Nigel Cawthorne: The Empress of South America

Reviewed by FEDERICO MONSALVE

As feminist academics continue to research, interpret and contextualise history, people such as Eliza (aka Elisa) Lynch are the perfect missing links to the
male-dominated world of 19th-century Latin America.

The Empress of South America is one of the many biographies about Lynch that are being churned out by publishing houses in the United States and Britain.

Lynch broke almost every stereotype of a proper 19th-century aristocrat, fleeing the Irish potato famine to become a high-class prostitute in the luxurious brothels of Paris, then becoming the companion of dictator Francisco Solano Lopez and behind-the-scenes ruler of Paraguay.

As tenacious as she was ruthless, power- and money-hungry, and not ashamed to use her charms to reel in the highest bidder, Lynch changed the course of Paraguayan history.

Lynch's climb into the lavish world of the grandes cocottes came thanks to marriage (at 15) to a 40-year-old French Army vet, whom she later left for a higher-ranking Russian officer.

After his disappearance into the war machine, Eliza was left in Paris with a mansion and no means to support herself. That is until Lopez, the enfant terrible of the Paraguayan aristocracy proposed to her four weeks after an encounter in a local parlour.

From there Cawthorne explores the torrid dictatorship of Lopez and Lynch, who is said to have ordered executions simply because they were overheard criticising Lopez' fashion choices.

Cawthorne paints her as a cold, ruthless woman with little to no love for her husband but only for his power and money. He shows her as a machiavellian socialite with an iron heart and a shopping addiction that cost the country millions a year. She set Lopez on the track of the War of the Triple Alliance (Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay combating the Paraguayan forces) and is credited with bankrupting what was South America's richest country.

This is a blood-drenched, brutal book, told with amazing ease and painstaking detail. So much detail that one can only wonder how much of it is skewed with poetic licence to try to demonise Lynch.

Paraguay's Apothecary General George Masterman put it best: "From Paris [Lopez] imported two novelties, a French uniform ... and his mistress; the latter the most fatal step in his life."

Publisher: Arrow Books

Price: $27.95