Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Rutherford B. Hayes is a Big Deal in Paraguay

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

Rutherford Birchard Hayes was the 19th president of the United States. He is famous for being the second person to win the presidency without winning the popular vote, and he won in the electoral college by a single vote. The whole election was so shady, he earned the nickname Rutherfraud. Beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot that people remember about the Hayes administration. However, in Paraguay, Rutherford B. Hayes is a really big deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Rutherford Burchard Hayes was the 19th president of the United States. He is famous for being the second person to win the presidency without winning the popular vote, and he won the electoral college by a single vote. The whole election was so shady he earned the nickname Rutherfraud. Beyond that, there isn't a whole lot that people remember about the Hayes administration. There isn't much in the United States that's named after President Hayes. However, in Portugal, Rutherford B. Hayes is a really big deal. find out why this former U.S. president is a bigger deal in Paraguay than he is in his own home country on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day and tonight. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us. every week on the Thurline podcast from NPR. This episode is brought to you by the Travel Photography Academy. Have you ever been on a trip and wondered why your photos don't turn out like the images

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to master your camera and to take better photos on your next trip. To improve your photography and to get better images on your next trip, visit Travel Photographyacademy.com or click in the link in the show notes. Rutherford B. Hayes is a big deal in Paraguay. give you an idea just how big of a deal he is there. Paraguay has 17 departments, their equivalent of states. One of them is called the President Hayes Department, and it isn't tiny. It's larger than the state of West Virginia. The capital of the President Hayes Department is Via Hayes, which has a population of 15,000 people. In Via Hayes, there's an elementary school named after the president. In the capital city of Ascentiaon, there is a soccer club named

club President Hayes, and the team nickname is The Yankees. There's a Rutherford B. Hayes Museum. He's on posted stamps, and there's even a holiday named after him in the department that bears his name. In the 1990s, a girl who came out of a coma was granted a wish by a local television station. Her wish, to visit the Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio. After all of this, it needs to be pointed out that never once in his life did President Hayes ever stepped foot in Paraguay. In fact, he never once left the United States. So why is Paraguay such a big fan of a 19th century U.S. president?

Basically, because if it wasn't for President Hayes, Paraguay probably wouldn't exist. To understand how this came to be, we need to go back to the Paraguayan War, also known as the War of Triple Alliance, which took place from 1864 to 1870, just after the U.S. Civil War. The Paraguayan War was one of the bloodiest wars in the Western Hemisphere. It was a complicated, messy war with origins similar to the start of World War I. I'll try to summarize the war as simply as I can without getting into too much detail because this is a daily podcast. Paraguay at the time was led by a man named Francisco Solano Lopez.

He was sort of an arch type for the South American dictators who would follow him. His father was president of Paraguay after taking power in a military coup in 1840. Francisco was made a general at the age of 18, which always turns out great, and then was given ever more loftier titles by his father until eventually being named Vice President of Paraguay under his dad. When his father died in 1862, he was named President of Paraguay unanimously by the Paraguay in Congress. Like his father, he was the de facto dictator of the country. At the beginning of the conflict, Paraguay actually had a larger army than the combined armies

of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. However, their population was 22 times smaller than the size of the Triple Alliance, and they had no access. to the sea. Paraguay and Brazil back different sides in a conflict for power in Uruguay. When the Brazilian side became ascendant, Paraguay wanted to send forces into Uruguay to help. However, Paraguay doesn't border Uruguay. They asked Argentina if they could march through their territory and the Argentinians refused. Paraguay began the war by invading Brazil and then declared war in Argentina when they wouldn't let them pass through their territory. They then found themselves fighting three countries at once. After a few victories, the tie turned against the Paraguans quickly.

The war devastated Paraguay. By the time the war was over, an estimated 60% of the population of Paraguay was dead, as were over 80% of the men in the country. Only 12% of the remaining population at the end of the war was male, and in some areas it was as low as 5%. Fast forward to several years after the end of the war. Paraguay had lost territory to both Brazil and Argentina. However, there was still a significant part of the country which was under dispute with the Argentinians.

The disputed part was over half of what makes up Paraguay today. In 1878, the two countries decided to get a third-party arbitrator to settle the dispute. They didn't want a European power to adjudicate, as they had too much vested interest in playing power politics. They also didn't want another former Spanish colony to have any say as they could be biased towards one side or another. They eventually settled on letting the President of the United States, Rutherford B. Hayes, arbitrate the dispute. Hayes mostly decided with Paraguay and granted the majority of the territory in question to them. He rendered the decision on November 12, 1878, the day which is now celebrated as a provincial holiday in the President Hayes Department. That land makes up 60% of the country of Paraguay today.

A big chunk of that land which was seated to Paraguay is the department which bears his name. Some historians estimate that if the Nobel Prize had been awarded at that time, Hayes probably would have been a shoe-in for it for bringing peace to the region. The funny thing is, despite all the love which Paraguay has for Rutherford B. Hayes, he probably spent no more than a few hours of his life thinking about the decision. Most of the work was done by his Secretary of State, William M. Everts. He just signed off on whatever Everts agreed to. The love affair for Hayes in Paraguay perhaps isn't as strong as it used to be. Most people aren't aware of history anymore and just think of him as some gringo president with little idea of how or why he is honored. However, for some,

Rutherford B. Hayes' memory will live on. In the words of Maria Teresa Garazo, the director of the President Hayes Museum, Hayes is a giant. He is a spectacular immortal figure for us. We are Paraguay because of him. Hayes will never be forgotten. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James Macalah. Special thanks to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Please remember to leave a review over on Apple Podcasts. Even a simple review can really help the show get discovered in the sea of other podcasts that are out there.