Editing History of Paraguay (section)

==Military dictatorships==

===February Revolution===
{{main|February Revolution (Paraguay)}}
The revolution of February 1936 overthrew Liberal Party politicians who had won the war. The soldiers, veterans, students, and others who revolted actually felt that victory had come despite the Liberal government. Promising a national and social revolution, they occupied Asunción and brought Colonel [[Rafael Franco]] to power.

During its 18 months of existence, the Franco government showed that it was serious about social justice by expropriating more than 200,000 hectares of land and distributing it to 10,000 peasant families. In addition, the new government guaranteed workers the [[right to strike]] and established an [[eight-hour day|eight-hour work day]].

Perhaps the government's most lasting contribution{{according to whom|date=July 2016}} affected national consciousness. In a gesture calculated to rewrite history and erase seven decades of national shame, Franco declared [[Francisco Solano López]] a national hero "sin ejemplar" (without precedent) because he had stood up to foreign threats, and sent a team to [[Battle of Cerro Corá|Cerro Corá]] to find his unmarked grave. His remains, along with those of his father, were buried in the [[National Pantheon of the Heroes]]. A monument to him was erected on Asunción's highest hill.

Despite the popular enthusiasm that greeted the February Revolution, Franco's government lacked a clear program. When he published his distinctly [[fascist]]-sounding Decree Law No. 152 promising a "[[totalitarian]] transformation" similar to those in Europe, protests erupted. The youthful, idealistic elements that had come together to produce the Febrerista movement were actually a hodgepodge of conflicting political tendencies and social opposites, and Franco was soon in deep political trouble.

A new party of regime supporters, the Revolutionary National Union (Unión Nacional Revolucionaria), was founded in November 1936. Although the new party called for [[representative democracy]], rights for peasants and workers, and socialization of key industries, it failed to broaden Franco's political base. In the end, Franco lost his popular support because he failed to keep his promises to the poor. He dared not expropriate the properties of foreign landowners, who were mostly Argentines. In addition, the Liberals, who still had influential support in the army, agitated constantly for Franco's overthrow. When Franco ordered Paraguayan troops to abandon the advanced positions in the Chaco that they had held since the 1935 truce, the army revolted in August 1937 and returned the Liberals to power.

The army, however, did not hold a unified opinion about the Febreristas. Several attempted coups served to remind President [[Félix Paiva]] (the former dean of law at the National University) that although the February Revolution was out of power, it was far from dead. People who suspected that the Liberals had learned nothing from their term out of office soon had proof: a peace treaty signed with Bolivia on 21 July 1938, fixed the final boundaries behind the Paraguayan battle lines.

===Estigarribia===
[[File:Jose Estigarribia.jpg|thumbnail|right|José Félix Estigarribia]]
In 1939 the Liberal politicians, recognizing that they had to choose someone with national stature and popularity to be president if they wanted to keep power, picked General [[José Félix Estigarribia]] as their candidate on 19 March 1939. This hero of the Chaco War was serving as a special envoy to the United States, and on 13 June Estigarribia and US Secretary of State [[Cordell Hull]] signed the [[Export-Import Bank of the United States|Export-Import Bank]] loan of US$3.5&nbsp;million.<ref name="google8">{{cite book|title=Paraguay and the United States: Distant Allies|last1=Mora |first1= F.O.|last2=Cooney |first2= J.W.|date=2010|publisher=University of Georgia Press|isbn=9780820338989|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oRkSVeJYSQwC&pg=PA97|page=97|access-date=2017-01-07}}</ref> This greatly increased US influence in the country where Nazi sympathies were common. On 15 August 1939, he assumed the presidency and quickly realized that he would have to continue many of the ideas of the February Revolution to avoid political anarchy. He began a program of [[land reform]] that promised a small plot of land to every Paraguayan family. He reopened the University, implemented monetary and municipal reforms, balanced the budget, financed the [[public debt]], increased the capital of the [[Central Bank of Paraguay]], and drew up plans to build highways and public works with the loan from the United States.

Estigarribia faced sharp criticism from the conservative Catholic intellectuals and their newspaper ''El Tiempo'' as well as leftist ''febrerista'' student activists in the university. After anti-government demonstrations broke out in Asunción, the army suppressed them and arrested Catholic and ''febrerista'' leaders. This led to a withdrawal of Colorado support for Estigarribia, and an attempted coup on 14 February 1940 broke out in Campo Grande military base.<ref name="google9">{{cite book|title=The Cambridge History of Latin America|last=Bethell |first= L.|date=1991|issue=6. sēj|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=9780521266529|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=cbhOISlOv3MC&pg=PA234|page=234|access-date=2017-01-07}}</ref>

On the same day Estigarribia proposed to establish a temporary dictatorship. This proposal split the Liberal party leadership, many of whom supported this idea, and on 18 February 1940 he established a temporary dictatorship, dismissing the 1870 Constitution and promising a new Constitution.

