I the Supreme

by Augusto Roa Bastos

  Here is a very brief roundup of some of the statements on the subject that were forthcoming from the most noted national historians (presented in the order in which they were made public):

  Benigno Riquelme García (February 23, 1961):

  “Allow me to state to Your Excellency that personally, and in view of the information with which I am acquainted, I am of the opinion that there exist valid reasons to presume that both the remains extant in the Museo Histórico Nacional de Buenos Aires and those in our own Museo Godoi have been removed from a grave that was undoubtedly that of the illustrious patriot in question.

  “What could well be a matter of dispute is the previously mentioned contestation of the authenticity of these remains, an assessment that might either be invalidated or substantiated following unbiased expertise, which I most respectfully suggest to Your Excellency, and which might be carried out by the institutions listed below:

  SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

  United States National Museum

  Washington, D.C.

  DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

  Yale University

  U.S.A.

  PEABODY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY

  Harvard University

  Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

  “Their competency and impartiality in this matter would be beyond question. As regards the necessary circumspection that the Government of the Republic must observe on initiating the pertinent steps, for understandable reasons that it is not opportune to explain I believe that it is necessary to avoid a prudence so excessive that it will preclude making a gesture whose exemplarity is beyond all doubt, whatever the verdict of the scientific centers which I have taken the liberty of proposing.” [There is a report appended that traces the fate of the remains preserved in the Museo Histórico Nacional de Buenos Aires and criticizes the expert opinion of Dr. Félix F. Outes concerning the aforementioned remains, rejecting and sarcastically demolishing the latter’s conclusions.]

  Jesús Blanco Sánchez (March 14, 1961):

  “To begin with, I must inform Your Excellency that the decision of the Superior Government to honor the memory of our heroes of National Independence is especially gratifying to me and impresses me as being most laudable. Allow me therefore to add that from the moment that our government undertakes this project, it is of fundamental importance that it be pursued with absolute seriousness, and above all that all possible steps be taken in order to avoid unpleasant surprises, to which the Government of the Nation cannot expose itself.

  “As Your Excellency is well aware, if these remains were in our own country there would be no major problem standing in the way of the realization of this most felicitous aim, but in the final analysis and over and above all else it is the symbolic meaning that such things have which is always most conspicuous. But in view of the fact that these remains must be brought from Buenos Aires, where this hero of our Independence has been so bitterly fought, especially by a powerful and persistent current of opinion that is adverse both to his person and, even more particularly, to his labor as Head of Government, this subject, for these reasons, becomes delicate and worthy of careful and objective study. In this connection, I believe that the aforementioned current of opinion is again on the rise in Argentina at present, and therefore we must foresee the possibility that the remains preserved in the Museo Histórico de Buenos Aires are not authentic; if this should prove to be the case, there can be no doubt that we would expose ourselves to a treacherous propaganda campaign aimed at leaving us in a ridiculous position.

  “No one can question the authenticity of the document. [The reference is to a document that apparently proves that the remains are authentic.] In my opinion it does not constitute completely convincing proof, since whoever kept these relics ‘in a box of noodles’ for some time and then gave them to a foreigner is eloquently indicating to us that they never aroused his interest in the slightest, nor did they awaken in him any patriotic feeling whatsoever.”

  Manuel Peña Villamil (March 24, 1961):

  “In order to provide Your Excellency with the desired information while adhering to a strict criterion of scientific research, it becomes necessary to answer two questions which, although related, correspond to different aspects of the problem. Firstly, is it likely that the remains extant in the Museo Histórico Nacional de Buenos Aires are those of the Perpetual Dictator? Secondly, does the present state of the historical investigations of the matter authorize the Superior Government to initiate official steps in order to secure the return of these mortal remains?

