Sex Lives of the Great Dictators

9. GOING DOWN SOUTH OF THE BORDER

Latin America has seen its fair share of dictators. One of the most unpleasant was Francisco Solano Lopez of Paraguay. Far from liberating his country, he almost destroyed it by going to war simultaneously with three powerful neighbours — Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

Born in 1827, Francisco Lopez was the son of the Paraguayan dictator, Carlos Antonio Lopez. The United States Minister to Paraguay, Charles Ames Washburn, once described Francisco:

This repulsive creature was the terror of the first families of Asuncion and their daughters. He had a predilection for aristocratic virgins and any who resisted would find their fathers jailed on Carlos Lopez’s orders.

One woman he particularly liked was Pancha Garmendia, known as “the pride and jewel of Asuncion”. Every young man in Paraguay desired her, but Lopez scared them all off. Nevertheless she rejected him, threatening to commit suicide if he laid a finger on her.

Unfortunately, Francisco could not have Pancha’s father jailed as he was already dead. He had been executed as an enemy of the state by Carlos Lopez’s predecessor, El Supremo, the first Perpetual Dictator for Life of Paraguay. Instead, he had her brothers charged with being enemies of the state and executed. With his father’s permission, Francisco confiscated their property and had Pancha arrested. She spent the rest of her life in chains. Even when Francisco Lopez was forced to withdraw from Asuncion by the Allied armies twenty years later, he dragged Pancha along with him into the jungle where she died soon after.

After dealing with Pancha, Francisco fell for Carmencita Cordal and was determined to make her his concubine. She was about to be married to her cousin, Carlos Decoud, the son of one of Paraguay’s leading families. Decoud had the temerity to pick a fight with Francisco and thrash him humiliatingly. It was a foolish move. Carlos Lopez had Decoud arrested on trumpedup charges of plotting a coup d’etat.

The night before he was to be wed to Carmencita, Decoud was executed and his bloodstained corpse was flung into the street in front of her house — some say it was actually delivered to her living-room. Carmencita spent the rest of her life dressed in black, praying in desert shrines and gathering flowers by moonlight.

The daughters of all the leading families began applying for passports and Francisco’s behaviour became so outrageous that Carlos Lopez thought it best that he leave the country while the situation cooled down. So Francisco headed off to Europe with an unlimited bank account. His mission was to buy a navy -just what a landlocked country like Paraguay needed.

On arriving in Paris, young Lopez left the tedious business of state to his secretary and, as the American ambassador put it, “gave loose rein to his natural licentious propensities, and plunged into the vices of that gay capital”.

A great fan of Napoleon, Francisco was eager to be presented at the court of Napoleon III. He squeezed himself into one of his smallest uniforms — he thought, mistakenly, that tight clothing would disguise his corpulent form.

When he was presented to the Emperor, he kissed the Empress’s hand. She turned away and promptly vomited over an ormolu desk, later excusing herself on the grounds that she was pregnant.

Francisco Lopez made a flying visit to London, but Queen Victoria discovered that she was “quite too busy” to entertain her Paraguayan guest.

Back in Paris, Francisco met a young woman who managed to overlook his repulsive appearance. It was said that, where others saw only rotting teeth, she saw jewels. Her name was Eliza Lynch.

Born in County Cork in 1835, she was said to have too much imagination, too many brains and too much libido. She was married at the age of fifteen, divorced at seventeen, and had taken a string of lovers by eighteen. Her family had fled to France to escape the 1845 famine. Her first husband was Xavier Quatrefages, a career officer in the French Army. He was old enough to be her father, but the marriage was an escape from the poverty her family had sunk into.

Her husband was posted to Algiers where Eliza was raped by his commanding officer. Quatrefages took no action to defend his wife’s honour, but she had met a dashing young Russian cavalry officer who did. He killed the colonel and took Eliza off to Paris where he established her in a house in the fashionable Boulevard Saint Germain. But her dashing young cavalry officer soon abandoned her for the excitement of the Crimean War.

Pictures of her from that time show that she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman and she decided to pursue a career as a courtesan. Argentinian journalist Hector Varela described her:

She had a flair for language and a quick wit, and was soon entertaining numerous gentlemen callers. Her reputation grew and no man of substance would leave Paris without having paid a visit to Chez Lynch.

Eliza was still only nineteen when she entertained a man named Brizuela, who was one of Francisco’s retinue. He boasted of his dalliance to the young Lopez, who decided to see this jewel with his own eyes. Eliza was equally eager to entertain this savage who all Paris knew was spraying money around like buckshot.

