Carlos Antonio López Ynsfrán (November 4, 1792 – September 10, 1862) served as leader of
Paraguay
Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...
from 1841 to 1862.
Early life
López was born at
Manorá (Asunción)
Manorá (or Manó Râ) is a barrio (neighbourhood) of Asunción, the capital of Paraguay. It has a population of 1,898 people.
Geography
Manorá is bordered near Santo Domingo, Las Lomas, San Jorge, Ycua Sati, San Cristobal, and Villa Morra. ...
on November 4, 1792, as one of eight children.
He graduated from Real Colegio y Seminario de San Carlos and then began a law practice, a profession which allowed him to develop influential connections.
He attracted the hostility of the
dictator
A dictator is a political leader who possesses absolute power. A dictatorship is a state ruled by one dictator or by a small clique. The word originated as the title of a Roman dictator elected by the Roman Senate to rule the republic in ti ...
José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, his reputed uncle, which caused him to go into hiding for several years.
Political career
López served briefly as secretary of the
military junta
A military junta () is a government led by a committee of military leaders. The term ''junta'' means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the national and local junta organized by the Spanish resistance to Napoleon's invasion of Spain in ...
led by Colonel
Mariano Roque Alonso that ruled the country from 1840 to 1841, after the death of Francia.
On March 12, 1841, Congress chose López and Alonso to be joint consuls for three years.
In 1844, he exiled Roque and assumed dictatorial powers. A few months later, Congress adopted a new constitution, which changed the head of state's title from consul to
president and elected López to the new post for a 10-year term.
The constitution vested López with powers almost as sweeping as those "El Supremo" had held for most of his 26-year rule, effectively codifying the dictatorial powers he had seized just months earlier. The document included no guarantees of civil rights; indeed, the word "liberty" was not even mentioned in the text.
He was re-elected for a three-year term in 1854 and again in 1857 for ten more years, with the power to nominate his own successor.
His government was directed towards developing Paraguay's primary resource extraction and strengthening Paraguay's a