Paraguay had the oldest one-party regime on earth. Under the 60-year dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner's Colorado party, wealth and power became concentrated in the hands of a small few; until elections in 2008 broke the party's hold on the country and promised a newer, more egalitarian future, particularly for the country's indigenous people. In The Priest of Paraguay Hugh O'Shaughnessy tells the story of how Fernando Lugo, a bishop from a deprived diocese, swept to victory and what this means for his country, Latin America and the wider world. He traces Lugo's life alongside the turbulent history of Paraguay - from his early years in a family which fell victim to Stroessner to his release by the Vatican in order to follow a political calling to the outcry following revelations of illegitimate children. The book also examines what may lie in store for the newest addition to Latin America's 'pink tide' of socialist and social democratic countries. This is history of a fascinating but largely unknown country by one of the most respected commentators on Latin America.

The bishop becomes president -- An island surrounded by land -- Stroessner pounces -- Verbistas and liberacionistas -- The rise of Lugo -- A new Paraguay?

This slice of 17th and 18th century western history is a saga of love, savage violence, and betrayal that reads like fiction. While it is centered on a famous Roman Catholic order, its international and religious scope makes it of interest to armchair historians of all beliefs including Protestants, Jews, agnostics and secular humanists. In colonial South America the Jesuits established missions among the Guarani. As the Portuguese and Spanish slavers descended on Paraguay, the Jesuits sought to protect these stone-age Indians in their missions. Their resistance to the colonists? attacks contributed to the political problems of the church with Catholic monarchs back in Europe. As a consequence, the monarchs pressured a frightened pope to abolish the Jesuit order. In the long, tortured history of European colonization of the Americas, these Jesuit ?Black Robes? in Paraguay stood out as a breed apart, even from their fellow Jesuits elsewhere. Leaders of the anti-Catholic, anti-Jesuit Enlightenment such as Voltaire and Raynal rallied to the side of these extraordinary Paraguay missionaries. Raynal wrote that never has so much good been done for mankind with so little evil. Ironically, the ?heretic? monarchs of Russia and Prussia invited hundreds of the former Jesuits to run their colleges. In doing so, they inadvertently saved these outcasts to become the nucleus around which a reinvigorated papacy would re-establish the Jesuit order forty years after its abolition.

For one brief shining hour there existed in the jungles of what is now Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, a marvelous civilization that stands today only in near-forgotten though still eloquent ruins. These were the Thirty Cities of the so-called "Jesuit Reductions", safe havens into which Jesuit missioners gathered primitive Indians to protect them from Portuguese slave traders and the depredations of the Spanish colonists. In a fantastically short time, the talents of these previously untrained people flowered into the building of a remarkable "world" of beauty and grace almost beyond belief, a world Voltaire called "in some way the triumph of humanity" and Chesterton called "a Paradise in Paraguay". Were it not for the mute testimony of the delicately carved statues and the ruins of noble churches, the whole story might seem beyond belief.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1871. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.