Within hours of entering Madame Lynch’s salon, Francisco entered her boudoir. The next day he told her of the riches of his country. The day after that, she gave notice to her landlord.

There is no doubt that Lopez was desperately in love with Eliza. He had met beautiful women before, but Eliza was the first woman to go to bed with him without putting up a struggle first.

Eliza, for her part, must have felt some physical revulsion for the loathsome creature. But, although she had no real idea where Paraguay was, she had a shrewd sense of money and power. She was quick-witted enough to know that, while she was a sought-after beauty at nineteen, all too soon she would loose her power to charm, and here was a man who could keep her in clover for the rest of her life. He told her that, one day, he would become the emperor of South America. Could she not be his empress?

Neglecting the tiresome formalities of marriage, they set off on a honeymoon around Europe. On the way, Eliza picked up trunkloads of gowns and jewels. They dined with the notorious Queen Isabella of Spain, who suggested that Paraguay hold a referendum to see if the people wanted to return to the Spanish fold. Francisco said he would think about it. He didn’t.

In Rome, it was said, Eliza held a “wickedly obscene” dinner party for the pope. Then, after a tour of the Crimean battlefront, the happy couple headed for Paraguay.

Francisco’s brother Benigno, who had been with Francisco in Paris, had already returned to Paraguay and told Carlos Lopez that Francisco was involved with “una ramera irlandesa” — an Irish prostitute. Fearing his father’s wrath, Francisco and Eliza stopped off in Buenos Aires. Doña Juana and Francisco’s two sisters said that they refused to accept “La Irlandesa”, but Carlos realized that he was getting old and needed his son and heir back in the country. Reassured by a message from his father, Francisco and an apprehensive Eliza began the slow thousand-mile voyage up river to Asuncion.

When they arrived, Eliza was heavily pregnant. The women of the Lopez family were good to their word. They refused to accept Eliza. She responded by strutting around Asuncion in the latest Paris fashions, showing off her magnificent figure. This quite outshone anything the Lopez sisters had to offer.

Eliza soon found that she did not have a free hand with Francisco. He stall maintained his former lover, Juana Pesoa, and their two children in his town house in Asuncion. He also took other lovers. Eliza took control by selecting his concubines for him. She took great pains over this task. Although she would not marry Francisco herself -fearing that, as his wife rather than his mistress, she would lose all power over him — she had to make sure that no one else did either.

Francisco Lopez also persisted in his brutal seduction techniques. When he fell in love with the daughter of Pedro Burgos, a magistrate from the small provincial city of Luque, he threatened to confiscate her father’s property if she did not submit. However, Pedro Burgos was not without some influence with Carlos Lopez. Eliza stepped in. Once she had ascertained that Pedro’s daughter had no desire whatsoever to marry Francisco, she encouraged Pedro to accept Francisco as his daughter’s lover — on the promise that he would be amply rewarded when Francisco came to power. His daughter submitted, but Pedro Burgos was later executed by Francisco in the belief that he was plotting against him.

Eliza’s skilful manipulation of Francisco’s sex life put her in a position of considerable power. She still had ambitions to be the Empress of South America, as he had promised. As part of that plan, she decided that the ramshackle town of Asuncion must be transformed into an imperial city. She persuaded Francisco to begin an extensive building programme, which included the construction of a replica of Napoleon’s mausoleum at Les Invalides, to be used as Francisco’s own tomb.

Eliza also wanted to secure the position of her son, Juan Francisco. Although he was Francisco’s favourite, she feared that he might one day fall from his father’s favour. The answer was to have him baptized.

Francisco liked the idea. Belatedly he announced his son’s birth with a hundred-and-one-gun salute. This caused eleven buildings in downtown Asuncion to collapse, five of which were newly built under Francisco’s modernization plan. One of the guns, an English field piece, had not been cleaned properly and backfired, killing half the battery and putting the other half in hospital.

The Lopez ladies got themselves into a flap over this, and Carlos banned the planned baptism in Asuncion’s Catedral de la Encarnacion. The Bishop of Paraguay, who was Carlos’s brother, threatened to excommunicate any priest who performed the baptism.

But Eliza was not to be put off. She found a priest, Father Palacios, and promised him that, if he would baptize Juan Francisco, he would succeed as Bishop of Paraguay when Francisco came to power.

