Juan Silvano Godoi

Juan Silvano Godoi (November 12, 1850 – January 1926) was a librarian and intellectual at the time of the Paraguayan national reconstruction.

Childhood and studies He was born in Asunción on November 12, 1850. He was the son of the Colonel Juan Vicente Godoy and Petrona Echagüe. Narciso Echagüe y Andía, his mother's father, was one of the leaders of the national independence process. He was imprisoned during Francia's dictatorship, and shot after twenty years in jail.

Juan Silvano studied in the Jesuit College of the Inmaculate Conception in the city of Santa Fe, Argentina. There, he was condisciple of José Zorrilla de San Martín. In the holidays of 1864, he spent some time in Asunción. Due to his short age and good luck, Francisco Solano López authorized him to continue his education in Argentina. This way, he avoided, along with two of his brothers, the Paraguayan War in which sixteen of the Echagüe family died. Some of the deceased were meritorious soldiers.

He entered the Faculty of Law of the University of Buenos Aires, and stayed there during most of the war. In January 1869, once Asunción was occupied, he interrupted his studies to move back to his land with a group of young fellow patriots. In spite of his religious formation, Godoi had become a mason and a freethinker.

The post-war During the time he spent in Paraguay after his return he knew many young national leaders. He was a co-founder of the Gran Club del Pueblo (a precursor of the traditional Liberal Party) along with José Segundo Decoud, Facundo Machaín, Juan José Decoud, Cayo Miltos and Miguel Palacios. He witnessed how many of his previously mentioned fellows vanished.

He was elected as a conventional in the district of the Catedral. He was a member of the commission that was in charge of redacting the Constitution of 1870.

Exile and late life After the failed revolution, Godoi lived an eighteen year-long exile in Buenos Aires. His cultural background and education led him to meet most of the leading Argentine intellectuals, like Aristóbulo del Valle, Ramón J. Cárcano, Guido Spano, Mariano Pelliza and others.

During the government of Colonel Escurra, in 1895, he returned to Paraguay. He took his library of twenty thousand volumes along with him. He also took many of his famous paintings. In addition to this he offered the country two books of his own, as a display of patriotism in spite of his long absence.

In 1901, he became general director of the National Library, Museum and Archives. He represented Paraguay in 1910, the century of Argentina’s independence, in the American Congress.

Godoi died in January 1926, in Asunción. The mother of his children was Bienvenida Rivarola.