The War of the Triple Alliance: The Genocide That Nearly Erased Paraguay

Look at this building. It looks like a European palace transplanted to the banks of the Paraguay River. White columns, balustrades, neoclassical proportions. Francisco Solano López ordered its construction in 1857, when he was minister of war and the undisputed heir to power. He didn't build it as a seat of government. He built it for himself. To live in. To receive European guests. To show the world that Paraguay was a modern, powerful, and sovereign nation. Today it's the seat of government. But in 1869, when the Allied forces entered Asunción, this palace was looted. Brazilian and Arge…

Look toward the river. On January 1, 1869, a fleet of Brazilian warships appeared in this bay. Asunción was practically empty. López had ordered the city evacuated months before. Residents had fled into the interior. A few elderly people remained, some sick, and a handful of soldiers with no ammunition. The Allies entered without resistance. In the hours that followed, the systematic looting of the city began. What couldn't be transported was destroyed. Doors, windows, furniture, rooftops. The port, which had been one of the most active on the Río de la Plata in the previous decade, was l…

This cathedral was completed in 1845. Nineteen years later, from this very atrium, priests blessed the soldiers heading off to war. Paraguay entered the conflict in November 1864, when Francisco Solano López ordered the capture of a Brazilian ship navigating the river. That act triggered a war against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay simultaneously. It was a decision many considered suicidal from day one. Paraguay had around 500,000 people. Its enemies together numbered more than 10 million. But López didn't see it that way. He believed the war would be short. That Brazil would back down. T…

The building in front of you was designed as a chapel in 1863. The war found it half-built. Today it's the National Pantheon of Heroes, the place where the remains of Paraguay's principal military figures rest, including those of Marshal Francisco Solano López. Yes: the same man who led the country into catastrophe is today venerated as a national hero. That says a lot about Paraguay. For decades, his figure was banned. Postwar governments declared him a criminal and a traitor. But in the 20th century, Paraguayan nationalism reclaimed him as a symbol of resistance against foreign imperial…

This building was the center of colonial power, then republican power, in Paraguay. In 1869, it stopped being Paraguayan. Allied forces installed a puppet government in Asunción: the Paraguayan Legion, made up of exiles who had fled from López and now returned with the invaders. The Allied occupation lasted until 1876. Six years. During that time, Paraguay had to negotiate from a position of total defeat. It signed treaties ceding enormous territories: the north of the country to Brazil, and strips of the south to Argentina. The total lost amounted to around 40% of the territory Paraguay …

This house witnessed Paraguay's independence in 1811. Go inside if you can. It's a museum, and inside you breathe a different era. Before the war, Paraguay was an oddity in South America. While the rest of the continent was opening its markets to foreign capital and going into debt with English banks, Paraguay had built something different: a state economy, with no foreign debt, no foreign capital, its own railway, its own shipyard, and an iron industry in full development. It was the only country in Latin America with no debt to European banks. That model was destroyed by the war. When …

Stand here and think about this number: 90%. That's what some historians estimate died of the total Paraguayan men of fighting age between 1864 and 1870. Ninety out of every hundred. At the end of the war, Paraguay had between 28,000 and 30,000 adult men, out of a total population of fewer than 200,000. The demographic imbalance was so extreme it changed the country's social structure for generations. Paraguayan women rebuilt the country almost entirely on their own. They worked the land, raised the children, ran the businesses. Guaraní, which was an everyday spoken language, survived pre…

On August 16, 1869, something happened that should never have happened. The Battle of Acosta Ñu. By that point, the Paraguayan army no longer existed as such. There were no men left. So López did the unthinkable: he sent children to fight. In May 1867 he had decreed the forced conscription of all males between 12 and 15. In February 1869, he officially declared that children under 12 were also to be considered adults for military purposes. At Acosta Ñu, around 3,500 children wearing banana-leaf uniforms and charcoal-painted beards to look like adults faced 20,000 Allied soldiers. The batt…

There is a woman whose story sums up the entire tragedy of this war. Elisa Lynch. Irish. Born in Cork in 1833. López met her in Paris in 1853. He was 27, the son of Paraguay's president, and had just bought weapons in Europe. She was 19, and married to a French officer. They fell in love. They left together for Asunción. They never married because Paraguayan society wouldn't accept it. They had seven children. Elisa lived through the entire war alongside López. While he commanded, she organized field hospitals, cared for the wounded, sold her jewelry to finance the army. On March 1, 1870…

Climb to the top if you can, or stay at the base looking toward the river. From this hill you can see Asunción, and beyond it, the Paraguay River. This city survived. But it's not the same. Before the war, Paraguay was the only nation in Latin America without foreign debt and with its own railway. By 1870, it was a failed state with 65% of its population dead and 40% of its territory ceded. The war officially ended on March 1, 1870, when Francisco Solano López died at Cerro Corá. His last cry, according to witnesses, was: "I die with my homeland!" It's not clear if that's heroism or delu…