Eliza Lynch

Eliza Alice Lynch (Charleville, County Cork, Ireland, 19 November 1833 – Paris, France, 25 July 1886) was the Irish mistress-wife of Francisco Solano López, president of Paraguay.

Slandered as the most vilified woman in Latin American history, she was dubbed as "an ambitious courtesan" who seduced the heir apparent of the Government of Paraguay, Francisco Solano López, turning him into "a bloodthirsty dictator." However, all those accusations were part of the propaganda-warfare by the allies during the Paraguayan War, and are now disproven.

Nowadays, she is considered as a "National Heroine" of Paraguay.

Early life She was born Eliza Alicia Lynch in Charleville, County Cork, Ireland, at the time part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. She was the daughter of John Lynch, MD and Jane Clarke Lloyd, who was from a family of officers of the Royal Navy. She emigrated at the age of ten with her family to Paris to escape the Great Irish Famine. On 3 June 1850, she married Xavier Quatrefages, a French officer who was shortly afterwards posted to Algeria. She accompanied him, but at eighteen years of age, due to deteriorating health, she returned to Paris to live with her mother in the Strafford household. Courtesy of a few fortuitous introductions, she later entered the elite circle surrounding Princess Mathilde Bonaparte and quickly set herself up as a courtesan.

Eliza Lynch was described as possessing a Junoesque figure, golden blonde hair and a provocative smile. In 1854, Eliza met General Francisco Solano López, son of Carlos Antonio López, the president of Paraguay. The young general, in training with the French army, regarded his country's interests above all as fundamental reasons for his European journey. However, Lynch and López would begin a relationship which led her to return with him during that same year to Paraguay.

Paraguay

Once in Paraguay, Eliza Lynch became López's partner, bearing him six children in total.

She arguably is considered to be the reason López was so ambitious. However, in a book she wrote in 1876 while in Buenos Aires titled "Exposición. Protesta que hace Elisa A. Lynch" (Exposition. Protest made by Elisa A. Lynch) she states that she had actually no knowledge of and did not meddle in political affairs, rather dedicating her time during the war to helping the wounded and the innumerable families which followed López wherever he went. One of these women was Ramona Martínez, who became known as "the American Joan of Arc" for her fighting and encouragement of the soldiers.

After the Brazilian forces killed López, they headed towards the civilians in order to capture them. López and Lynch's eldest son Juan Francisco, who had been promoted to colonel during the war and was fifteen years old, was with her. The Brazilian officers told him to surrender, and upon replying "Un coronel paraguayo nunca se rinde" (A Paraguayan colonel never surrenders) he was shot and killed by the allied soldiers. At this Lynch, after jumping and covering her son's body, exclaimed "¿Esta es la civilización que han prometido?" ("Is this the civilization you have promised?") in reference to the allies' claim that they intended to free Paraguay from a tyrant and deliver freedom and civilization to the nation. She then buried both López and her son with her bare hands before being taken as prisoner. She returned to Europe with her remaining children; and after five years, and under promises of the then-elected Paraguayan president Juan Bautista Gill that she would be respected, she decided to return to Paraguay to settle there and try to claim her former property. It was during these events that she wrote her book.

Eliza Lynch died in obscurity in Paris on 25 July 1886. Over one hundred years later, her body was exhumed and brought back to Paraguay where the dictator General Alfredo Stroessner proclaimed her a national heroine. Her remains are now located in the national cemetery "Cementerio de la Recoleta". Lynch is known as Madam or Madama Lynch in Paraguay due to her European origins, the fact that she never married López, and the implications of her past as a courtesan.

Eliza Lynch in art and literature

Non-fiction Book published in 1870 about Elisa Lynch.Elisa Lynch por Orion, critica literaria, by Mariano Pelliza (1870). A history based facts in The Shadows of Elisa Lynch by Siãn Rees. "There is no doubting her scholarship and fine writing"—Sunday Times. A sympathetic biography which discovers her birthplace is "The Lives of Eliza Lynch" by Michael Lillis and Ronan Fanning (2009) Gill & Macmillan, Dublin. A more fictional leaning anti-Lynch work, The Empress of South America by Nigel Cawthorne. "Calumnia" La historia de Elisa Lynch y la guerra de la triple alianza by Michael Lillis y Ronan Fanning. Paraguay 2009 (Spanish translation)

Fiction Eliza Lynch is often noted as the Paraguayan predecessor to the Argentine Evita (without the change of heart from aristocratic elitism to champion of the downtrodden). Due to the melodramatic appeal of her story, many fictionalized accounts of her life were written at the time and up to the present day, but the historical record is somewhat ignored and liberties are taken to maximize dramatic effect. Novels include:

William Edmund Barrett, Woman on Horseback (1938) Graham Shelby, Demand the World (1990) Anne Enright, The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2003) Lily Tuck, The News from Paraguay (2004), which won the National Book Award for that year

See also The Shadows of Eliza Lynch by Sian Rees (Headline Review (6 January 2003)) and The Empress of South America by Nigel Cawthorne (William Heinemann, London 2003).

Madame Lynch y Solano López by Maria Concepción Leyes de Chávez. Editorial "El Lector" 1996 Paraguay. (Spanish)

Elisa Lynch by Hector Varela. Editorial "El Elefante Blanco". Argentina 1997. (Spanish)

Pancha Garmendia y Elisa Lynch Opera en cinco actos by Augusto Roa Bastos. Paraguay 2006. Editorial "Servilibro" (Spanish)

La Gran Infortunada by Josefina Plá. Ediciones "Criterio" Paraguay 2007. (Spanish)

Madame Lynch and Friend by Alyn Brodsky. Harper and Row Publishers New York 1975. (English)

The play Visions (1978) by Louis Nowra depicts Lynch and López leading Paraguay to disaster in the Paraguayan War.

Ballet in two acts "Elisa" (2010) libretto by Jaime Pintos and Carla Castro, music by Nancy Luzko and Daniel Luzko. Commissioned by Ballet Municipal de Asunción

Film In the 2013 biographical film Eliza Lynch: Queen of Paraguay, Eliza Lynch was portrayed by Maria Doyle Kennedy.