Editing History of Paraguay (section)

===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"/>