José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia

Francia was born in Yaguarón, in modern-day Paraguarí Department. Francia's father was an officer turned tobacco planter from São Paulo, and his mother was a Paraguayan descended from Spanish colonists. He was christened Joseph Gaspar de Franza y Velasco but later used the more popular name Rodríguez, and changed Franza to the more Spanish Francia. Although his father was simply García Rodríguez Francia (Portuguese: Garcia Rodrigues França), the dictator inserted the article de to style himself "Rodríguez de Francia y Velasco". He was of Portuguese descent.[3]

He studied at the monastery school of San Francisco, Asunción, originally in training for the Catholic priesthood, but never became a priest. On 13 April 1785, after four years studying, he became a doctor of theology and master of philosophy at the College of Monserrat at the National University of Córdoba[4]^: 21 in what would soon become Argentina.

Although he was dogged by suggestions that his father, a Brazilian tobacco exporter, was a mulatto, Francia was awarded a coveted chair of theology at the Seminary of San Carlos in Asunción in 1790. His radical views made his position as a teacher there untenable, and he soon gave up theology to study law. Eventually, he became a lawyer and learned five languages: Guarani, Spanish, French, Latin, and some English.

During his studies, he was influenced by the ideas of Enlightenment and then the French Revolution. Francia was disgusted by Paraguay's casta system, which was imposed by Spain, and as a lawyer, he would defend the less fortunate against the affluent. A devotee of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, a keen reader of Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the French Encyclopedists, Francia had the largest library in Asunción. His interest in astronomy, combined with his knowledge of French and other subjects considered arcane in Asunción, caused some superstitious Paraguayans to regard him as a wizard who could predict the future.

Depiction of José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia.

He demonstrated an early interest in politics. He became a provincial cabildo member in 1807, fiscal officer in 1808 and attained with difficulty the position of alcalde del primer voto, or head of the Asunción cabildo, by August 1809, the highest position he could aspire to as a criollo[5] (a native-born White). He had tried in 1798 but failed because of his humble background.[4]^: 22 Other significant members included Fulgencio Yegros; Pedro Juan Caballero; Manuel Atanasio Cabañas; and the last colonial governor, Bernardo de Velasco.

After the May Revolution in Buenos Aires, Governor Velasco convened the Congress of the province on 24 July 1810. Francia shocked the other members by saying it was irrelevant which king they had. When Paraguay's independence was declared on 15 May 1811, he was appointed secretary to the three-man ruling junta and included in the five-man governing junta by Congress meeting on 17 June 1811. On 1 August, he resigned because of the army's dominance over Congress. He retired to the countryside, where he spread rumours that the country was going to be betrayed by the incompetent government. He was one of the few men in the country with any significant education and soon became the country's real leader. Only one other Paraguayan had a doctorate: Juan Bogarin, one of the five junta members.

From his retirement in his modest chacra (farm or country estate) at Ibaray near Asunción, he told countless ordinary citizens who came to visit him that their revolution had been betrayed, the change in government had only traded a Spanish-born elite for a criollo one, and the government was incompetent and mismanaged. He returned to the junta in October if Bogarin was removed and resigned again on 15 December. He did not return again until 16 November 1812 and then only if he was in charge of foreign policy and half of the army.

Paraguayans often referred to him simply as "Dr. Francia" or Karai Guasu ("great lord" in Guarani). A few Indians believed that he had supernatural powers: when some saw him measuring the stars with his theodolite, they thought he was talking to night demons.[6] Francia would later use it to straighten the streets of Asunción.

On 1 October 1813, Congress named Francia and Fulgencio Yegros as alternate consuls for a year. Francia was given an initial term of four months. Francia's initial term was followed by a four-month term for Yegros, which was then followed by a second four-month term for Francia. Each consul controlled half of the army. On 12 October 1813 Paraguay declared independence from the Spanish Empire.

