Triple Alliance war that nearly erased Paraguay
The Paraguayan War, or War of the Triple Alliance from 1864 to 1870, matched Paraguay against Argentina, Brazil's Empire, and Uruguay. It remains the deadliest war between states in Latin American history, and after conventional defeat a guerrilla struggle ground down Paraguay's army and civilians alike.
The fighting broke out in late 1864 as a quarrel between Paraguay and Brazil that grew out of the Uruguayan War; Argentina and Uruguay joined in 1865, giving the conflict its alliance name. Once Paraguay's regular forces were beaten, President Francisco Solano López kept up a guerrilla campaign for 14 months, and battle, hunger and disease killed much of the population. It ended only when Brazilian troops killed him at Cerro Corá on 1 March 1870, and Argentine and Brazilian soldiers occupied the country until 1876. Paraguay's losses were immense, though even rough totals remain disputed, and it gave up contested land to both victors.
The roots lay in colonial cartography. The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas bore little relation to where Spanish and Portuguese settlers actually lived, the 1750 Treaty of Madrid drew lines closer to today's borders, and later accords culminating at Badajoz in 1801 kept revising them. After Spain's Río de la Plata viceroyalty fell apart in the 1810s, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay inherited overlapping claims over thinly settled land; Paraguay and Brazil could not agree whether the Apa or the Branco river marked their frontier.
Relations were not always hostile. Brazil was first to recognise Paraguayan independence, in 1844, when Argentina still regarded it as a runaway province, and even sent officers to help fortify Asunción against Juan Manuel Rosas. But Brazil needed the Paraguay River to reach landlocked Mato Grosso, since no road linked Cuiabá to Rio de Janeiro, and permission was hard to secure. Brazil also intervened repeatedly in Uruguay, in 1851 and 1855 among other occasions.
Historians still argue about causes. The traditional account blames López for exploiting the Uruguayan crisis to grab influence over the Platine basin; others stress colonial border legacies and Brazilian and Argentine meddling in Uruguay. Inside Argentina, President Bartolomé Mitre used his newspaper La Nación to cast the war as a national cause that rivals could hardly oppose.
Source: Paraguayan War
