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Radio War Nerd EP #22—War of the Triple Alliance, with Ignacio Portes (Patreon)

Published:
2016-02-27 20:53:34
Edited:
2017-08-04 01:43:17
Imported:
2026-06

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  • Radio-War-Nerd-Podcast22-War-Triple-Alliance-2-26-16_-_22716_12.00_PM.mp3

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Content

The War of the Triple Alliance

Guest: Ignacio Portes

Interview with Argentinean writer-journalist Ignacio Portes on the incredible War of the Triple Alliance: Paraguay vs Brazil, Argentina & Uruguay in the 1860s, and the horrific Chaco War of the 1930s between Paraguay and Bolivia . . . 

Read the War Nerd's background articles on the War of the Triple Alliance, and on the Chaco War.

Direct link to this episode's mp3.

Files

Comments

Lo

I was getting worried the war nerd might've been disappeared by roving bands of fascists or something. Glad to be proven wrong.

Adrian Johansson

In South America i kind of like Peru because they have the last Gun Cruiser in the world with Bofors 15,2mm gun turrets :D

Adrian Johansson

In Sweden the Defeat most filled with Mythology is the Great Northern War. We lost that but what's taken out of the conflict was how superior and offensive the Carolean army was (basically religious fanatics). Sweden was grinded down because we got more and more enemies and the King refusing to negotiate because Denmark Russia and Poland had backstabbed Sweden with the declaration of war when it started. A sentiment not well suited to power politics! There was a big Charles XII "cult" in Sweden in the late 19th century and early 20th Swedish army units even got three cornered caps during ww2 to improove morale because they reminded of the ones used by Chales XII Carolean soldiers. When his statue was inagurated in Stockholm there was actually rioting because there was so many people wanting to see it ! Today Nationalism is looked upon as something bad by the PC culture in Sweden put if/when this changes yoiu can be sure that Charles XII will be on center stage among the historical figures !

Tom Muller

Regarding racial dynamics behind Paraguay's destruction: Argentina's Europeanized elite did regard the Paraguayans as riffraff to be put down, but the main thrust of the whole genocidal effort came from Brazil. Mitre left Paraguay in 1867 to take reins of the situation in Buenos Aires, leaving the command to the Marquis of Caxias, to the relief of the whole cadre Brazilian generals, who hated being under Argentinean command even though the imperial army dwarfed the confederate (Argentine) forces 10 to 1. Brazil did not really follow the typical South America template, unlike what John said - it was a slave-holding empire whose indigenous population had been largely exterminated, an European monarchy ruled by a civilian elite. There were no big Native populations and the divide was mostly Black/White, not Criollo/Mestizo. Also, unlike the rest of South America, where the criollo elite was shot through with plantation-owners with their own militias, coffee Barons would not consider wasting their time in the army, whose officer corps came from the (very tiny) middle class. I would concur with Ignacio that Argentina was the great victor - didn't fight much, made a lot of money resupplying the Brazilian Navy in Buenos Aires - since they emerged as a (mostly) unified country, full of resources and without slavery, the abolition of which plunged Brazil in half a century of instability. The 1880-1930 were Argentina's golden years, when it was known as the "Italian Australia", the world's 5th largest economy, rich on cattle and wheat.

Corey J Williams

WTF is wrong with you guys with the shitty guitar intro. I couldn't be more excited to be here an already I'm wondering what is wrong with myself. Please. Just start talking. Or just a couple of drum beats or something for gods sake.

Santiago Tórtora

Happy March 1st everyone! 146 years ago died the man who almost turned the entire population of his country into an heroes. ¡Feliz Día de los Héroes!

Freddy K.

