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mistress madame eliza lynch was the already-married daughter of an irish doctor. ambitious, social climbing, fond of nice things. >> guido: blouse imported from france. they say she brought to paraguay the first piano. and there were parties here. >> peter: he showed madame lynch to his father, and his father was upset. so she was put aside, and, uh -- >> anthony: kept as a mistress. >> peter: and that was the way paraguayan society tried to treat her, and she wanted to be treated as the -- >> anthony: princess. >> peter: yes. >> anthony: tell me about madame lynch's famous boat trip. on one of her more notorious ventures as hostess, madame lynch organized a grand outing to the new french colony at nouveau bordeaux. she invited all of society to join her. >> historian: right.
>> guido: paraguay was a very poor country. the spaniards came because they thought there was a lot of silver in the area. they found nothing, so they lost interest in paraguay. >> anthony: this is the only country in latin america where the indigenous language is the official language. >> peter: they talk guarani automatically. i'm married toa paraguayan woman, and when her father's coming, they automatically talk guarani, and i'm, more or less, out. >> anthony: a proudly mestizo society. >> guido: yes. >> anthony: was it de francia? >> guido: yeah. el supremo.
arms? >> historian: arms and technicians, british engineers, and machinery. >> anthony: junior, by most contemporary accounts, was an idiot. so, he came back with a mistress. madame lynch. >> historian: yes. >> anthony: which dad wasn't too happy about. >> historian: right. >> historian: he was very traditional and wanted his son to many a paraguayan woman. >> anthony: mhmm. >> historian: to do everything by the book. >> anthony: right. paraguay's soon-to-be first mistress madame eliza lynch was the already-married daughter of an irish doctor. ambitious, social climbing, fond of nice things. >> guido: blouse imported from france. they say she brought to paraguay the first piano. and there were parties here.
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. >> 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.
>> peter: he showed madame lynch to his father, and his father was upset. so she was put aside, and, uh -- >> anthony: kept as a mistress. >> peter: and that was the way paraguayan society tried to treat her, and she wanted to be treated as the -- >> anthony: princess. >> peter: yes. >> anthony: tell me about madame lynch's famous boat trip. on one of her more notorious ventures as hostess, madame lynch organized a grand outing to the new french colony at nouveau bordeaux. she invited all of society to join her. >> historian: 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. boost. it's about moving forward, not back. it's looking up, not down. it's being in motion. in body, in spirit, in the now. boost® high protein it's intelligent nutrition with 15 grams of protein and 26 vitamins and minerals. for when you need a little extra. boost® the number one high protein complete nutritional drink. be up for it
>> 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. 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
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. its steam engines taken out of service only a few years ago. and he sent his son, francisco solano lópez, to europe. >> anthony: in his mission, his father had sent him out to get what?
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 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.
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. 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.