In March 1814, Francia imposed a law that no Spaniard may intermarry with another Spaniard, and that they may only wed mestizos, Amerindians, or Africans. This was done to eliminate any socioeconomic disparities along racial lines, and also to end the predominantly criollo and peninsulare influence in Paraguay. De Francia himself was not a mestizo, but feared that racial disparities would create tensions that could threaten his absolute rule.[7]

Dr. Francia

One Latin American scholar, Antonio de la Cova, summarised Francia's rule as follows:

"... we find a strange mixture of capacity and caprice, of far-sighted wisdom and reckless infatuation, strenuous endeavours after a high ideal and flagrant violations of the simplest principles of justice. He cut off Paraguay from the rest of the world by stopping foreign commerce, but carefully fostered its internal industries and agriculture under his personal supervision. Dr. Francia disposed to be hospitable to strangers from other lands, and kept them prisoners for years; lived a life of republican simplicity, and severely punished the slightest want of respect. As time went on he appears to have grown more arbitrary and despotic. Deeply imbued with the principles of the French Revolution, he was a stern antagonist of the church. He abolished the Inquisition, suppressed the college of theology, did away with the tithes, and inflicted endless indignities on the priests. He kept the aristocracy in subjection and discouraged marriage both by precept and example, leaving behind him several illegitimate children. For the extravagances of his later years the plea of insanity has been put forward."[8]

Francia aimed to found a society on the principles of Rousseau's Social Contract[9] and was also inspired by Robespierre and Napoleon. To create such a utopia, he imposed a ruthless isolation upon Paraguay, interdicting all external trade, and he fostered national industries.

Francia is often categorized as one of the caudillos of the post-colonial era, but he deviated from the authoritarian tendencies of most of his contemporaries. Instead, he attempted to reorganize Paraguay in accordance with the wishes of the lower classes and other marginalized groups. He greatly limited the power of the Church and the landed elites in favor of giving peasants a way to make a living on state-run estancias. He is criticized by some scholars for being entirely against the Church, he wanted only to diminish the institution's all-encompassing political control. He actually built new churches and supported religious festivals using state funds. Francia's government also took over services usually under church supervision, such as orphanages, hospitals, and homeless shelters, to manage them more efficiently. Francia and his policies were in fact very well received by the majority of Paraguayans, excluding the small ruling classes, and his neutrality in foreign affairs kept peace in a period of turmoil.[10]

Francia's authoritarian regime built the foundations of a strong and dirigiste state in order to undertake the economic modernization of the country. Paraguay thus instituted rigorous protectionism at a time when most other countries were adopting the free-trade system promoted by the United Kingdom while entrusting their national bourgeoisie with the task of piloting wealth creation. This model, continued after Francia's death by his successors Carlos Antonio López and Francisco Solano López, made Paraguay one of the most modern and socially advanced countries in Latin America: the redistribution of wealth was so great that many foreign travelers reported that the country had no begging, hunger or conflict. The agrarian reform has allowed for a fairly equitable distribution of land. Asunción was one of the first capitals on the continent to inaugurate a railroad network. The country had a growing industry and a merchant fleet made up of ships built in national shipyards, had a trade surplus and was debt-free.[11]

Fulgencio Yegros, first Consul of Paraguay and Francia's nemesis

In February 1820, Francia's political police called the Pyraguës ("hairy feet") uncovered and quickly crushed a plot by the elites and many leading independence figures to assassinate him. Juan Bogarin, the only conspirator who was still free, confessed the plot to his priest and then Francia. Almost 200 prominent Paraguayans were arrested by Francia, who executed most of them. On 9 June 1821, a letter detailing an anti-Francia conspiracy was found by two slaves and Francia's priest, who had knowledge of the plot from the confessions of a conspirator. Francia had all 300 Spaniards arrested and made them stand in the plaza while he read the letter out. They were released 18 months later only when they had paid 150,000 pesos (by comparison, the 1820 budget was 164,723 pesos).[12] The arch-conspirators, Fulgencio Yegros and Pedro Caballero, were arrested and imprisoned for life. Caballero committed suicide on 13 July 1821, and Yegros was executed four days later.

