Editing History of Paraguay (section)

===Francisco Solano López, 1862–70===
[[File:BRIGADIER GENERAL FRANCISCO SOLANO LOPEZ, ENVOY EXTRAORDINARY AND MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY OF THE REPUBLIC OF PARAGUAY.png|thumbnail|left|Francisco Solano López during his trip to Europe, 1854]]
[[File:Solano Lopez 1866 by Garcia.jpg|thumbnail|right|López as a military leader, 1866]]
[[File:1864 Mitchell Map of Brazil, Bolivia and Chili - Geographicus - SouthAmericaSouth-mitchell-1864.jpg|thumbnail|right|Political map of the region, 1864]]

[[Francisco Solano López]] became the second and final ruler of the López dynasty. After his father's death the Paraguayan Congress elected him President on 16 October 1862. Solano López consolidated his power after his father's death in 1862 by silencing several hundred critics and would-be reformers through imprisonment.

The government continued to exert control on all exports. The export of [[yerba mate]] and valuable wood products maintained the balance of trade between Paraguay and the outside world.<ref>{{worldhistory|section=1665|quote=Page 630}}</ref> The Paraguayan government was extremely protectionist, never accepted loans from abroad, and employed high tariffs against the importation of foreign products. This protectionism made the society self-sufficient. This also avoided the debt suffered by Argentina and Brazil.

Solano López had as a lover an Irish woman, [[Eliza Lynch|Elisa Alicia Lynch]]. "La Lynch", as she became known in Paraguay, was a strong-willed, charming, witty, intelligent woman who became a person of enormous influence. Lynch's Parisian manners soon made her a trendsetter in the Paraguayan capital, and she made enemies as quickly as she made friends. Lynch bore Solano López five sons, although the two never married. She became the largest landowner in Paraguay after Solano López transferred most of Paraguay and portions of Brazil into her name during the war.

Observers sharply disagreed about Solano López. [[George Thompson (engineer)|George Thompson]], an English engineer who worked for the younger López, called him "a monster without parallel". Solano López's conduct laid him open to such charges: his miscalculations and ambitions plunged Paraguay into a war with Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The war resulted in the deaths of half of Paraguay's population and almost erased the country from the map. During the war, Solano López ordered the executions of his own brothers and had his mother and sisters tortured when he suspected them of opposing him. Thousands of others, including Paraguay's bravest soldiers and generals, also went to their deaths before [[Execution by firing squad|firing squad]]s or were hacked to pieces on Solano López's orders. Others saw Solano López as a paranoid [[:Wiktionary:megalomania|megalomaniac]], a man who wanted to be the "Napoleon of South America".

However, sympathetic Paraguayan nationalists and foreign revisionist historians have portrayed Solano López as a patriot who resisted Argentine and Brazilian designs on Paraguay. They portrayed him as a tragic figure caught in a web of Argentine and Brazilian duplicity who mobilized the nation to repulse its enemies, holding them off heroically for five bloody, horror-filled years until Paraguay was finally overrun and prostrate. Since the 1930s, Paraguayans have regarded Solano López as the nation's foremost hero.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://countrystudies.us/paraguay/10.htm|title=Paraguay - Francisco Solano Lopez|last1=Hanratty|first1=D|last2=Menditz|first2=S|date=1988|website=countrystudies.us|publisher=US Library of Congress Washington|access-date=2020-04-07}}</ref>