Back to Glory

For three days at Asuncion barefooted Indians stared at the gold-braided visitors, watched their little army goose-step, listened to the music that escaped from the ballroom, heard the shuffle of dancers, the clink of sabers. They had come to see swarthy, stolid Higinio Morinigo inaugurated Dictator-President (salary $236 a month) of their pictorial, backward Para guay.

Up the Parana River from rich Argentina came two mine layers and a delegation of nine officials led by Rear Admiral Eleazar Videla. Out of the sky from Bolivia came nine planeloads of officials; from Brazil more airplanes; from Chile a delegation with Foreign Minister Joaquin Fernandez; from Uruguay U.S. Ambassador William Dawson. From as far away as Costa Rica came others.

Strong-man Morinigo, who grabbed authority Sept. 7, 1940, after the airplane-crash death of President Jose Felix Estigarribia, made his job "legal" last February in an election in which he was the only candidate. Now there were three grand balls, many banquets and luncheons, parades and a sports show to assure the people that their choice was not unduly limited.

At 9:30 a.m. in the green, blue and gold-bordered reception salon of the Government Palace, the Archbishop of Paraguay administered the oath of office in the presence of 150 uniformed and full-dressed witnesses. President Morinigo, in a red & blue uniform with the red, white & blue band of office across his breast, read a speech which established continental solidarity, internal totalism and progress as the program of his regime. He led the procession (thoroughly guarded) to the Cathedral for Mass, returned to the Palace for a popular reception.

In the afternoon, preceded by a sirening jeep, he rode to the reviewing stand in a Lend-Lease command car bedecked with the colors of American nations. For two hours he saluted and watched a military parade as Paraguay's crack little army marched, rode and rumbled by in Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps. Murinigo and everybody knew that so long as the parading army supports him he is set.

During the ceremony, the jefe received 35 grizzled, barefooted veterans of the war of 1870 on the Palace balcony. Their leader, perky Sergeant Major Victoriano Martinez, shouted patriotic praise at Morinigo, called him the new Supremo* who would lead Paraguay back to glory.

The road to 20th-century glory will be a long one for Paraguay, where there is 80% illiteracy, where industrial workers earn an average of 66-c- daily, farm workers 30-c-. Cabinet members are paid $135 monthly.

Once considered Hitler-minded, Higinio Morinigo became a spirited United Nations cooperator, particularly after a tour of the U.S. last June. (He saw war-production plants, visited President Roosevelt, was awarded an honorary doctor's degree at Fordham University.) His enthusiasm was rewarded: the U.S. sent him $1,000,000 worth of airplanes, trucks, jeeps and signal equipment; the U.S. is spending an estimated $11,000,000 in Paraguay, where the annual budget is $6,642,000. Brazil has lent Paraguay money for improvements, given the land-locked country use of Santos as a free port. And Argentina, which always considered Paraguay a satellite province, has come to life, canceling the 1870 war debt and increasing imports to offset U.S. and Brazilian influence.

*El Supremo, Jose Caspar Rodriguez Francia, was Dictator of Paraguay for a quarter-century (1814-40). His policy of strict isolationism prevented Paraguay's incorporation into Argentina or Brazil.

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