Venancio Flores

Bartolomé Mitre, the leader of Buenos Aires, subverts the Argentine Confederation in 1860, and begins to establish a new centralist government, with the help of Uruguayan Colorado party leader Venancio Flores.

Bartolomé Mitre secretly backs the revolt of Venancio Flores against the Uruguayan Blanco government in 1863.

Brazil's intervention in Uruguay is intensified both because of Argentina's temporary weakness and because of Brazil's desire to expand its frontiers to the Rio de la Plata.

Brazil intervenes militarily in Uruguay as often as it deems necessary, in accordance with the 1851 treaties.

In 1865 the Triple Alliance—formed by the emperor of Brazil, the president of Argentina, and General Venancio Flores (1854-55, 1865-66), the Uruguayan head of government whom they both have helped to gain power—declares war on Paraguay.

Francisco Solano López, Paraguay's megalomaniac dictator, had been verbally rattling his saber against Argentina and Brazil.

The conflict lasts five years (1865-70) and ends with the invasion of Paraguay and its defeat by the armies of the three countries.

Montevideo, which is used as a supply station by the Brazilian navy, experiences a period of prosperity and relative calm during the war.

The balance of power is restored between Argentina and Brazil, the guarantors of Uruguayan in- dependence, after the war with Paraguay.

Thus, Uruguay is able to internalize its political struggles, an indispensable condition for consolidation of its independence.

The prevailing political idea in Uruguay until 1865 is fusion (fusion), meaning unity among Uruguayans, the putting aside of the colors and banners that have divided them in the past.

This idea had inspired the administrations of Juan Francisco Giro (1852-53), Gabriel Pereira (1856-60), and Bernardo Berro (1860-64).

Hatred and rivalry had flared up, however, preventing harmony.

Giro hasd been forced to resign. Pereira suppressed almost six coup attempts, and Berro, the last Blanco president until 1958, confronts a revolution led by Colorado Venancio Flores, who takes power with the support of Brazil and Buenos Aires.

However, General Flores, who has been commanding the armed forces instead of governing the country since that March, is assassinated in Montevideo in 1868, on the same day that Berro is assassinated.

Historians have long considered that Paraguay under José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia (1813–1840) and Carlos Antonio López (1841–1862) had developed quite differently from other South American countries.

The aim of Rodríguez de Francia and Carlos López had been to encourage self-sufficient economic development in Paraguay by imposing a high level of isolation from neighboring countries.

The regime of the López family is characterized by a harsh centralism without any room for the creation of a true civil society.

There is no distinction between the public and the private sphere, and the López family rules the country as it would a large estate of land.

The government exerts its control on all exports.

The export of yerba mate and valuable wood products maintain the balance of commerce between Paraguay and the outside world.

The Paraguayan government is extremely protectionist, never accepting loans from the outside and, through high tariffs, refusing the importation of foreign products.

Francisco Solano López, officially the eldest son of Paraguay’s president, Carlos Antonio López, was born in Manorá (Asunción).

He had been made Brigadier General of the Paraguayan army by his father at the age of eighteen, in 1844, during the spasmodic hostilities then prevailing with Argentina.

Sent in 1853 as minister plenipotentiary to Britain, France and Italy, he had spent a year and a half in Europe.

Purchasing large quantities of arms and military supplies, together with several steamers, he had organized a project for building a railroad and establishing a French colony in Paraguay.

He had also become infatuated with the empire of Napoleon III and Napoleon himself.

López had equipped his army with exact copies of uniforms of Napoleonic army.

He had ordered for himself an exact replica of Napoleon's crown.

While there, he had met Parisian courtesan Eliza Lynch and brought her with him back to Paraguay, where she will be his mistress and de facto first lady till his death, strongly influencing his later ambitious schemes.

Returning to Paraguay, he had become Minister of War in 1855, and was subsequently appointed as Vice President by his father.

In November 1859, López had been on board the war steamer Tacuari when it was attacked by British Royal Navy ships attempting to pressure his father into releasing a British citizen from prison.

The British consul who ordered the attack is Sir Edward Thornton, who will later personally support Argentina in the Paraguayan War.

This is one of several incidents that has damaged Paraguayan relations with Britain.

Thornton had later apologized for the action in order to repair relations, and promised Britain has no intention of interfering with Paraguayan jurisdiction.

When his father died in 1862, López had called a congress that had unanimously chosen him as president for ten years.

López has modernized and expanded industry and the Paraguayan Army.

The government has hired more than two hundred foreign technicians, who have installed telegraph lines and railroads to aid the expanding steel, textile, paper, ink, naval construction, weapons and gunpowder industries.

