Sex Lives of the Great Dictators (19 page)

face was rather flat, and his nose and his hair indicated more of the negro

than the Indian. His cheeks had a fullness that extended to the jowl, giving

him a sort of bulldog expression.

This repulsive creature was the terror of the first families of Asuncion and their daughters. He had a predilection for aristocratic virgins and any who resisted would find their fathers jailed on Carlos Lopez's orders.

One woman he particularly liked was Pancha Garmendia, known as "the pride and jewel of Asuncion". Every young man in Paraguay desired her, but Lopez scared them all off.

Nevertheless she rejected him, threatening to commit suicide if he laid a finger on her.

Unfortunately, Francisco could not have Pancha's father jailed as he was already dead. He had been executed as an enemy of the state by Carlos Lopez's predecessor, El Supremo, the first Perpetual Dictator for Life of Paraguay. Instead, he had her brothers charged with being enemies of the state and executed. With his father's permission, Francisco confiscated their property and had Pancha arrested. She spent the rest of her life in chains. Even when Francisco Lopez was forced to withdraw from Asuncion by the Allied armies twenty years later, he dragged Pancha along with him into the jungle where she died soon after.

After dealing with Pancha, Francisco fell for Carmencita Cordal and was determined to make her his concubine. She was about to be married to her cousin, Carlos Decoud, the son of one of Paraguay's leading families. Decoud had the temerity to pick a fight with Francisco and thrash him humiliatingly. It was a foolish move. Carlos Lopez had Decoud arrested on trumpedup charges of plotting a coup d'etat.

The night before he was to be wed to Carmencita, Decoud was executed and his

bloodstained corpse was flung into the street in front of her house - some say it was actually delivered to her living-room. Carmencita spent the rest of her life dressed in black, praying in desert shrines and gathering flowers by moonlight.

The daughters of all the leading families began applying for passports and Francisco's behaviour became so outrageous that Carlos Lopez thought it best that he leave the country while the situation cooled down. So Francisco headed off to Europe with an unlimited bank account. His mission was to buy a navy -just what a landlocked country like Paraguay needed.

On arriving in Paris, young Lopez left the tedious business of state to his secretary and, as the American ambassador put it, "gave loose rein to his natural licentious propensities, and plunged into the vices of that gay capital".

A great fan of Napoleon, Francisco was eager to be presented at the court of Napoleon III.

He squeezed himself into one of his smallest uniforms - he thought, mistakenly, that tight clothing would disguise his corpulent form.

When he was presented to the Emperor, he kissed the Empress's hand. She turned away and promptly vomited over an ormolu desk, later excusing herself on the grounds that she was pregnant.

Francisco Lopez made a flying visit to London, but Queen Victoria discovered that she was "quite too busy" to entertain her Paraguayan guest.

Back in Paris, Francisco met a young woman who managed to overlook his repulsive

appearance. It was said that, where others saw only rotting teeth, she saw jewels. Her name was Eliza Lynch.

Born in County Cork in 1835, she was said to have too much imagination, too many

brains and too much libido. She was married at the age of fifteen, divorced at seventeen, and had taken a string of lovers by eighteen. Her family had fled to France to escape the 1845

famine. Her first husband was Xavier Quatrefages, a career officer in the French Army. He was old enough to be her father, but the marriage was an escape from the poverty her family had sunk into.

Her husband was posted to Algiers where Eliza was raped by his commanding officer.

Quatrefages took no action to defend his wife's honour, but she had met a dashing young Russian cavalry officer who did. He killed the colonel and took Eliza off to Paris where he established her in a house in the fashionable Boulevard Saint Germain. But her dashing young cavalry officer soon abandoned her for the excitement of the Crimean War.

