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>> there's nothing much left of nouveau bordeaux. i'm told a small museum of artifacts. the site where the only once briefly existed is now called villa hayes. >> guido: and the men who contracted them was given money for each settler. >> anthony: perhaps there was a communication breakdown somewhere and he might've told the paraguayans that, "i'm bringing you the finest farmers france has to offer." >> guido: right. >> anthony: and he might've told these frenchmen, "oh, they're gonna give you free property, you don't have to do anything. you'll live like kings, it's a land --" >> guido: possible. >> anthony: "just reach up in the trees and fruit and gold bars are dropping." >> peter: in fact, they were thrown out in the coast and say, "here you are! that's your land. go ahead!"
otherwise he was going to be enrolled in the army. >> anthony: lopez, eventually, he was hunted down. madame lynch survived. >> guido: yes. she survived. >> anthony: but with her money? i mean, she was allowed to keep her possessions? >> guido: yes. >> anthony: in history it's hard to find a more disastrous, or more cruel, or a pointless campaign it would seem. when all was said and done, as much as sixty percent of the population and ninety percent of the men of this country were dead. >> guido: the survivors were just, like, fifty or forty thousand people so that's why you could easily understand why there was nothing here for a
i mean it's hot here; it's dry, it's wet it's fetid it's difficult. >> guido: big mosquitoes, and you have all the ticks and all kinds of vermin. >> anthony: a flatland of cactus and thorns and misery and cannibals. >> peter: there was the indians, the guaycurú, coming down the river and killing everybody. there was the lengua who, if you entered the country, you are good food. >> anthony: right. did the paraguayans ever see this as a utopia? >> peter: no. i'm sure not. what we have ahead is nueva bordeaux. >> anthony: wait a minute. that? >> peter: this. >> anthony: wow -- it's kinda not how i pictured it. doesn't look like bordeaux to me.
>> peter: you have the two most appreciated fish here on the table of paraguay. >> anthony: yep. >> peter: that's the catfish, surubí. >> anthony: and that? >> peter: that's the dorado, the golden fish. >> anthony: oh, the dorado. of course. yes. ooh, that's tasty! ooh, that's nice. >> anthony: so, i'm -- i'm curious about this whole episode of the settlement of nouveau bordeaux. >> guido: there came about four hundred people. they were supposed to be about one thousand. they were supposed to be, most of them, farmers. but just eighty-six were farmers. >> anthony: who were the other people? just -- >> guido: they were tailors; they were shoemakers, musicians -- >> peter: teachers and artists, and they were put in the jungle and left by themselves. >> anthony: right. why here, of all of the places in the world? people talk about the chaco as a hell.
>> peter: short after this episode with the new bordeaux group came the triple alliance war. >> anthony: jean bourdain died in 1858. >> eduardo: yes, before. >> peter: it was a good time to die because this way you hadn't to join this horrible war. >> anthony: he'd miss the war? >> peter: yeah. the old lopez died, the young lopez got in power. >> anthony: our man becomes, uh, president. >> guido: yes, francisco lopez. >> anthony: absolutely the most maniacal, megalomaniacal, piss-pot dictator. >> peter: you are right. >> anthony: he was rather unkind to his siblings. >> guido: his two brothers were tortured and killed. >> anthony: right. >> guido: the sister who went to jail, taken into tiger cages. >> anthony: tiger cages. yeah. >> guido: tiger cages. and, the mother was given some beating.
>> anthony: these poor french guys show up. >> guido: right. >> anthony: uh, lópez senior, and the government, kept their side of the bargain. they provided them with, uh -- >> guido: yes. right. >> anthony: houses, equipment. >> guido: tools and animals and everything. >> anthony: man, i used to have one of these, make pressed sandwiches i think. and that's it. "okay, now dig, grow --" the settlers quickly discovered that farming is hard work, and that the conditions in the chaco in no way resembled the new france of their dreams. that was a big snake. >> guido: so, they get broke and they decide to leave the colony. >> anthony: how many french were left at the end of the new bordeaux experiment? did any stay? >> guido: some of them, but few. >> anthony: all right.
guarani, and i'm, more or less, out. >> anthony: a proudly mestizo society. >> guido: yes. >> anthony: was it de francia? >> guido: yeah. el supremo. >> anthony: el supremo! gotta love it. >> anthony: a nearly two-hundred year succession of dictators began in 1811, when josé gaspar rodríguez de francia declared himself el supremo for life. de francia insisted paraguay become a mestizo, mixed-race society. >> mario: paraguayans are neither spanish nor indians. we are mestizos. >> anthony: yep. >> peter: el supremo forbid maritals between whites and whites; he produced the mestizos by force. >> anthony: today, ninety-five of paraguayans are of mixed spanish and guarani blood. >> mario: and we usually speak the two languages. >> anthony:right.
>> anthony: a magnificent river steamer was engaged for the party. >> guido: and, well, there were some tensions between the paraguayan ladies and madame lynch. >> anthony: once on board, as the story goes, those mean bitches treated their hostess like so much trash. >> guido: and so she got upset and threw off board all of the food which they were supposed to eat. >> anthony: she had it all thrown in the river? >> guido: yes. >> anthony: then she ordered the captain to stop the boat and let her guests just sit there, in that jungle heat, for hours. throwing tubs of caviar, whole roasted pigs, into the river in front of these starving aristocrats. somehow, that pleases me.
country eat it. >> anthony: it's like cheesy cornbread! >> peter: yeah. >> anthony: awesome. good meal. so, this was the house of, or, one of the houses of the notorious madame lynch. >> guido: right. exactly. >> anthony: journalist, poet, and author guido rodriguez alcala has written books on paraguay's history. now, who exactly was madame lynch? a murky background would you say? >> guido: there's a lot of talk about that. >> anthony: right. >> guido: somebody say she was a great woman or that she was a very evil one. >> anthony: she came over on the famous trip from france. >> guido: right. >> anthony: succeeding de francia in 1840s lopez senior reversed many of paraguay's isolationist policies. he invited foreigners to settle here and built one of south america's first railways.
sixty-something. >> anthony: right. his sixty-something year-old mother was flogged and beaten in front of him. not a nice man. >> peter: he believed that he had a chance to get married with the daughter of the imperator of brazil. >> anthony: of brazil, that's right, yeah. he was refused in very unflattering terms. thanks presumably, to lopez jr.'s expansionist ambitions, he dragged paraguay into the triple alliance war. he essentially challenged all three neighbors. >> pedro: brazil, argentina, and uruguay. >> anthony: to war. this doesn't seem like a good idea. >> pedro: ah, yeah. >> anthony: right. in what would become the bloodiest war in latin america's history, hundreds of thousands of paraguayans died. when lopez ran out of adults, he sent children into the field dressed only in rags, armed with sticks pained to look like guns. >> guido: my great-grandfather was a ten year-old boy and he was dressed like a girl because