STRIFE IN PARAGUAY

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXXI, Issue 4958, 20 February 1937, Page 5

STRIFE IN PARAGUAY

COUNTRY’S STORMY HISTORY. LAST YEAR’S REVOLUTION. A year ago last Thursday Paraguay, which had justed concluded a sanguinary war with Bolivia over the Chaco oil concessions, was plunged into yet another of its many revolutions, and the streets of Asuncion, its capital, were thick with dead. Mr. W. Vogt, an Aucklander of Norwegian extraction, who was present in Paraguay throughout the revolution, told “The Dominion” that the revolution occurred when the Communists, the Nationalists, and the Young Officers’ Party formed a group under Colonel Franco and, occupying the hills surrounding Asuncion, fired down on the city. President Ayala, who had taken refuge on a gunboat which had declared itself neutral, was later handed over to the revolutionaries, and with 35 others he was imprisoned in three small and badlyventilated rooms. Later General Estigaribia, who had commanded the army in the war, was also captured. It was pitiable, Mr. Vogt, said to see the soldiery, worn out from their long campaign, assemble in the principal square of Asuncion. There, ragged and bare-footed, they saluted the new dictator.

In 1875 Paraguay had a population of 1,350,000, but a disastrous war in the ensuing five years reduced the number to 320,000. In 1934, before the war with Bolivia, the estimated popoulation was 1,000,000, of whom 800,000 were females. In the war 40,000 male Paraguayans lost their lives.

Under President Lopez II (18751880), the first railway in South America was built, from Asuncion to Villarrica. With the fall of Lopez 11, however, the country has been in a state of almost constant revolution.