The War of Paraguay against the Triple Alliance. Historical memory and search for the identity foundations

Abstract

The war of Paraguay against the Triple alliance is the national-state identity central element. The war fought a century and a half ago had catastrophically devastated the country thus being the most powerful traumatic event for Paraguayan society. The six months long dispute on the Paraguayan war causes and consequences between J. O'Leary and C. Baez in 1902 constitutes the turning point in the historical revisionism development. The rehabilitation of Marshal F.S. Lopez after the 1936 February Revolution had finished the gradual process of reassessing the past and opened a new page in the country's political life. Throughout the entire authoritarian period, historical concept by J.O'Leary, later called as the "Paraguayan revisionism", served as the ideological basis for authoritarian power and for the A.Stroessner dictatorship reinforcement. This doctrine is no longer relevant to the current democratic period ideology. However, it still persists as a historical narrative underlying national-state identity. The resulting contradiction has an important impact on the nature of modernization, the foreign policy trajectory and has a conflict potential for public discussions about the past. At the same time, the ongoing changes are shaping the need to identity narratives change.