Essay
La muerte del Mariscal López
Not translated into English
Juan Silvano Godoi · 1905
Synopsis
The essay returns to the end of Marshal Francisco Solano López, killed at Cerro Corá on 1 March 1870. It first recalls the ruin of the country, which according to the author went from one million three hundred thousand inhabitants in 1864 to two hundred and twenty thousand in 1870, then follows the retreat northward of the last soldiers through the forests of Amambay. On the morning of 1 March, a Caainguá cacique offers the marshal refuge if he disbands his army; López refuses and gathers his chiefs. The account draws on the testimony of an Argentine attached to the Brazilian troops.
Context
The text appeared in 1905, thirty-five years after the events, almost at the same time as a piece by Juan Emiliano O'Leary, who had not been born in 1870; Godoi, for his part, was twenty and had just arrived from Buenos Aires. It was reprinted in 1912 in a volume of his essays. The historian Milda Rivarola, who in 2011 gathered it with other documents on the marshal's death, notes that it fell into oblivion during the great quarrel between nationalists and liberals, but that it was the first, and that these essays bring into history figures absent from the testimonies of the time, such as the cacique.
Who it is for
In Spanish, never translated; the text can be read in Milda Rivarola's anthology and in facsimile. Ornate prose, laden with adjectives and classical quotations.
Prizes and reception
The text that started the dispute over the marshal, still cited by historians who recount the last battle of the war.