Liberal Party

The Liberal Party (Partido Liberal) was one of the two traditional political parties in Paraguay. Arising out of the political confusion of the mid-1880s, the party was originally a small clique of some forty friends, most of them asunceños. They had little ideological orientation per se and were chiefly interested in displacing the governing faction led by Bernardino Caballero, Patricio Escobar, and José Segundo Decoud. This latter group, reacting to the establishment of the Liberal Party in 1887, created the Colorado Party during the same year. Thus were mapped out the two contending sides of an enduring political rivalry.

The Liberals got a chance at power in 1891, when they attempted to overthrow the moderate Colorado government of Juan Gualberto González. Their failure led to a split in the party that paralleled a split among the Colorados and led to no end of intrigues over the next decade.

The Liberal Party reunified in 1902, setting the stage for a major revolution two years later that finally gave the Liberals control of the government. The Liberal rule that followed was distinguished by a broad commitment to laissez-faire economic policies and by heavy-handed paternalism in the political realm. The limitations of this model were clear by the mid-1930s, when a combination of factors—the Great Depression, the Chaco War, and the rise of a more radical political alternative—brought about the February Revolution of 1936.

The Liberals, though still relatively unpopular, were briefly restored to power at the end of the decade, but the ancien régime was clearly on the wane. The well-known war hero, General José Félix Estigarribia, promised to "modernize" party doctrine when he became president in 1939. Instead, his death one year later brought about an outright ban on party activities from 1941 to 1946 during the presidency of Higínio Morínigo.

Except for a brief flicker of promise at the time of the 1947 civil war, the Liberal Party has remained in opposition ever since. During the Stronato (1954–1989), the Liberals again split into several factions, with a minority advocating cooperation with General Alfredo Stroessner. Repressive measures enacted against the majority faction, led by Domingo Laino, kept traditional Liberals on their guard until the dictator's fall in 1989. Even with subsequent democratic reforms, however, the party did not regain the strong influence it had once commanded, obtaining only 20 percent of the vote in the 1989 presidential election. As of 2006, the successor of the Liberal Party, the Authentic Radical Liberal Party received approximately 25 percent of the vote in the legislative elections.

See alsoParaguay: The Twentieth Century; Paraguay, Political Parties: Colorado Party.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

R. Andrew Nickson, Historical Dictionary of Paraguay (1993), pp. 452-455.

Additional Bibliography

Freire Esteves, Gomes. Historia contemporánea del Paraguay. Asunción, Paraguay: El Lector, 1996.

Lewis, Paul H. Political Parties and Generations in Paraguay's Liberal Era, 1869–1940. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993.

                                    Thomas L. Whigham