On 10 July the project of the new Constitution was published and on 4 August 1940, approved in the referendum. The new Constitution was based on the 1937 authoritarian Constitution of Brazil's [[Estado Novo (Brazil)|Estado Novo]] and established a [[Corporatism|corporativist]] state. The Constitution of 1940 promised a "strong, but not despotic" President and a new state empowered to deal directly with social and economic problems. But by greatly expanding the power of the [[Executive (government)|executive branch]] it served to legitimize open dictatorship. It greatly increased the powers of the Presidency, eliminated the vice-presidency, created a unicameral parliament, and increased the state's power over individual and property rights. It also gave the military the duty to protect the Constitution, thus giving it a role in politics.<ref name="google9"/>

===Morínigo, 1940–48===
{{main|Higinio Moríñigo}}
The era of the New Liberals, as Estigarribia's supporters were called, came to a sudden end on 7 September 1940, when the President and his wife died in an airplane crash. Hoping to maintain their control over government through a more submissive military man, the Old Liberal ministers and army leadership decided on the War Minister [[Higinio Moríñigo]] as the temporary president until new elections could be held in two months.

The apparently genial Moríñigo quickly proved himself a shrewd politician, and Liberal ministers resigned on 30 September, when they realized that they could not impose their will on him. Having inherited Estigarribia's near-dictatorial powers provided by the new 1940 Constitution, Moríñigo quickly banned ''febreristas'' and Liberals and clamped down drastically on free speech and [[individual liberty|individual liberties]].

A non-party dictator without a large body of supporters, Morínigo survived politically – despite many plots against him – because of his astute handling of an influential group of young military officers who held key positions of power.

The Allied victory in [[World War II]] pressured Moríñigo to liberalize his regime in 1946. Paraguay experienced a brief period of openness as he relaxed restrictions on free speech, allowed political exiles to return, and formed a coalition government with Liberals and ''febreristas''. Moríñigo's intentions about stepping down were unclear, however, and he maintained a ''de facto'' alliance with Colorado Party hardliners and their right-wing ''Guión Rojo'' (Red Banner) paramilitary group led by [[Juan Natalico Gonzalez]], which antagonized and terrorized the opposition. The result was a failed coup d'état in December 1946 and full-scale [[Paraguayan Civil War (1947)|civil war]] erupted in March 1947. Led by the exiled dictator [[Rafael Franco]], the revolutionaries were an unlikely coalition of ''febreristas'', Liberals and Communists, united only in their desire to overthrow Moríñigo.

The Colorados helped Moríñigo crush the insurgency, but the man who saved Moríñigo's government during crucial battles was the commander of the General Brúgez Artillery Regiment, Lieutenant Colonel [[Alfredo Stroessner]]. When a revolt at the Asunción Navy Yard put a strategic working-class neighborhood in rebel hands, Stroessner's regiment quickly reduced this area to rubble. When rebel gunboats threatened to dash upriver from Argentina to bombard the capital into submission, Stroessner's forces battled furiously and destroyed them.

By the end of the rebellion in August 1948 the Colorado Party, which had been out of power since 1904, had almost total control in Paraguay. The fighting had simplified politics by eliminating all other parties and by reducing the size of the army. As 90% of the officer corps had joined the rebels, fewer individuals were now in a position to compete for power.

However, the Colorados were split into rival factions. The hardline ''guionistas'', headed by the fiery left-leaning nationalist writer and publisher [[Juan Natalicio González]], opposed democratic practices. The moderate ''democráticos'', led by [[Federico Chaves]], favored free elections and a [[power-sharing]] arrangement with the other parties.

With Moríñigo's backing, González used his ''Guión Rojo'' paramilitary to intimidate ''democráticos'' and gain his party's presidential nomination. He ran unopposed in the long-promised 1948 elections. Suspecting that Moríñigo would not relinquish power to González, a group of Colorado military officers, including Stroessner, removed Moríñigo from office on 3 June 1948. After a short Presidency, González joined Moríñigo in exile and Chaves assumed Presidency on 10 September 1949.

Moríñigo had maintained order by severely restricting individual liberties, but as a result, he created a political vacuum. When he tried to fill it with the Colorado Party, he split the party in two, and neither faction could establish itself in power without help from the military. The creation of [[one-party rule]] and order at the expense of political liberty and acceptance of the army's role as the final political arbiter created conditions for the emergence of Stroessner's regime.

===Political consequences===
Within a couple of decades, Paraguayan politics had come to a full-circle. The [[Chaco War]] had sparked the [[February Revolution (Paraguay)|February Revolution]], which signaled the end of Liberal rule and ushered in a revived Paraguayan nationalism that revered the dictatorial past of the López era. The result was the [[Constitution of Paraguay|Constitution of 1940]], which returned near-dictatorial powers to the Presidency, that the Liberals had stripped away. When a brief flirtation with multi-party democracy led to the Civil war, the Colorado Party, loyal to the memory of López, was once again running Paraguay. Meanwhile, the influence of the armed forces in the domestic politics had increased dramatically as no Paraguayan government since the Chaco War held the power without its consent.