  “In answer to the first problem posed, I must say that I am not in a position either to affirm or deny categorically that these remains are authentic. Before any answer can be given, it is necessary to consider the procedures followed by Señor Loizaga in order to exhume the remains from the old church of the Encarnación. As it happens, we have Señor Loizaga’s own version of the exhumation, in the form of a letter sent to the Argentine historian Dr. Estanislao Zeballos. In a monograph entitled Muerte y Exhumación de los restos del Dictador Perpetuo del Paraguay, the Paraguayan historian Ricardo Lafuente Machaín reproduces it without essential variants and without further research. Father Becchi and Señor Juan Silvano Godoi are mentioned as eyewitnesses of the event. On that occasion the latter removed another skull from the same grave; it is preserved in the museum in Asunción that bears his name.

  “The observations which seem to us to indicate the procedure followed by Señor Loizaga in effecting the aforementioned exhumation are as follows: (a) His act was inspired not by a spirit of serious and impartial historical investigation but by political passion; (b) He did not submit the remains to any expert examination that would exclude the possibility that an error had been made in the process of exhumation.” [There follow other considerations in which he questions the authenticity of the remains, as certified in a report by the Paraguayan physician Dr. Pedro Peña, published in the daily La Prensa, Asunción, I° = II = 1898, and in the famous phrenological study by the Argentine physician Dr. Félix F. Outes, 1925, a key document in this dispute between museums, published in the Boletín del Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas, Fac. Filosofía y Letras de Buenos Aires (tomo IV, pp. 1 ff.).]

  Julio César Chaves (March 28, 1961):

  “Toward the middle of the year 1841, the political atmosphere in Paraguay was extremely tense as a heated polemic concerning the life and works of El Supremo began. Pamphlets and lampoons circulated, prose and verse made the rounds. His enemies and his supporters girded themselves for battle and threw themselves into it with equal passion. The former declared that the Supreme was not worthy of being laid to rest in a church and publicly announced their intention of getting their hands on his remains so as to toss them on a rubbish heap. We may here remind the reader that a short time later a placard appeared on the door of the church, stating that it had been sent by him from hell and begging that he be removed from that sacred place in order to lessen his burden of sin. Moreover, several of the families cruelly persecuted by El Supremo, among them the Machaíns, made no secret of their plans to take their vengeance upon his remains. His supporters, in their turn, did not remain inactive. They organized continual popular demonstrations whose participants marched in procession to their leader’s grave. The tension grew all through the year 1841 and would appear to have reached its peak on September 20, the first anniversary of the death of the Supreme Dictator. The passions that had been unleashed threatened to set off a civil war; the atmosphere became so heated that it threatened the peace of the nation, particularly necessary at that juncture in order to allow it to confront and resolve serious international, economic and social problems. It was then that the Consuls resolved to take action, decisively and dramatically: they ordered that the mausoleum housing the remains be demolished and the body buried ‘no one knows where.’ According to Alfred Demersay’s version of events (Le
Docteur Francia, Dictateur du Paraguay, 1856): ‘He was buried in the church of the Encarnación and a granite column marked his last resting place for the veneration and worship of his numerous partisans. It was said that shortly after the anniversary of that day of mourning the mausoleum disappeared, and the rumor spread that the remains of the famous Doctor had been transferred to the cemetery of the church. Part of this story straight out of a novel was true, but the consular government, the mysterious source of this measure inspired by politics, vehemently denied any thought of a gratuitous profanation. The Supreme now rests in the place that the piety of those men chose for him, but his tomb has never ceased to case a shadow upon his successors.’

  “Thomas Jefferson Page, the captain of the North American vessel Water Witch, which arrived in Paraguay on a mission of exploration and research, has this to say on the subject: ‘The churches are well maintained, but one of them, quite evidently, was less well attended than the others. The good people rarely mention the fact, because an awesome mystery has penetrated within its sacred limits. One quiet morning, the temple was opened for prayer as usual: the monument had been shattered and the bones of the tyrant had disappeared forever. No one knew how they had disappeared, no one asked what had become of them. It was merely whispered that the devil had reclaimed what was his: body and soul.’ (La Plata, The Argentina Confederation and Paraguay, London, 1859.)