Pictures of her from that time show that she was an extraordinarily beautiful woman and she decided to pursue a career as a courtesan. Argentinian journalist Hector Varela described her:

She was tall with a flexible and delicate figure with beautiful and seductive

curves. Her skin was alabaster. Her eyes were of a blue that seems borrowed

from the very hues of heaven and had an expression of ineffable sweetness in

whose depths the light of Cupid was enthroned. Her beautiful lips were

indescribably expressive of the voluptuous, moistened by an ethereal deco that
God must have provided to lull the fires within her, a mouth that was like a

cup of delight at the banquet table of ardent passion. Her hands were small

with long fingers, the nails perfectly formed and delicately polished. She was,
evidently, one of those women mho make the care of their appearance a

religion.

She had a flair for language and a quick wit, and was soon entertaining numerous

gentlemen callers. Her reputation grew and no man of substance would leave Paris without having paid a visit to Chez Lynch.

Eliza was still only nineteen when she entertained a man named Brizuela, who was one of Francisco's retinue. He boasted of his dalliance to the young Lopez, who decided to see this jewel with his own eyes. Eliza was equally eager to entertain this savage who all Paris knew was spraying money around like buckshot.

Within hours of entering Madame Lynch's salon, Francisco entered her boudoir. The next day he told her of the riches of his country. The day after that, she gave notice to her landlord.

There is no doubt that Lopez was desperately in love with Eliza. He had met beautiful women before, but Eliza was the first woman to go to bed with him without putting up a struggle first.

Eliza, for her part, must have felt some physical revulsion for the loathsome creature. But, although she had no real idea where Paraguay was, she had a shrewd sense of money and power. She was quick-witted enough to know that, while she was a sought-after beauty at nineteen, all too soon she would loose her power to charm, and here was a man who could keep her in clover for the rest of her life. He told her that, one day, he would become the emperor of South America. Could she not be his empress?

Neglecting the tiresome formalities of marriage, they set off on a honeymoon around Europe. On the way, Eliza picked up trunkloads of gowns and jewels. They dined with the notorious Queen Isabella of Spain, who suggested that Paraguay hold a referendum to see if the people wanted to return to the Spanish fold. Francisco said he would think about it. He didn't.

In Rome, it was said, Eliza held a "wickedly obscene" dinner party for the pope. Then, after a tour of the Crimean battlefront, the happy couple headed for Paraguay.

Francisco's brother Benigno, who had been with Francisco in Paris, had already returned to Paraguay and told Carlos Lopez that Francisco was involved with "una ramera irlandesa" -

an Irish prostitute. Fearing his father's wrath, Francisco and Eliza stopped off in Buenos Aires. Doña Juana and Francisco's two sisters said that they refused to accept "La Irlandesa", but Carlos realized that he was getting old and needed his son and heir back in the country.

Reassured by a message from his father, Francisco and an apprehensive Eliza began the slow thousand-mile voyage up river to Asuncion.

When they arrived, Eliza was heavily pregnant. The women of the Lopez family were

good to their word. They refused to accept Eliza. She responded by strutting around Asuncion in the latest Paris fashions, showing off her magnificent figure. This quite outshone anything the Lopez sisters had to offer.

Eliza soon found that she did not have a free hand with Francisco. He stall maintained his former lover, Juana Pesoa, and their two children in his town house in Asuncion. He also took other lovers. Eliza took control by selecting his concubines for him. She took great pains over this task. Although she would not marry Francisco herself -fearing that, as his wife rather than his mistress, she would lose all power over him - she had to make sure that no one else did either.

Francisco Lopez also persisted in his brutal seduction techniques. When he fell in love with the daughter of Pedro Burgos, a magistrate from the small provincial city of Luque, he threatened to confiscate her father's property if she did not submit. However, Pedro Burgos was not without some influence with Carlos Lopez. Eliza stepped in. Once she had

ascertained that Pedro's daughter had no desire whatsoever to marry Francisco, she encouraged Pedro to accept Francisco as his daughter's lover - on the promise that he would be amply rewarded when Francisco came to power. His daughter submitted, but Pedro

Burgos was later executed by Francisco in the belief that he was plotting against him.

Eliza's skilful manipulation of Francisco's sex life put her in a position of considerable power. She still had ambitions to be the Empress of South America, as he had promised. As part of that plan, she decided that the ramshackle town of Asuncion must be transformed into an imperial city. She persuaded Francisco to begin an extensive building programme, which included the construction of a replica of Napoleon's mausoleum at Les Invalides, to be used as Francisco's own tomb.

