Do you remember the dictator's mother in El Otoño del Patriarca, by Gabo, when she said: "If I had known that my son was going to be president, I would have sent him to school"? They say that García Márquez was inspired, of course, by all Latin American dictators, but especially in one of them, incidentally little known: In Doctor Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, from Paraguay, better known as "El Doctor Francia". His surname was "Franza", but he signed "France", and that's how they knew him.
Among all the fauna that has ruled us, that character has unique characteristics. He was famous, in contrast to others, for his life as an ascetic and his rigorous zeal in taking care of every penny of the national budget. And it is not a legend: a minister of tax collection was dismissed and ended up with his bones in jail for a shortage of two copper coins in the accounts he presented.
Doctor Francia graduated as Doctor in Theology and, already in power, showed all his distrust towards the people of cassock. He asked Congress to declare begging illegal, and it was forbidden to ask, give or receive alms. As soon as this law was passed, Doctor Francia recalled that priests and nuns lived on that, precisely from the alms of the believers and that, consequently, their activity was illegal. He then proceeded to close the monasteries, demanded nuns and priests to be secularized and declared "Members useless for the State" ie criminals, religious who opposed, to apply the weight of the law. He immediately nationalized all the riches of the church.
doctorFrancia02Francia was a type of authoritarian, autocratic temperament, that only believed in him. For fear of being poisoned, his food was tested by different men of the troop, handpicked, and also by his own cook. In 1825 he was visited by an emissary of Simón Bolívar who proposed, on behalf of the Liberator, to join the new front of independent nations. He dismissed it, without attending to it, with a sharp refusal: "Paraguay will not associate with anyone while I am directing his destiny".
Authoritarian and distrustful. I did not believe in cassocks or alliances. And he looked askance at foreigners. Aimé Bonpland, the extraordinary scientist and companion of Humboldt, paid those consequences. His research interests took him to Argentina, to the border with Paraguay. France seemed suspicious to him, organized a commando, kidnapped him in a foreign land, and kept him under surveillance for years, in Paraguayan territory, without allowing him to leave that space.
At his death, Paraguay retained that spirit of sovereignty and then came the government of Solano López. It would seem impossible, but at the time Paraguay was the most powerful country in Latin America. And then it was torn apart in a war that a hundred and fifty years later, has not been able to recover demographically. Such was the devastation suffered by the entire population, especially the male population, who for many years allowed and encouraged polygamy. But that is another story.
This story was originally published by my friend Ramiro Diez on his wed page