Bareiro, Cándido (1838–1880)

Cándido Bareiro (b. 1838?; d. 4 September 1880), Paraguayan diplomat and president (1878–1880). Bareiro was one of a score of young Paraguayans sent to Europe for advanced study by the Carlos Antonio López government in the late 1850s. Bareiro's field was diplomacy, and within a few years he received an appointment as minister to Paris and London. His stay in the European capitals coincided with the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870), in which Paraguay faced the combined military might of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. Bareiro's loyalty to the López regime and his unceasing efforts to counter Allied propaganda in Europe brought him some acclaim among those few Paraguayans then living abroad.

He finally returned to a wrecked and occupied Asunción in 1869. At once he became the focus of a Lopizta group that included Bernardino Caballero and Patricio Escobar, both war heroes. Other conservatives, many with Brazilian connections, came to join this same group, which, after Bareiro's death evolved into the Colorado Party. Bareiro himself manipulated various Paraguayan factions, as well as the Brazilian occupiers, during the 1870s. In this, he worked hard to oppose the liberals who had tried to undercut the influence of the traditional rural elites.

Bareiro was elected president in 1878. Though his administration was short lived and his attempts to resuscitate the economy woefully inadequate, he did make an honest attempt to curb the corruption that had seeped into Paraguayan politics since the war. He also had the satisfaction of seeing Paraguayan claims over the Chaco Boreal upheld in an arbitration award.

Bareiro died suddenly of a stroke while working at his desk in the presidential palace.

See alsoParaguay, Political Parties: Colorado Party .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Harris Gaylord Warren, Paraguay and the Triple Alliance: The Postwar Decade, 1869–1878 (1978), pp. 52-57, 73-74, 180-181, 274-275, and Rebirth of the Paraguayan Republic: The First Colorado Era, 1878–1904 (1985), pp. 41-50.

                                    Thomas L. Whigham