Probable Detention of Two Americans in Paraguay, 1850

This journal article provides invaluable insight into a foreign, specifically American, view of Paraguay during the regime of Carlos Antonio López. López, a despotic dictator who ruled in much the same vein as his predecessor, José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia. Both López and Francia exercised near-total control over the comings and goings of the Paraguayan people, preferring to keep Paraguay as an isolated state during the post-colonial era. The detention of foreign traders who traveled to Paraguay, a hallmark of the Francia regime, continued under the tyrannical López, signifying the total control of Paraguay’s post-colonial authoritarian regimes.

The source, entitled “Probable Detention of Two Americans in Paraguay,” is a short news article written in 1850 in the journal Scientific American. It explains that two Americans, who received express permission from the dictator López, traveled to Paraguay to trade some of their merchandise. However, at the time of this article’s publication, they had not been seen for over five months, leading to the suspicion that they had been detained by López.

Chasteen noted in his chapter “Postcolonial Blues” that “economically, these were stagnant years” and that “liberals had failed to create inclusive political communities” (Chasteen, 143). This certainly applies to this particular source, with López’s detention of these two Americans proving to be an example of this failure of political liberalism. If a liberal Paraguayan congress had existed during the reign of López, then it is possible that these Americans would have been free to trade in Paraguay without fear of detention. It didn’t, however, and so these Americans were detained. The situation is reflective of the pivot back to hierarchy, conservatism, and authoritarianism across Latin America.

Works Cited:

Chasteen, John Charles. Born in Blood and Fire. 4^th edition. New York: W.W. Norton, 2016.

“Probable Detention of Two Americans in Paraguay.” Scientific American 6, no. 14 (1850): 106. Accessed March 10, 2021.