José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia y Velasco…

José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia y Velasco has run Paraguay for the past twenty-five years with the aid of only three other people.

He aims to found a society on the principles of Rousseau's Social Contract; Robespierre and Napoleon have inspired him as well.

To create such a personal utopia he has imposed a ruthless isolation upon Paraguay, interdicting all external trade, while at the same time fostering national industries.

He has become known as a caudillo who rules through ruthless suppression and random terror with increasing signs of madness, and is known as "El Supremo.”

However, despite these seemingly authoritarian attributes, Dr. Francia has helped to create one of the first peri-industrial societies in Latin America.

By closing the borders to free trade (which is at that time almost solely British), Francia has allowed Paraguayan factories to open and begin producing manufactured goods.

While the people are limited to buying only from Paraguayan companies, the country under Francia is the earliest example of a Latin American country exhibiting Henry Ford's more modern idea: that of paying the factory workers enough money to be able to afford the products they make.

However, since this closing of the market is viewed by Britain as counter to their system of free trade, they incite dissent with the newly industrializing nation in the neighboring countries of Brazil and Argentina, which will eventually lead to the War of the Triple Alliance, the reopening of Paraguay's market, and the end of industrialization.

To this day, Paraguay's economy has never reached the same threshold of industrialization as it had under Dr. Francia and his immediate successors.

Francia, born in Yaguarón, had become a doctor of theology and trained for the Catholic priesthood but never entered it.

When Paraguay's independence was declared in 1811, he was appointed secretary to the national junta or congress.

He was one of the few men in the country with any significant education, and soon became the country's real leader.

In 1814, a congress named him Consul of Paraguay, with absolute powers for three years.

At the end of that term, he had sought and received absolute control over the country for life.