  “Can the remains donated by Dr. Estanislao S. Zeballos to the Museo Histórico Nacional de Buenos Aires be those of the Perpetual Dictator of Paraguay? These remains were on exhibition for many years in this museum: they are at present in the basement of that institution, among the objects of no value.

  “We know of only two opinions, both well-supported and both negative [the reference is to the two studies already mentioned]. Outes, an eminent scientist, impelled by his curiosity as a researcher, examined the supposed remains. After so doing, he stated: ‘In the first place, the calvaria, because of its morphological characteristics and its anatomical features, belongs to an individual of the feminine sex, 40 years old at most, who very probably was not a European, sensu lato. There is no relationship whatsoever between the calotte and the facial mask. Quite aside from the characteristics offered by the latter, any effort of reconstruction based on both pieces would be fruitless, since there is an excess of frontal bone in each. This is evidence, prima facie, that it corresponds to two individuals. The jaw, finally, is that of a child, which at death still had all of its milk teeth.’

  “His conclusions, therefore, are as follows: Firstly: The skullcap belonged to a woman, 40 years old at most, and non-European: either black or Indian. Secondly: The facial mask was that of an adult, not of a senile. Thirdly: The jaw belonged to a child less than six years old.”

  2. Migration of the remains of EL SUPREMO

  R. Antonio Ramos (April 6, 1961):

  “Francisco Wisner de Morgenstern, who wrote a book about The Supreme Dictator at the request of Marshal Francisco Solano López, notes the following: ‘A few months after the death of the Dictator, the sacristan of the church was surprised one morning to find the sepulcher where he was buried open. It was never discovered who the authors of this deed were; however, they had left a trail that disappeared on the shore of the Paraguay River, into which there is good reason to presume that they were thrown, since traces were found on the aforementioned shore which prove this. Several versions of what had happened made the rounds in the Asunción of that era: one of them had it that orders had been given men paid by the M….family to remove the remains and throw them into the river, as vengeance for the execution of members of this same family ordered by the Dictator after the last Yegros conspiracy was discovered; another version was that a certain family had the remains taken from the vault in order to incinerate them and throw his ashes to the winds; and finally, that another family, by agreement with the priest, removed them in order to hide them elsewhere.’ ” [Commentary of the Compiler: If we accept Wisner’s version, based on gossip whispered about the city wherein the remains of El Supremo disappear into water, fire, air, or earth, we find ourselves confronted with the fact that the migration of his remains, profaned out of hatred or vengeance, never took place.]

  Be that as it may, let us follow the remainder of Dr. Ramos’s statement:

  “Wisner de Morgenstern nonetheless cites another version based on testimony that we shall now examine. Carlos Loizaga, who was a member of the triumvirate set up in Asunción in 1869 and who negotiated with Baron de Cotegipe the peace treaty with Brazil [the reference is to the puppet government placed in power by the occupation forces of the War of ’70, a year before it officially ended], states in a letter addressed to Dr. Estanislao Zeballos that he [the ex-triumvir Loizaga], accompanied by Father Vecchi, the parish priest of Encarnación, exhumed ‘the remains of the tyrant.’ Those relics—he adds—had previously been in a sarcophagus located to one side of the High Altar of that church, and the parish priest Don Juan Gregorio Urbieta, later Bishop, removed them one night, in the days of Don Carlos Antonio López, and buried them behind the sacristy, in 1841.

