Federico Chávez

Federico Chaves was president of Paraguay for five years and was removed by the army commander he had armed. He was a Colorado Party lawyer of long standing, from the faction known as the democraticos, and came to the presidency in 1949 after a period in which Paraguay went through six presidents in a year following a civil war that had driven the Liberals and the Febreristas into exile. He governed a one-party state under a state of siege that was renewed continuously, and he did some things that outlasted him: women received the vote under his government, and he moved Paraguayan foreign policy towards Peron's Argentina, signing economic agreements that were meant to reduce dependence on Brazil. The economy did not cooperate. Inflation, a currency devaluation forced by the central bank in 1954, and factional splitting inside the Colorados left him without a base. He had promoted Alfredo Stroessner to command the armed forces in 1951, calculating that a German-descended officer with no party faction was safe. In May 1954, after Chaves attempted to move against an officer close to Stroessner, the army took Asuncion in a short action with a few dozen dead. Chaves was deposed and briefly detained; a provisional president served out the term, and Stroessner was elected unopposed in July. That dictatorship lasted thirty-four years, the longest in South American history. Chaves lived until 1978 and saw almost all of it. He was in his seventies when he took office and ninety-six when he died. Paraguayan women voted for the first time in 1963, under the dictatorship that replaced him, on a law his government had passed.

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