"But what good came of it at last?' quoth little Peterkin." The mass of impressive correspondence produced but a meagre result. The charity of the United States toward the Latin-American countries usually seems inexhaustible, and no precedents were broken this time. A "new government" was organized in Chili. There had been an "election," and "Provisional President" (i. e., Military Dictator) Jorge Montt now became "President." In this new shuffle of the cards the venomous Matta had been superseded by a Chilian gentleman of smoother tongue, Señor Luis Pereira. Pereira was disposed to apologize rather than take chances. So he withdrew the offensive portions of Matta's despatch of December 11, and Chili agreed to pay to the wounded Americans and the families of those murdered an indemnity in the munificent sum of seventy-five thousand dollars. Minister Egan was notified soon thereafter that this sum was at his disposal, and, on orders from Washington, he accepted it.

Prior to this date Secretary Blaine had become alienated from President Harrison, and now took the opportunity, at a banquet given by a distinguished foreign diplomat, to criticise severely the President on account of his policy towards Chili. Mr. Blaine's criticism was telegraphed all over the United States the next morning. Mr. Blaine's comments seem disingenuous, perhaps unjust. President Harrison's preferences in this matter were perhaps thwarted by the indifference of Congress, and he probably thought that in accepting the indemnity offered by Chili, he was making the best of the situation.

CHAPTER XVII

REIGN OF TERROR UNDER THE BLOODY LOPEZ

A

DESCRIPTION of Francisco Solano Lopez, the fiend incar

nate, Dictator of Paraguay from 1862 to 1870, is given in the chapter on "Typical Latin-American Dictators - the Worst." During the war, from 1865 to 1870, which he provoked with the allies, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, there were committed by this monster in human form more assassinations and other outrages than can be charged to Nero, Caligula, or any other human beast of history. A strange combination of ignorance, superstition, cunning, crime, and insanity, instinct with a certain military genius not to be despised and a resourcefulness seldom possessed by one of his type, Lopez thought himself to be, as a matter of course, the Napoleon of South America, and the terror-stricken populace bowed before him at his own valuation.

During this long and frightful time of carnage Lopez perpetrated inconceivable atrocities against all classes of men and women, irrespective of age or nationality. With war raging all around him, and his soldiers decimated by great battles and swept away by fevers and other calamities, Lopez augmented the general terror by torturing and murdering the victims of his displeasure. In one of these massacres, in 1868, Lopez put to death many distinguished foreigners, accusing them of a conspiracy against him, — a wretched figment of his degenerate imagination.

It seems incredible that such a monster should have been able to sway and rule a whole nation, that thousands of men should have stood by, ready to aid his hellish purposes and carry out his diabolical orders.

But such were the facts, and even to-day terrible facts like these exist in many other Latin-American dictatorships, of which the most conspicuous is Venezuela.

Akers says:

"How frightful the war was for the Paraguayans may be judged from the fact that in 1863 the population was 1,337,489. In 1871 the returns showed only 221,079 persons resident in the Republic. This attenuated population comprised 28,746 men, 106,254 women, and 86,079 children. The adult

' Mr. Akers' figures are based on Paraguay's alleged "statistics," which of course are guesswork.

males were those who from infirmity or weight of years had been incapable of bearing arms. In other words, the whole able-bodied male population had been sacrificed. In the latter part of the struggle women had been utilized as beasts of burden, and when no longer available for transport purposes were left to die by the roadside."

What a strange thing was that species of human nature which allowed this ferocious beast in human form practically to exterminate it? And what indecent wretches are those who will laud such a being to the skies, who will fawn and flatter at his heels like a dog at the feet of a leper, who will praise him and deify him, and call his butchery sacred, and extol his mistress as if she were a woman immaculate and holy, and place under anathema or put to mortal torture any one who does not join in the grovelling!

I

Charles A. Washburn, a distinguished man, tactful and honorable, was the American minister to Paraguay during much of this era of blood. Mr. Washburn thus describes how Lopez grasped the presidency:

"He was elected in October, 1862. His father died in August, 1862, I think. He elected himself. He was the minister of war under his father, and had command of the army, and he just took possession when the old man died. The government at Asuncion has to each district a chief and a judge, and they constituted the government of that district, and sent to the congress in Asuncion the men that Lopez wished; but even then he was afraid there was a conspiracy, and there were a great many people arrested. It was reported that his brother, who has since been shot, was engaged in the conspiracy, and that Padre Maiz, who has been a sort of head inquisitor lately, was getting up a conspiracy against Lopez. At any rate there were very strong precautions taken, and there was a great military demonstration made. The congress was held in the Cabildo, or government house. It was surrounded by soldiers. One of the richest men in the country ventured to remark in the congress that Francisco Solano Lopez was not the proper person to be elected; that the Constitution of the country declared that the government should not be the heritage of any one family, and that therefore the son of the deceased president should not succeed him. The objection was negatived, and everybody voted for Francisco Solano Lopez, and he was elected. This gentleman was immediately put in prison, and was never heard of afterwards."

