Paraguay’s supreme leader, Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez…

Paraguay’s supreme leader, Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, has outlawed all opposition and abolished higher education (while expanding the school system), newspapers and the postal service.

He has abolished the Inquisition and established a secret police force.

He had abolished higher education because he saw the need to spend more money in the military in order to defend Paraguayan independence from those that do not recognize, it such as Argentina.

Leading a spartan lifestyle, Francia frowns on excessive possessions or festivities, even returning his unspent salary to the treasury.

He has closed the borders of the country to both people and trade (including river trade with neighboring Argentina, from which Paraguay had broken off during the Wars of Independence), reasoning this would prevent a national debt from forming, but also isolating the country from outside – especially modernizing European influences.

Francia had eventually seized the possessions of the Roman Catholic Church, nationalizing the land as communal farms, a measure which has proven successful.

He has appointed himself head of the Paraguayan church, for which the Pope has excommunicated him.

He has made marriage subject to high taxation and restrictions, insisting he personally conduct all weddings.

To reduce the influence of the Spanish gentry, he has forbidden them to marry among themselves.

He himself has no close relationships, but has a daughter, Ubalde García de Cañete.

Francia's later years are known for their seemingly arbitrary rulings.

He has ordered all dogs to be shot.

Not only does everyone have to raise their hat when he passes, but those without hats have to carry brims to raise.

When Francia dies in September 1840, his body is fed to caimans and his furniture burnt.

His reputation abroad is negative, though Thomas Carlyle, no friend to democracy, will find material to admire even in the publications of Francia's detractors and write in an 1843 essay "Liberty of private judgement, unless it kept its mouth shut, was at an end in Paraguay" but considered that under the social circumstances this was of little detriment to a "Gaucho population... not yet fit for constitutional liberty."