Mr. Ames, you gotta send The Nerd back to audio boot camp. These audio files are clearly not ready for (online) combat. You are publishing them with 192kbit constant bitrate, which would be half-way OK if it was music, but it's human speech. First thing to do: Lose the fat, use variable bitrate. Every summer I do a lot of audio recording at public university lectures because my task is putting them on the web as download and stream. Small file size is a priority, but if I can achieve that with great audio quality thanks to VBR, it becomes a no-brainer. I found that VBR6 works just fine. When it comes to Radio War Nerd, I usually download your mp3s to my phone, so that I can listen on my way to work. Unfortunately, the episode sizes have become Gargantuan lately: Episode #22 measures 167MB and my WNR folder just passed the 2 GB mark (sic!) To demonstrate what I'm talking about, I went ahead and took WNR Episode #20 (<a href="http://exiledonline.com/wnradio/Radio-War-Nerd-Podcast20.mp3)" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://exiledonline.com/wnradio/Radio-War-Nerd-Podcast20.mp3)</a> and encoded it with LAME VBR6 settings: <a href="https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12481593/Radio%20War%20Nerd%2020%20%28VBR6%2075kbit%29.mp3" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/12481593/Radio%20War%20Nerd%2020%20%28VBR6%2075kbit%29.mp3</a> Download, listen and compare. While I would have preferred to create that mp3 from the source instead of an already lossy mp3, it's only 54MB whereas your file is 138MB big. This means that your listeners could download the whole episode 2.5 faster and it would take 2.5 times less space on their phones, while the audio quality is the same. If your listeners stream to their phones, it means 2.5x less money spent on mobile bandwidth. As I said, human speech doesn't need much (my file does fine with 75kbit average). You are close to pushing 750 subscribers (very much deserved). If you are serious about running a professional podcast with 1 show per week, it's high time to get the audio files you are putting out and that recording equipment in order. Right now it feels like a writer who's never heard of touch typing.

Factory Troll

There is nothing like being in Paraguay for a triple alliance war nerd special (sick brag). That war was perhaps the main reason I spent an unhealthy proportion of my youth reading my way through the history of every single non-European county in the world. It then warms my heart to hear such an awesome episode, a collection of enlightening perspectives, insights and details not to be found elsewhere, I only have one objection to Dolans clam of isolationism under Francia. Contrary to popular belief, de Francia did not try to hermetical seal Paraguay of from the outside world, or deliberately increase its isolation, despite his somewhat paranoid attitude toward foreigners. Paraguay’s perceived isolation under Francia is foremostly a result of Paraguay’s remoteness, and the general discontent with Francia’s policies among contemporary ruling elites. Seemingly only Brazil, Britain and Buenos Aires ever made any attempts to establish formal relations, with Brittan and Brazil simply not taking the matter seriously enough and no one being willing to meet Francia’s principal condition, to recognize and treat Paraguay as a fully independent country. River trade on the other hand was both allowed and encouraged by Francia from 1820 and onwards, as the situation stabilized; albeit under strict government control and taxation (de Francia would demand samples of import goods to be handed to him personally for examination). The problem would rather be occasional embargos and restrictions against Paraguaian trade imposed by Buenos Aires. I have always been puzzled by the lack of admiration for, and recognition of, Francia’s work. He crushed the upper class and redistributed their land and resources, marginalized the church, promoted public education and universal health care, collectivized agriculture, put trade under strict government regulation as well as pursuing government monopolies on important commodities and took a liberal stance on sexuality (to say at least), and he was damn successful in doing so. Why didn’t every socialist during the last 150 years have a portrait of this man over their bed?

radiowarnerd

Thanks! I suspected that most accounts of Francia have a negative tilt because his radical socialist policies were hated by the Great Powers, but it's very hard to get pro-Francia perspectives, in part I suppose because it all ended badly. That's the real problem with somebody like that: people get in the habit of obeying, and the third-generation leader turns out to be somebody like Solano Lopez.

Ilias

Could you provide some suggestions on some good History books about the Latin America countries?

Ilias

Insightful comment! Could you provide some suggestions on some good History books about the Latin America countries, in English?

Antoni Gumbau

Hi gentlemen! A most interesting war. I studied about it for a show in a Spanish-speaking podcast. One couldn't help feeling that it was like a performance of the Movie "Die Untergang" in XIXth century Spanish America. This war had some funny units like the "Zuavos da Bahia", a unit of slaves dressed as zouaves. I loved the parallelism drawn by you between the campaign in Vicksburg and that of Humaitá (the Sebastopol of South America, as contemporary sources told). Exellent program and good job, sirs (by the way, that podcast I told you is available here (<a href="http://www.histocast.com/podcasts/histocast-103-guerra-del-paraguay-o-de-la-triple-alianza/)." rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.histocast.com/podcasts/histocast-103-guerra-del-paraguay-o-de-la-triple-alianza/).</a> Cheers!

