ABSTRACT
The mobilized Paraguayan peasantry proved to be a fierce and relentless defender of the national patrimony. The professionalization of the Paraguayan Army had yielded a competent, modern officer corps. In contrast to the turbulent of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the subsequent disorder of post-1932 Paraguay, the mid- to late 1920s and early 1930s appear as an oasis in Paraguayan history. The Liberals constituted a traditional party with paternalistic, clientilistic links to ordinary Paraguayans in the countryside; as a result, the Liberal governments after 1904 did not install democracy but merely replaced the strong rule of military men with the weak rule of a civilian oligarchy. The Morinigo government was openly sympathetic to the Nazi regime in Germany during the World War II years. The Chaco War had brought the February Revolution to power; ironically, the Chaco War also brought it down.
