MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Lula says Paraguay chose to invade Brazil; Paraguayan Congress accuses him of distorting history

Lula said Brazil likes peace but cannot forget that Paraguay one day decided to invade Brazil, adding that it later did the same to Argentina and Uruguay

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva invoked the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) to defend increased defense spending, in remarks that drew formal rejection this week from both chambers of Paraguay's Congress.

During a visit on Friday to a plant belonging to the defense company Avibras Aeroespacial, Lula said Brazil likes peace but cannot forget that Paraguay one day decided to invade Brazil, adding that it later did the same to Argentina and Uruguay. Press accounts differ on the order in which he named the three countries.

Paraguay's Senate approved a declaration on Wednesday, in an extraordinary session, to strongly condemn the remarks. The text, proposed by opposition senator Eduardo Nakayama, argues that the comments distort and unilaterally simplify the origins of the conflict and cast Paraguay as the sole aggressor, omitting the Brazilian Empire's intervention in Uruguay. Senators urged Brazilian authorities to adopt a respectful, balanced and truthful treatment of the two countries' shared history, and stressed that Paraguay poses no threat to Brazil's sovereignty or territorial integrity.

The Chamber of Deputies approved a declaration along similar lines by majority vote and added a request that Santiago Peña's government pursue diplomatic efforts toward the return of war trophies still held in Brazil. Among them it cited the Cristiano Cannon, an artillery piece cast in 1866 from bronze church bells donated by the population and now held at the National Historical Museum in Rio de Janeiro.

Paraguayan lawmakers and historians maintain that the conflict did not stem from expansionist ambitions on their country's part but as a response by the Paraguayan government of the day to Brazil's military intervention in Uruguay's civil war in 1864. The origins of the war remain a subject of historiographical debate.

Estimates of Paraguay's human losses vary widely and no academic consensus exists, given the absence of reliable census records. The text approved by the Senate puts the loss at between 50% and 60% of the population and describes the consequences as catastrophic and without parallel in South American history, citing economic devastation, prolonged military occupation and the imposition of war debts. Other published estimates are considerably lower.

Chamber of Deputies President Raúl Latorre described the conflict as the greatest genocide on the continent and criticized Lula for speaking too lightly about it. During the Senate debate, opposition senator Ignacio Iramain said the Brazilian leader has the right to defend his country's security but not to use Paraguay's tragedy to justify weapons.

Paraguay's foreign ministry has issued no official statement, a silence criticized by lawmakers across party lines. Nakayama attributed the remarks to electoral calculation on Lula's part, an interpretation the senator himself presented as conjecture. Brazil holds general elections in October.