Eliza also wanted to secure the position of her son, Juan Francisco. Although he was Francisco's favourite, she feared that he might one day fall from his father's favour. The answer was to have him baptized.

Francisco liked the idea. Belatedly he announced his son's birth with a hundred-and-one-gun salute. This caused eleven buildings in downtown Asuncion to collapse, five of which were newly built under Francisco's modernization plan. One of the guns, an English field piece, had not been cleaned properly and backfired, killing half the battery and putting the other half in hospital.

The Lopez ladies got themselves into a flap over this, and Carlos banned the planned baptism in Asuncion's Catedral de la Encarnacion. The Bishop of Paraguay, who was Carlos's brother, threatened to excommunicate any priest who performed the baptism.

But Eliza was not to be put off. She found a priest, Father Palacios, and promised him that, if he would baptize Juan Francisco, he would succeed as Bishop of Paraguay when Francisco came to power.

Francisco was loathe to go against his father's wishes, but Eliza talked him round. If Francisco did not consent to the baptism, she said she would take the child to Europe and have him baptized an Anglican! Francisco blustered that he could prevent her leaving Paraguay if he wanted. She replied that if she told Carlos Lopez that she intended to leave, he would provide her with an armed guard, and probably a considerable sum of money too.

Francisco had no choice. The baptism went ahead in Eliza's country house, though no one from Asuncion society or the diplomatic corps turned out. They were still more afraid of Carlos than of Francisco.

Although she had won this battle, the war between Eliza and the Lopez family continued.

Eliza neatly upstaged them at the opening of the National Theatre, built as part of Francisco's reconstruction plan. She got Francisco to designate a small box to the left of the stage the

"Royal Box". Carlos Lopez his wife and daughters were directed there, while the prominent box at the centre of the: auditorium wits reserved for Francisco and Eliza.

Eliza also made her presence felt in Asuncion society by holding a regular salon.

Although the ladies of Asuncion shunned it, their husbands all turned up and vied for the opportunity to flirt with the hostess.

Francisco was still determined to have his consort accepted by the ladies, not least his mother and sisters. When he opened the disastrous agricultural colony upstream in the Rio de la Plata region of Paraguay, he organized a tour for high-ranking Paraguayans and the entire diplomatic corps. The men would ride up to the colony, while the women would travel by boat. Madame Lynch would be Official Hostess on board, he announced.

This was an occasion that everyone had to attend. Even Doña Juana and her two

daughters puffed up the gang plank. But everyone pointedly ignored the Official Hostess.

Soon after they had cast off, the boat was moored in the middle of the stream and a huge feast was laid out - suckling pigs, roast turkey, baby lambs, fresh fruit and vegetables, the best imported wines. The ladies crowded around, but would not allow Eliza near the table. When she asked to be allowed through so that she could preside, they huddled more closely together, blocking her path. So Eliza summoned the waiters and said: "Throw it all over the side."

The ladies fell silent. The waiters hesitated and Eliza repeated the order.

"Throw it all over the side."

They picked up the food and the wine and pitched it overboard. Eliza then sat in silence, staring at the ladies who had snubbed her. They waited, famished, parched and sweaty for the next ten hours, before Eliza gave the captain permission to return to the quay.

By the time of his death, Carlos Lopez probably did not want Francisco to succeed him.

Despite his unsavoury dictatorial ways, Carlos was essentially a man of peace, and he feared Francisco's belligerent intentions towards their neighbours. On his father's death, Francisco called a National Congress which confirmed him as president for the next ten years.

Francisco Lopez also took the opportunity to announce that Eliza was about to present him with another son, her fifth. As the Congress erupted in spontaneous applause, he added: "I would like it to be known that it is our pleasure and desire that from this day forward Madame Eliza Lynch should enjoy the same privileges as those usually accorded to the wife of a head of State."

The Lopez ladies and half the female population of Asuncion fainted.