Divine Republic: Faith, Nation, and War in Nineteenth-Century Paraguay

This paper will examine how the Paraguayan state mobilized popular support during the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-70) with the moral coercion of priests and print propaganda written in Guaraní. Leading into the conflict, the ruling López regimes had assumed the wisdom of colonial statecraft in matters of religion and nation building. They had consolidated power over the local Church and revived its institutional apparatus for political and social control. In so doing, they also revived the religious moral order of colonial tradition and made it breathe for life in a post-colonial world, namely for the purposes of republican nationhood. The conflation of values old and new had made ideas of the republic familiar in the everyday lives of Paraguayans and even provided for its dynamic expression in the  vernacular, Guaraní. Upon mobilizing for war, such statecraft served then as the mediums of moral coercion. Paraguayan priests spoke Guaraní from the pulpits and wrote it in wartime newspapers on behalf of the government, pressing parishioners to understand the fight for the republic as a sacred defense of home and family against enslavement from black invaders. They made specific appeals to both men and women in this regard, drawing on the gendered despise for servitude in Paraguayan society. The threat of women enslaved to diabolical enemies of color proved particularly incendiary, if while also providing substance to popular notions of patriotic virtue and republican liberty. Paraguayans thus confronted the terrible burdens of modern nationhood articulated in their language and weighted with the biddings of God and family.