Francia outlawed all opposition and established a secret police force. His underground prison was known as the "chamber of truth", and most of Paraguay's manufactures were made with prison labor. He abolished flogging, but his implementation of the death penalty was brutal, as he insisted all executions be carried out at a banquillo ("stool") under an orange tree outside his window. To avoid wasting bullets, most victims were bayoneted, and their families were not allowed to collect the corpses until they had been lying there all day to make sure that they were dead.[13]

Many prisoners were also banished to Tevego, a prison camp 70 miles (110 km) away from any other settlements,[14] surrounded by an endless swamp on the east,[15] and by the Gran Chaco desert on the west. Upon his death, there were 606 prisoners in Paraguay's jails,[16]^: 116 who were mainly foreigners.

In 1821, Francia ordered the arrest and imprisonment of the famous French botanist and explorer Aimé Bonpland, who was running a private farm harvesting Yerba mate on the banks of the Paraná, which was seen to be a threat to the Paraguayan economy. Francia later granted Bonpland clemency because of his value as a physician and allowed him to live in a house if he acted as a doctor to the local garrison.[17]

Francia took several precautions against assassination. He would lock the palace doors himself, unroll the cigars that his sister made to ensure there was no poison, prepare his own yerba mate, and sleep with a pistol under his pillow. Even so, a maid tried to poison him with a piece of cake.[21] No one could come within six paces of him or even bear a cane near him. Whenever he would go out riding, he had all bushes and trees along the route uprooted so that assassins could not hide, all shutters had to be closed, and pedestrians had to prostrate before him as he passed.

Francia lived a spartan lifestyle, and apart from some books and furniture, his only possessions were a tobacco case and a pewter confectionery box.[24] Francia left the state treasury with at least twice as much money in it as when he took office, including 36,500 pesos of his unspent salary, the equivalent of several years' pay.

The final chapter of Rengger & Longchamps' work published in English in 1827 describes details of his personal life. This work seems to have had great impact in the English-speaking world, for many of its claims and descriptions have been accepted and used in other works. Thus, White's fictional account of Francia relies heavily on snippets of the work (e.g., one sentence in a footnote dealing with a tailor and cloth becomes an almost tragi-comic scene in El Supremo). The work is cited by historians to this day, as one of the few personal accounts, even if biased against him.

His reputation abroad was negative: Charles Darwin, for one, hoped he would be overthrown, though Thomas Carlyle (himself no friend to democracy) found material to admire even in the publications of Francia's detractors. Carlyle wrote in an 1843 essay that "Liberty of private judgement, unless it kept its mouth shut, was at an end in Paraguay", but considered that under the social circumstances this was of little detriment to a "Gaucho population ... not yet fit for constitutional liberty."[25]

Francia imbued Paraguay with a tradition of autocratic rule that lasted, with only a few breaks, until 1989. He is still considered a national hero, with a museum dedicated to his memory in Yaguarón. It contains portraits of him and his daughter as well as his sweets box, candlestick and tobacco case.[26] Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos wrote an ambivalent depiction of the life of Francia, a novel entitled Yo el Supremo (I, the Supreme).

The American author Edward Lucas White published his historical work of fiction regarding Francia and Paraguay of the mid-1810s in 1916. The author reworks some history in a playful fashion. For example, he has an almost comedic section (Chapter XX, Gold Combs in Church) where the protagonist helps two friends whose family members were humiliated at the big Cathedral Sunday Mass by being removed for wearing corsets and gold combs in their hair. In the next chapter, Service By Edict, Francia forces the Catholic clerics he assembles to hold a third Sunday Mass before noon and give public prominence to the two women, who are allowed their corsets but not their gold hair combs:

• El Supremo: A Romance of the Great Dictator of Paraguay (E. P. Dutton & Co., 1916)