but at the same time exceptional. The two provinces witnessed the arst major outbreaks of violence in the 1780s; yet, the lives of local people there revolved around timehonored patterns of communal farming punctuated by periodic celebrations, marriages, Catholic holy days, and the rare but annoying interventions of highwaymen. The great innovation of the 1700s—not a happy one—was the imposition of the labor draft (mita), which the Spaniards used to excess in their quest for the silver of Potosí. Mita had existed since Incaic times, but never had the institution threatened community life and identity. Stavig gives appropriate emphasis to mita as the factor that most damaged social relations in the two provinces. Indeed, it ultimately served as the ignition key for the rebellion. This is a broad study. It touches on many aspects of late colonial society. Its chief contribution, however, involves survival and adaptation—how a people under great pressure redeaned themselves, creating an identity that was both traditional and modern at the same time. Túpac Amaru may have lost his rebellion, but his people survived. Stavig tells us how they managed to do so. It is a story worth telling, and he has done it well.

A guide to collections on Paraguay in the United States

Introduction Archives and Manuscripts Arkansas California Connecticut Georgia Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri New Jersey New York North Carolina Ohio Oregon Rhode Island Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Washington, D.C. West Virginia Collection Index Subject Index