xnfec

Late to the party but what the hey! A few factoids for cosideration: Uruguay was the a bone of contention between Argentina and Brazil during the early part of its history. I was taught that it was set up by the British to be a buffer between the two. The Argentine dictator Rosas, who was the leader of the federalists mentioned by Jorge in this episode was, supposedly, a friend of the British prime minister, Palmerston, and went into exile there when his opponents (the Unitarians?) won. I've heard that he is buried in Southampton. The war between the Unitarians and the Federalists spilled over into Uruguay with the Federalists/Rosas backing the whites - blancos - under Manuel Oribe and the Unitarians backing the reds - colorados under Fructuoso Rivera. The whites were the rural land owners with the reds being more urban. Oribe laid siege to Montevideo for ten years. My great, great grandfather may have fought in this as a young man and, according to family legend, became friends with Urquiza, either there or later on, saving his life at some point. Another person fighting in the siege was Garibaldi, who had gone into exile there, from Italy where he was a wanted man. Initially, he fought in an failed attempt to gain independance for the southern Brazilian province of Rio Grande do Sul, but when that failed, he allied himself with the colorados in Uruguay who were eventually victorious - though the civil wars between the blancos and the colorados went on until the turn of the century. My source for this is a biography of Garibaldi by Jasper Ridley. At the time, if you had 100 men in Uruguay, you had an army. Battles were fought but the principal tactic was to steal your enemies horses. Not much to add about Paraguay except something my father told me which was that it was the biggest importer of scotch whiskey in south america - he worked in the industry - and that most of it was smuggled into Argentina and Brazil. I met a wealthy colleague of my fathers who was keen to by land in Paraguay and I heard a rumour that G. W. Bush had bought land there. I believe the US got permission to establish a military base there. Last piece on Uruguay. You mentioned Licio Gelli. When he was unmasked in Italy, he fled to Uruguay and lived there for many years. There was a saying in Uruguay that to get anywhere you had to be a mason and, during the dictatatorship, if you wanted to be head if the military, you had to be a mason. One of the big banks even had masonic arms on its head office building. Coincidence? I think not!! I'm not an expert or scholar by any means. Most of this is what people have told me or I have read. Really enjoy the shows and am glad to contribute in my modest way.

xnfec

sorry,, meant Ignacio, not Jorge

Hugo Turner

For a Great Account of Modern Argentine History that also tied in with the italian p-2 lodge Mark mentioned at end and involved Argentina's version of GLADIO check out "Incomplete Transition: Military Power and Democracy in Argentina." By J. Patrice McSherry author of the defitive book on Operation Condor "Predatory States" another weird coincedence Paraguays Fascist dictator was a friend to the now forgotten croatian Ustashe terrorist movement of the 70's who went to work for him as i discovered researching the world Anti-communist league. (See "Inside the League")

Jan Meyer

@Successful collaboration policies: Pretty much the same goes for Germany as for Italy. You got your fringe types (Adenauer was a Rhineland-separatist who would not have minded reigning in a French satellite, a sprinkling of socialist (wehner, fresh from Hotel Lux in Moscow and having sworn of communsim) Schuhmacher (fresh out of one of the better KZs but he would still only live til 1952) and a whole lot of people who might not have been Nazis in the revolutionary sense but where either heavily involved with the system and its organizations (Hanns Martin Schleyer, president of the Federation of German industry and German Emplyoers association had been in the SS during the war, got denazified by 1949, became secretary in chamber of commerce in Baden and then climbed the ladder to the halls of power) or were former functionaries of the NS-System repurposed for US use (Reinhard Gehlen who founded the West Germany intelligence agency comes to mind; he run a ring of former SS SD and Wehrmacht officers against the Russians for the Americans), etc. In the end there is a reason why the former American zone of occupation is still one of the most xenophobic areas of Germany and why Bavaria has remained light brown.

Jan Meyer

And don't even get me started on Gladio, use of Nazi contacts to further contacts with the Mujahideen ("A mosque in Munich" deals with this). All in all the Americans could not wait to make the nazis fight the Communist (again).

xnfec

Interestingly, both wars Bolivia lost were over deserts.