Aceval, Benjamín (1845–1902)

A Paraguayan educator and diplomat, Benjamín Aceval is commonly associated with the Gran Chaco border negotiations of the 1870s and 1880s, but was also largely responsible for the recovery of his country's educational system in the wake of the disastrous War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870). A native asunceño (resident of Asunción, Paraguay's capital), he received his early education at the Colegio de Monserrat in Córdoba, Argentina, before going on to complete legal studies in Buenos Aires in 1873. He accompanied the stream of expatriates returning to Paraguay during the Brazilian occupation, and upon arrival in his native city took up journalism, becoming the editor of the liberal newspaper La Reforma. For a short time, he headed the Justice and Education ministries before heading the negotiating team sent to Washington in 1875 to argue the Paraguayan side of the Chaco border dispute with Argentina. Aceval's careful delineation of claims, backed up by an impressive command of archival documentation, placed him in sharp contrast with his Argentine counterparts, and when President Rutherford B. Hayes announced his arbitral decision, it was in no small measure due to Aceval's labors that the Paraguayan position was upheld.

Returning to Asunción, Aceval gave up diplomacy for a time and dedicated himself wholeheartedly to public education, which had fallen into terrible disrepair since the end of the war. He helped establish the Colegio Nacional in the capital, with a branch in Villarrica. In 1878 he turned down the foreign minister's portfolio in order to continue as director of the Colegio, which he administered for eight years and saw grow into an institution of considerable importance in just a short time.

While the Chaco difficulties with Argentina had been resolved, those with Bolivia had just started, and the government continued to call on Aceval as an adviser on the matter. In February 1887 he signed the Aceval-Tamayo treaty, which, though it failed to resolve the land dispute, nonetheless kept the peace with Bolivia for the better part of a generation. Throughout this time he worked as a professor of law at the Facultad de Derecho and was sometimes rector of the university. He died in Asunción.

See alsoChaco Region; Paraguay: The Nineteenth Century; War of the Triple Alliance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Zubizarreta, Carlos. Cien vidas paraguayas. Asunción: Araverá, 1985.

                                  Thomas L. Whigham