Peña, Manuel Pedro de (1811–1867)

Manuel Pedro de Peña (b. 1811; d. 1867), Paraguayan publicist and revolutionary pamphleteer. Although born in Asunción in the first year of his country's independence, Peña chose to live for many years in Buenos Aires, where he moved in expatriate circles that were made up of men and women opposed to the regimes of Carlos Antonio López (1841–1862) and of his son, Francisco Solano López (1862–1879). Peña, who had once worked as a minor official in the government of the elder López in the late 1850s, began acting as spokesman for various Paraguayan revolutionary groups residing in the Argentine capital. He made eloquent, though bitter, attacks on the López family in the Buenos Aires press, especially in the daily La Tribuna and in Nación Argentina. These attacks appeared all the more poignant because Peña claimed an unproven family relationship with the Lópezes.

Peña's editorial efforts had the greatest impact after the beginning of the War of the Triple Alliance (1864–1870), when he wrote a regular column, "Cartas del ciudadano paraguayo dirijidos a su querido sobrino," that appeared in several newspapers. The men of the Paraguayan Legion who fought in the war under Argentine command, were said to have carried his pamphlets into battle. Peña died in Buenos Aires.

See alsoLópez, Carlos Antonio; War of the Triple Alliance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Héctor Francisco Decoud, Los emigrados paraguayos durante la guerra de la Triple alianza (1930).

Charles J. Kolinski, Independence or Death! The Story of the Paraguayan War (1965).

Additional Bibliography

Kraay, Hendrik, and Thomas Whigham. I Die with My Country: Perspectives on the Paraguayan War, 1864–1870. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004.

Leuchars, Chris. To the Bitter End: Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2002.

Ramírez Braschi, Dardo. La Guerra de la Triple Alianza: A través de los periódicos correntinos, 1865–1870. Corrientes: Moglia Ediciones, 2004.

                                 Thomas L. Whigham