  “In the aforementioned letter by Carlos Loizaga, he states that Father Vecchi was present when he exhumed the ‘remains of the Tyrant.’ But Ricardo de Lafuente Machaín states that Juan Silvano Godoy was present as well. ‘Despite the great circumspection surrounding this undertaking’—he declares—‘Dr. Juan Silvano Godoy, secretary of the High Court of Justice, learned of it, and though he had not been invited to attend, decided to do so. On the appointed night he hid behind one of the pillars, awaiting the arrival of Señor de Loizaga. From there he flew forth to meet him, enveloped in his cape and an immense broad-brimmed hat, like a giant bat in human form. Once recovered from his fright, occasioned by the place, the circumstances, and the intentions of this sudden apparition, or perhaps judging the latter to be irreproachable, Señor de Loizaga offered no objections to the functionary’s joining him and the workmen, and the latter set to work. Once the stone was removed and the workers’ grub-hoes dug in, human remains soon appeared. It was presumed that those of the Supreme Dictator were the ones lying at the very top. Señor de Loizaga ordered them to be collected and placed in a little noodle box that he had brought with him especially for that purpose. But amid the earth and the debris another skull came to light. Señor Godoy leaned down, picked it up, and carried it off underneath his cape. They say that the ex triumvir, Señor de Loizaga, watched him take off into the distance, wondering for a moment which of the two skulls was the real one. He was nonetheless quite certain that the remains he had collected in the noodle box were those of The Supreme, and stowed it away in an attic in his house until he could decide what to do with the contents.’ ” [Señor Godoy kept the skull that he had carried away with him that night in his private museum, worthy of a man of the Renaissance; thus the story of the remains is left hanging suspended at this fork in the path of the bicephalous skull of the tyrant, other scholiasts comment.]

  Dr. Ramos goes on: “Let us now see what happened to the skull collected by Loizaga. At the time of his visit to Asunción in 1876, Dr. Honorio Leguizamón, the ship’s physician of the Argentine gunboat Paraná, learned that ‘the remains of the Perpetual Dictator were in the possession of Carlos Loizaga.’ This news reached him through the intermediary of the latter’s family. Leguizamón tried ‘to see and examine the precious remains.’ Loizaga refused at first, but later acceded to the desires of the Argentine physician [who had treated him and cured him of a serious disease]. Dr. Leguizamón himself offers the following account: ‘The remains were handed over to me inside a large noodle box. I was vastly disappointed to find myself in possession of nothing more than a shapeless mass of bones shattered to bits with a hammer. Knowing the temperament of my patient as well as his long-standing hatred of the Dictator, it was not difficult for me to conjecture the motive that lay behind those hammer-blows. Of the skull only the upper portion was well preserved. As for garm
ents all I found was the sole of a shoe that would fit only a very small foot; probably that of a very young child. I persuaded Señor Loizaga, from whom I refused to accept any honoraria, to allow me to take away with me the skull of what had once been El Supremo of Paraguay.’

  “At a later date,” Dr. Ramos concludes, “Leguizamón gave the intact portion of the skull to Dr. Estanislao Zeballos, who donated it in turn to the Museo Histórico Nacional de Buenos Aires. According to the latest information the skull is no longer on public exhibition, as was the case in earlier days. In view of the considerations briefly outlined above, in no way meant to exhaust the subject, it cannot be definitely stated that the skull preserved in the Museo Histórico Nacional de Buenos Aires is that of the Supreme Dictator. There exist no certain facts to support such a statement.”

  Marco Antonio Laconich (April 21, 1961):

  “After Asunción fell to the Triple Alliance, the [Paraguayan] legionnaries took over the sacked and pillaged captive city. And like frenetic worm-wolves [sic: misprint?] they began to dig about in the sacred ground of the dead, to satisfy hatreds toward El Supremo that went back half a century. In 1870 Loizaga was a member of the Triumvirate placed in power in Asunción by the allies, as the provisory ‘Paraguayan’ government. Loizaga was a primate of the Legion. We do not doubt for an instant that he was the author of this profanation of sacred remains, of which he appears to boast in his answer to Dr. Zeballos. Moreover, he was in a privileged position to commit it with the greatest impunity; but if he believed that he had found the Dictator’s grave, and died in that belief, he was laboring under a serious misapprehension. For there is every reason to presume that Loizaga stumbled on a common grave of some sort and extracted from it, in the dead of night, the human remains that he long kept in his house, in a noodle box. We conclude that it was a common grave on the basis of the results of the analysis of some of these bones made by Dr. Outes; bones carried away with him by Dr. H. Leguizamón.