Irish ‘Queen of Paraguay’ more sinned against than sinner?

When Brazil won the bloodiest war in South America’s history it cast itself as the victim and Eliza Lynch as one of the chief villains. The unofficial “Queen of Paraguay”, said the victors, was a gold-digging Irish prostitute who encouraged her adopted country to invade neighbours. The war ended in 1870 with Brazil battered and Paraguay destroyed: up to 90% of the adult male population were dead, including Francisco Solano López, the demented dictator who had fallen under Lynch’s spell and built her a palace. She escaped execution but not infamy. Brazilian chronicles depicted her as a warmongering manipulator, and the reputation stuck. She featured alongside Lucrezia Borgia in a 1995 book called The World’s Wickedest Women. Now, however, a revisionist history by Irish authors has turned the tables by portraying Lynch as a misunderstood hero and Brazil as a near-genocidal aggressor.

via Book depicting ‘Queen of Paraguay’ Eliza Lynch prompts calls for Brazilian penitence | World news | guardian.co.uk.

The book is The Lives of Eliza Lynch: Scandal and Courage, by Michael Lillis and Ronan Fanning. All I can say is, she seems like the Jet-Set Hobo’s kind of woman. Well, she was another free-spirited Irish adventurer, like her compatriot, Lola Montez. (Long a source of fascination, Montez was born Eliza Gilbert, became Mistress to ‘Mad’ King Kudwig of Bavaria and is said to have inspired the song, ‘Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets’.)

Granted, Lynch’s was a colourful, picaresque life, but the events she lived through were terrible. According to some estimates, nine in ten Paraguayan males were killed in the war with Brazil that grew out of her dictator boyfriend’s folly. In any case, the authors of this new biography think that Brazil owes Paraguay an apology, in the same spirit that Tony Blair apologized to Ireland for the 1840s famine. Well, if there’s one thing the JSH likes almost as much as a beautiful adventuress, it’s a lost cause. And maybe they should say ‘eu sinto muito‘; for all the good it would do. There again, the Brazilians point out that Paraguay started the conflict – what you might call the Dresden justification.

According to the article, one of the book’s co-authors said the war “blasted Paraguay back to the stone age.” The last time the hobo was there, Asuncíon appeared to have been blasted to its fake-designer-watch age.