The Ybycuí foundry, completed in 1850, manufactures cannons, mortars and bullets of all caliber.

River warships are built in the shipyards of Asunción.

This industrial and military growth requires some contact with the international market, but Paraguay is a landlocked country.

Its ports are river ports, and Paraguayan and other ships must travel down the Río Paraguay and the Río Paraná to reach the estuary of the Río de la Plata (shared by Argentina and Uruguay) and the Atlantic Ocean.

López conceives of a project to obtain ports on the Atlantic Ocean: he probably intends to create a "Greater Paraguay" by capturing a slice of Brazilian territory that will link Paraguay to the Atlantic coast.

Brazil has carried out three political and military interventions in Uruguay.

The first had been in 1851, against Manuel Oribe to fight Argentine influence in the country, following which Montevideo had rewarded Brazil's support by signing treaties that confirmed Brazil's right to intervene in Uruguay's internal affairs.

In accordance with the 1851 treaties, Brazil intervenes militarily in Uruguay as often as it deems necessary.

The second Brazilian intervention had come in 1855, at the request of the Uruguayan government and Venancio Flores, leader of the Colorados, who are traditionally supported by the Brazilian empire.

The third intervention, in 1864, lights the fuse for the Paraguayan War.

Bernardo Berro, a member of the National (Blanco) Party, had first served as head of state of Uruguay in a provisional government for several weeks in 1852, during a brief period in which the National Party had come to power.

Leading the National Party's return to power in 1860, Berro had made attempts to unite the country's political factions, efforts not seldom opposed by members of his own Party and Government.

Flores, who in 1839 had been made political chief of the department of San José, had fought in the "Guerra Grande" against Manuel Oribe and his Argentinian backers, and had then become a leading figure in the Colorado party and formed a triumvirate with Fructuoso Rivera and Juan Antonio Lavalleja in 1853.

Serving as interim President of Uruguay, he had remained in power until 1855, after which he had moved to Argentina.

In 1863, he had started a rebellion against Berro, which has led to civil war in Uruguay.

Berro had stepped down from the Presidency on March 1, 1864.

Atanasio de la Cruz Aguirre, a member of the National Party and a Senator from 1861, assumes the Presidency of Uruguay as next-in-line, in his capacity of President of the Senate.

The Brazilian government has nominated a member of the ruling Liberal party, councilor José Antônio Saraiva, as plenipotentiary to Uruguay.

In April 1864, Brazil sends a diplomatic mission to Uruguay, led by Saraiva, to demand payment for the damages caused to gaucho farmers in border conflicts with Uruguayan farmers.

Uruguayan president Atanásio Aguirre, of the National Party, refuses the Brazilian demands.

Francisco Solano López offers himself as mediator, but is turned down by Brazil.

The fight between Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro for hegemony in the Río de la Plata has profoundly marked the diplomatic and political relations among the countries of the region since Brazil and Argentina became independent of Spain.

Brazil, under the rule of the Portuguese, had been the first country to recognize the independence of Paraguay, in 1811.

While Argentina was under the ruled of Juan Manuel Rosas (1829–1852), a common enemy of both Brazil and Paraguay, Brazil had contributed to the improvement of the fortifications and development of the Paraguayan army, sending officials and technical help to Asunción.

As no roads link the province of Mato Grosso to Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian ships need to travel through Paraguayan territory, going up the Río Paraguay to arrive at Cuiabá.

Many times, however, Brazil has had difficulty obtaining permission from the government in Asunción to sail these waterways.

Saraiva’s main objective is to end the crisis between both countries by peaceful means.

On May 12, 1864 he presents his credentials to the Uruguayan government and four days later formally delivers the Brazilian demands.

The demands are implicitly an ultimatum, and are rejected by Aguirre on May 24, 1864.

Both the Blanco and Brazilian governments are intransigent.

The Uruguayans erroneously believe that their alliance with Paraguay will protect them from a Brazilian attack and that, in the event of war, slave rebellions will occur in Brazil, preventing effective mobilization.

In turn, the Brazilian government has no genuine desire for dialogue.

In addition, Saraiva's arrogant and authoritarian attitude causes irritation among the members of the Blanco government, and hinders the search for a peaceful solution.

The Brazilian Conservatives caution the liberal cabinet, arguing that the war could spread onto Brazilian soil.

This warning will later prove prophetic, when Paraguayan troops invade the Brazilian province of Mato Grosso in December.

Meanwhile, Saraiva has made a secret alliance with the Argentine government.

Immediately afterwards, he had begun conversations with the rebel leader Flores, who had accepted the Brazilian demands.