Mr. Washburn's description of the "court" atmosphere of Asuncion is strikingly suggestive of the conditions in Caracas, Bogotá, and other cities in Latin America under tyrant domination:

"Nobody there dared say a word but 'Viva el gran Lopez!' His little paper is filled up with nothing but flourishing adulations of the great Marshal Lopez. All the time before the evacuation they were holding public meetings - every week or two to make presents to Lopez. Even the women and

--

children had to give away everything they could scrape, to show their appreciation and gratitude to him; there was no resisting it. Nobody dared to hold back or to refuse to contribute. They gave him a great big album with gold covers a quarter of an inch thick, those people who could not get enough to eat themselves. That was going on all the time. I lived there so long that I got the confidence of quite a number of people, Paraguayans. They thought I was a safe person to talk to. They even told me that there was the most universal hypocrisy there; that there was not a man, woman, or child who would not be delighted to know that Lopez was forty feet under ground. They had to go to those meetings and to make speeches and to offer their lives, fortunes, and everything else; even the women offered to take up arms under his imported mistress, who generally took the lead among the I mean Mrs. Lynch."

women

By the time Lopez had reached the cruellest stage of his bloodthirsty career, and assassinations had come to be of daily occurrence, he had looted many of the foreign legations, and had perpetrated grave indignities and imposed intolerable restrictions upon attachés of the American legation. Lopez hated Washburn, as a criminal hates a gentleman, and the minister's life had been made a burden to him and was actually in danger, while Mrs. Washburn was in a serious nervous condition brought on by the atrocities taking place around her. Moreover, Mr. Washburn's task was made especially difficult, his experiences were rendered especially hazardous, through the daily appeal to him for aid of hundreds of refugees, despairing victims of unspeakable cruelty.

Finally things arrived at so flagrant, so unbearable, a pass that the United States government sent a vessel for the return of Mr. and Mrs. Washburn, their suite and household.

The Paraguayan Nero had previously demanded from the American minister the surrender of two members of his legation, - Porter Cornelius Bliss, an American, and George F. Masterman, an Englishman by birth. Lopez had conceived grudges against these men and had determined to punish them.

When Mr. Washburn was leaving Paraguay, he demanded passports not alone for himself and family, but also for the members of his legation, including Bliss and Masterman. But Lopez refused to issue papers in favor of Bliss and Masterman, and, despite the minister's protests, he placed both men under arrest and submitted them to various tortures in order to extort "confessions from them."

II

There was an investigation by Congress. I quote from the report of the Committee as follows:

"On Mr. Washburn's return to Asuncion he soon found that during his absence of nearly two years great changes had taken place in Paraguay. At the time of his departure the country was in the enjoyment of profound peace,

and the people engaged in their usual vocations; on his return he found the country involved in a disastrous war; terror, alarm, and distrust prevailed on every side; industry paralyzed; the citizens denied their most precious rights, and all the resources and energies of the country pressed into the military service. Lopez, the 'Marshal President of Paraguay,' was entering upon that era of blood so indelibly impressed upon his subsequent career. He possessed absolute authority, and governed by his unrestrained will a country whose history presents a continued series of tyrannical exactions on the part of its rulers and of submissive obedience on the part of its people. "As the tyrant is ever the slave of jealousy and suspicion, it is natural to find that Lopez, in his imagination, saw himself constantly surrounded by enemies conspiring his overthrow.

"This caused him to establish a system of espionage so general and so thorough that almost every citizen became a voluntary or involuntary informer. Torture was resorted to for the purpose of extorting confession of crimes or criminal intentions which never existed, and charges were fabricated by these means, which involved alike all who were subject to his unjust suspicions, including even those of his own blood.

"The testimony shows that the victims of his cruelty are numbered not by tens but by hundreds.

"Dr. Stewart, who resided for twelve years in Paraguay and who occupied the position of inspector-general of the hospitals and medical adviser of the Lopez family, having thus full opportunity of knowing that to which he testifies, states in his evidence the following:

"I was an eyewitness of the horrible atrocities committed upon many hundreds of human beings who were accused of conspiracy. I saw them heavily laden with irons, and heard their cries and implorings to their torturers for mercy; Lopez knew all that was going on.

"Torture was almost indiscriminately applied, and those who survived its barbarities were put to death.

"No fewer than eight hundred persons, comprising natives of nearly every country in the civilized world, were massacred during those terrible months of June and December, 1868.

...

"The next relative whom Lopez seized was his own brother-in-law, Don Saturnino Bedoya, who in July, 1868, was tortured to death by the cepo uruguayano,

a mode

of torture correctly described in the published statements of Mr. Masterman and Mr. Bliss.

"I saw Lopez's two brothers, Venancio and Benigno, in irons, and heard, from many witnesses of the butchery, that Benigno had been cruelly scourged and afterward executed in December, 1868.

"General Barrios attempted suicide after the imprisonment of his noble wife, the sister of Lopez, but recovered, and was then laden with irons. I saw him professionally before his execution, and found him quite insane; and had Mr. Washburn been thrown into prison, as was at one time suggested by Mrs. Lynch and by the late bishop of Paraguay, I am convinced that he would have been tortured and made away with, like the other victims of Lopez.'

"The evidence submitted with this report fully corroborates the testimony of Dr. Stewart, and proves that cruelties have been practised to such an extent that the sacred name of home and the blessings of civilization are almost unknown in Paraguay. That in the prosecution of the deplorable struggle in which that unhappy country has been involved for the last five years, old men, the youth of tender age, and in some instances even the gentler sex, have from time to time been ruthlessly swept into the constantly diminishing ranks of the army, until the country is almost depopulated.