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5. Benjamin Constant: The "Truth" behind the Paraguayan War
- University of Nebraska Press
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[First Page] [81], (1) Lines: 0 to 4 ——— 1.96901pt ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [81], (1) Renato Lemos 5. Benjamin Constant The “Truth” behind the Paraguayan War The ParaguayanWar was still raging when pundits identified Benjamin Constant as the author of an article on the conflict published anonymously in a Rio de Janeiro paper.1 In a letter to the newspaper’s editor the recently returned veteran denied authorship but instead offered to publish under his own name“the truth that I know of what has taken place in the current war with Paraguay.”2 There is no indication of this promised article in his private archive,but his correspondence during the time that he was at the front certainly contains elements of the“truth”that he would have told about the war.3 Born in 1837, Benjamin Constant Botelho de Magalhães reached the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Brazilian army. A professor of mathematics in military and civilian schools and one of the most important advocates of positivism in Brazil, he acted as the principal organizer of the military coup that overthrew the monarchy in 1889. In the subsequent provisional government (1889–91) he served as second vice president, war minister, and head of the Ministry of Education, Post, and Telegraph. After his premature death in January 1891, the republic’s constituent assembly bestowed on him the title “Founder of the Republic.”4 During his eleven months in Paraguay (October 1866–September 1867) Benjamin Constant corresponded with several people, including his wife, his father-in-law, his brother, and several close friends. The approximately sixty extant letters are but a fraction of this correspondence. Several have been lost, and most of those that he received during this time have not come to light.5 These losses do not, however, diminish the value of the surviving letters. That they were not written for publication distinguishes them from the wartime correspondence previously available to researchers— official dispatches and isolated letters. It also distinguishes them from the classic war memoirs written for posterity in different political contexts.These letters resemble the sources used by Bell I. Wiley in his classic studies of the U.S. Civil War based on the private correspondence of Confederate and Union soldiers.6 Benjamin Constant’s correspondence can also be read as a counterpoint to the war narratives that repeat the official government or army view.7 Explicit criticisms of military and civil authorities occasionally appear in his writings, especially when he and his friends question official reports. The letters thus 82 Benjamin Constant [82], (2) Lines: 45 ——— 0.0pt PgV ——— Short Page PgEnds: T [82], (2) offer important insights into the war’s influence in forming the worldview of the generation that fought in it and whose members later played important roles in Brazilian society and politics.8 The author emerges as the product of his time,a man caught up in events whose importance for the development of Brazil’s society and polity would only become clear much later. The letters reveal how an individual lived through social and political processes set off by the war, whose significance neither he nor his contemporaries recognized. Benjamin Constant did not, of course, consciously see himself as part of historical events later perceived as central to the foundation of Brazil’s national army. But his letters contain many indications of how this overwhelming process took place on the individual level:the experience with other peoples and other forms of social and political organization, the contrasting values of allies and enemies, the relationships of subordination and loyalty between soldiers and national leaders, and the construction of images of the enemy and of altruistic service to the nation. It is important to recognize at the outset that Benjamin Constant’s dual role as soldier-professor shaped his understanding of the war. As a youth he had enlisted at the rank of cadet in order to gain an education and to enter a profession that enjoyed some status in Brazil. But he was not strongly committed to his military career; in Paraguay he described himself as an officer without a military vocation. Rather, before the war he dedicated himself to teaching and to his family. This goal echoed the career of his father, a low-ranking Portuguese naval officer who remained in Brazil after independence and combined his military career with that of primary-school teacher. The need to provide for his family in case of his death prompted...