Francisco was loathe to go against his father’s wishes, but Eliza talked him round. If Francisco did not consent to the baptism, she said she would take the child to Europe and have him baptized an Anglican! Francisco blustered that he could prevent her leaving Paraguay if he wanted. She replied that if she told Carlos Lopez that she intended to leave, he would provide her with an armed guard, and probably a considerable sum of money too.

Francisco had no choice. The baptism went ahead in Eliza’s country house, though no one from Asuncion society or the diplomatic corps turned out. They were still more afraid of Carlos than of Francisco.

Although she had won this battle, the war between Eliza and the Lopez family continued. Eliza neatly upstaged them at the opening of the National Theatre, built as part of Francisco’s reconstruction plan. She got Francisco to designate a small box to the left of the stage the “Royal Box”. Carlos Lopez his wife and daughters were directed there, while the prominent box at the centre of the: auditorium wits reserved for Francisco and Eliza.

Eliza also made her presence felt in Asuncion society by holding a regular salon. Although the ladies of Asuncion shunned it, their husbands all turned up and vied for the opportunity to flirt with the hostess.

Francisco was still determined to have his consort accepted by the ladies, not least his mother and sisters. When he opened the disastrous agricultural colony upstream in the Rio de la Plata region of Paraguay, he organized a tour for high-ranking Paraguayans and the entire diplomatic corps. The men would ride up to the colony, while the women would travel by boat. Madame Lynch would be Official Hostess on board, he announced.

This was an occasion that everyone had to attend. Even Doña Juana and her two daughters puffed up the gang plank. But everyone pointedly ignored the Official Hostess. Soon after they had cast off, the boat was moored in the middle of the stream and a huge feast was laid out — suckling pigs, roast turkey, baby lambs, fresh fruit and vegetables, the best imported wines. The ladies crowded around, but would not allow Eliza near the table. When she asked to be allowed through so that she could preside, they huddled more closely together, blocking her path. So Eliza summoned the waiters and said: “Throw it all over the side.”

The ladies fell silent. The waiters hesitated and Eliza repeated the order.

“Throw it all over the side.”

They picked up the food and the wine and pitched it overboard. Eliza then sat in silence, staring at the ladies who had snubbed her. They waited, famished, parched and sweaty for the next ten hours, before Eliza gave the captain permission to return to the quay.

By the time of his death, Carlos Lopez probably did not want Francisco to succeed him. Despite his unsavoury dictatorial ways, Carlos was essentially a man of peace, and he feared Francisco’s belligerent intentions towards their neighbours. On his father’s death, Francisco called a National Congress which confirmed him as president for the next ten years. Francisco Lopez also took the opportunity to announce that Eliza was about to present him with another son, her fifth. As the Congress erupted in spontaneous applause, he added: “I would like it to be known that it is our pleasure and desire that from this day forward Madame Eliza Lynch should enjoy the same privileges as those usually accorded to the wife of a head of State.”

The Lopez ladies and half the female population of Asuncion fainted.

Within a month of Francisco Lopez’s coming to power, a thousand of the most prominent citizens of Paraguay were either in exile, in prison or on the run. Their crime? Opposing Francisco.

Next, he decided to bring the church under his dominion. Father Palacios, as promised, became Bishop of Paraguay. Not only had he baptized Juan Francisco, he had gone on to provide Francisco with useful intelligence, gleaned in the confessional box.

Formerly derided as “the Irish concubine”, the British Minister in Asuncion now called Eliza “the Paraguayan Pompadour”. Lopez still maintained a separate house where he entertained prostitutes, but he lived openly with Eliza. She was now “First Lady of Paraguay”. The ladies of Asuncion had to swallow their pride and call on her. Eliza organized huge balls and dictated exactly what the other women should wear. She, of course, outshone them all.

Lopez suddenly announced that he intended to marry the beautiful young Princess Isabella of Brazil. This was for strictly political reasons, he explained. Eliza would remain his favourite. As always, Eliza turned the situation to her own advantage. She demanded co-equal status and forced Lopez to legitimize her children, making Juan Francisco his undeniable heir. When Princess Isabella got wind of this, she decided to marry one of the French royal family instead.

To celebrate the first anniversary of Francisco Lopez’s accession to power, Eliza arranged a great circus, with bullfighting, dancing and plays, in a hippodrome built down on the waterfront. Wine and cana, the local rum, flowed freely and, according to one observer, the crowds “actively engaged in raising the birth rate”.

Francisco Lopez still had international political ambitions. He tried to intervene in a squabble Brazil and Argentina were having over Uruguay, but he mishandled the situation so badly that all three countries declared war on Paraguay. Lopez went on the offensive, disastrously. Nevertheless, Madame Lynch organized a Victory Ball, where all the ladies of Asuncion were to wear their baubles — which Eliza promptly impounded as a contribution towards the war effort. She further humiliated them by inviting all the city’s prostitutes, personally opening the door to them and bidding them welcome. Her excuse was that “all classes should mingle on so festive an occasion”.

Lopez himself went to the front to direct operations, leaving Eliza in Asuncion as regent. Her first act was to announce that the women of Paraguay would donate the rest of their jewellery to the state in its hour of need. She also had a good line in uncovering plots — accused plotters had to pay up in gold coin to prove their loyalty.

Soon the war was going so badly that Lopez was running short of able-bodied men. All males between the ages of eleven and sixty were drafted, including the aristocrats. Women were left to plough the fields and the only men seen in Asuncion were the police.

The armies of the Triple Alliance began to invade Paraguay. They defeated the Paraguayan army at the battle of Estero Bellaco on 24 May, 1866 and the Paraguayans were so emaciated that their bodies would not burn. Seemingly determined to turn this rout into an even greater disaster, Lopez had every tenth officer and man among the survivors executed for “cowardice under fire”.

A truce was offered, but a precondition was that Lopez go into exile in Europe. He refused. Instead, he began imprisoning, flogging, torturing and executing as many of his own people as he could get his hands on. Not content with having three powerful neighbours aligned against him, Lopez turned his tender mercies on foreign residents and the U.S., Great Britain, France and Italy all sent gunboats.

Madame Lynch tried to keep things going by using her not inconsiderable charm to woo envoys and to reassure Lopez that the disasters that had befallen him were not his fault. They were the fault of the conspirators who surrounded him, and who Lopez mercilessly sought out.

After another military fiasco, Lopez was forced to evacuate Asuncion. He had already tortured and executed his two brothers and his sisters were imprisoned in covered bullock carts. Occasionally, they were let out to crawl into their brother’s presence, make fresh confession and submit themselves to be flogged. He also sentenced his mother to floggings, although she was over seventy.

Madame Lynch tried to carry as much of her booty with her as she could, but she had to abandon her piano in what is now the village of Piano, Paraguay.

Lopez withdrew into the jungle when he signed treaties with the Indians, but the Brazilian army pursued him relentlessly. Hours before the last attack, Lopez condemned his mother and sisters to death, though the sentence was not carried out.

While his men made a human shield against the enemy, Lopez tried to escape on horseback, but his horse got stuck in the mud of a river bed. When the Brazilians caught up with him, they were ordered to take him alive, but he pulled a gun and they had no choice.

“I die with my country,” he said as he expired.

Madame Lynch tried to escape in her carnage with her children, but they were caught by a Brazilian cavalry detachment. Juan Francisco tried to fight them off and was run through with a lance. Eliza was taken to see Lopez’s body. She and her remaining sons dug a grave for him and Juan Francisco with their bare hands.

When news of Lopez’s death reached Asuncion, there were scenes of wild joy. A celebration ball, which matched anything that Eliza had put on, was organized.

Madame Lynch and the Lopez ladies travelled back to Asuncion together on board a Brazilian gunboat. There, Doña Juana and her two daughters were allowed to return home. Madame Lynch was kept on board, under guard, for her own safety. The Provisional Government charged her with extorting money and jewellery for her own use, on the pretext that it was going towards the war effort, and wantonly conspiring in the murder of tens of thousands of Paraguayans in an unwinnable war.

The Brazilians rejected the petition and Madame Lynch and her four surviving sons were taken to Buenos Aires where they were put aboard a ship for Europe.

During her time in Paraguay, Madame Lynch had managed to deposit four thousand ounces of gold in the Bank of England, taken there by the Italian consul and an American minister who had taken her fancy. The Brazilians were similarly kind to the fair Eliza, allowing her to take a vast inventory of booty with her into exile.

She sent her children to school in England and began litigation to try to recover more of her loot. When the Paraguayan government seized her assets, she returned to Paraguay to pursue the matter in the courts there. Her presence was so divisive that the government asked her to leave.

She went to live in Paris again, dying there in 1886. She was buried in Pere Lachaise cemetery but, seventyfive years later, she was disinterred and her remains were shipped back to Paraguay where she now lies, an unlikely national heroine.