José Segundo Decoud

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In this Spanish name, the first or paternal surname is Decoud and the second or maternal family name is Domecq.
José Segundo Decoud
Senator of Paraguay
In office
28 September 1888 – 3 March 1909
Minister of Justice, Religion and Public Education of Paraguay
In office
2 March 1899 – 8 March 1899
Preceded byJosé Caminos
Succeeded byVenancio Víctor López
In office
15 April 1898 – 4 June 1898
Preceded byJosé Mateo Collar
Succeeded byBenjamín Aceval
In office
25 November 1878 – 9 July 1879
Preceded byAgustín Cañete
Succeeded byJosé Bazáras
In office
11 July 1871 – 11 November 1871
Preceded byJosé Mateo Collar
Succeeded byDomingo Antonio Ortiz
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Paraguay
In office
9 June 1895 – 19 June 1900
Preceded byHéctor Velázquez
Succeeded byFabio Queirolo
In office
2 March 1891 – 14 April 1891
Preceded byVenancio Victor López
Succeeded byBenjamín Aceval
In office
29 December 1887 – 28 September 1888
Preceded byAgustín Cañete
Succeeded byJuan Crisóstomo Centurión
In office
9 July 1879 – 25 November 1886
Preceded byBenjamín Aceval
Succeeded byBenjamín Aceval
In office
17 May 1871 – 11 July 1871
Preceded byCarlos Loizaga
Succeeded byBernardino Caballero
Minister of Finance of Paraguay
In office
25 November 1890 – 17 July 1891
Preceded byJosé Tomás Sosa
Succeeded byOtoniel Peña
President of the Paraguayan Supreme Court of Justice
In office
14 December 1876 – 11 July 1878
Preceded byCarlos Loizaga
Succeeded byJosé González Granado
Paraguayan Ambassador to Brazil
In office
1892–1894
Personal details
Born(1848-05-14)14 May 1848
Asunción, Paraguay
Died3 March 1909(1909-03-03) (aged 60)
Asunción, Paraguay
Resting placeRecoleta Cemetery, Asuncion
SpouseMaría Benigna Peña Guanes
Parents

José Segundo Decoud Domecq (14 May 1848 – 3 March 1909) was a Paraguayan politician, journalist, diplomat and military officer. He is often considered one of the foremost intellectuals of his generation,[1] and was also one of the first liberals of the country. Decoud was one of the founders of the long-standing Colorado Party, having been its first vice-president and having written its founding instrument.[2]

Biography[edit]

Early life[edit]

Segundo Decoud was born in Asunción on 14 May 1848 to Juan Francisco Decoud and Maria Luisa Concepción Domecq during Carlos Antonio López's rule. The Decouds were historically strong opponents to the López regime, and in the early 1850s the execution of his uncles Teodoro and Gregorio due to treason forced his family into exile.

Together with his brother Juan José, he studied at the Colegio del Uruguay in Entre Ríos, Argentina[3] and later joined the law school at the University of Buenos Aires.[4] With the outbreak of the Paraguayan War, however, he abandoned his studies and enlisted into the Paraguayan Legion, a military unit formed out of oppositionists of Francisco Solano López in Buenos Aires in 1865, though he left the unit before the war ended.[5]

Political life[edit]

Months before the war was over, and with the chief Brazilian diplomat Silva Paranhos' approval, the new Paraguayan politics began to form. On 26 June 1869, the Club del Pueblo was created with Segundo as a secretary. The club was a liberal political organization mostly composed by former members of the Paraguayan Legion and other dissenters to the López regime.[6] Already being an important figure in postwar Asunción due to his name and ideas, Decoud was named one of the members of the constitutional assembly that created the 1870 Constitution,[7] and in 1871 was made minister of Foreign Affairs for Cirilo Rivarola's government, having previously been Rivarola's secretary while the latter served as triumvir.[8] Afterwards, as Paraguayan politics took a violent turn,[9] Decoud withdrew temporarily from them to focus on his career as a journalist, and returned only in 1878 as minister for the Candido Bareiro government. The 1880s were the years in which he was the most active and had the greatest impact upon Paraguayan politics.

One of his most important feats was achieved in 1885, when he went to London as an extraordinary envoy and managed to renegotiate Paraguay’s debt there from little short of 3 million pounds sterling to 850 thousand, though the country had to cede 8,700 km2 of land to the bondholders in exchange.[10] As a diplomat, he also represented Paraguay as ambassador to the Empire of Brazil and to the Uruguayan government. Besides this, he was one of the founders, alongside ex-president Bernardino Caballero and others, of the Colorado Party in 1887, to which he contributed many years as its main ideologue.[11] The foundation of the country’s first university, the Universidad Nacional de Asunción, was in good part motivated by him, as well.[12]

Some controversies marked his career. He was one of the foremost advocates for the process of land sales by the government conducted from 1883 onwards,[13] which served to concentrate land ownership rapidly and which had a somewhat short-lived impact in the country’s finances;[14] he also was accused of having plotted with Argentine authorities in the 1870s to allow for Paraguay’s annexation to the former country.[15] In the 1890s he would still occupy many cabinet positions and was considered for the presidency, but intrigues kept him from power,[16] as they had more than once done in the decades before.

Journalistic career[edit]

José Segundo Decoud began his career in press soon after his return to Paraguay. Together with his brother Héctor Decoud, he started to work as editor and writer for the newspaper La Regeneración in 1869, which lasted until September 1870. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s he contributed to other newspapers such as La Reforma and La Opinión Pública.[17] His impactful texts were frequently republished in Argentine newspapers. Decoud also translated Joseph Alden's The Science of Government in Connection with American Institutions to Spanish,[18] and wrote books and articles such as Recuerdos históricos, La amistad, Cuestiones Políticas y Económicas, edited in 1876, and El patriotismo, published in 1905.[19] When he died, in 1909, it is said that he had been preparing for some years to write a book that would discuss Paraguayan history from the colonial era to his time.[17]

In 2014, the historian and diplomat Ricardo Scavone Yegros made a compilation of Decoud’s works and published them together with a critical study.

Death[edit]

Disillusioned with the direction of post-war Paraguayan politics, Decoud committed suicide in 1909, leaving a letter to his wife, in which he stated:[20]

The citizens of classical antiquity preferred death to a sterile life cut short by the low passions of men. I have thus conceived the idea of an immolation, as a personal sacrifice before the sacred area of the Homeland. Hopefully this holocaust closes the list of those who, having given their whole lives, also succumb offering their own death! Let the dead bury their dead!

His suicide letter to his wife can be read in Francisco Doratioto's Una relación compleja, Paraguay y Brasil 1889-1954.

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^ Warren & Warren 2014, pp. 302–303.
  2. ^ Warren & Warren 2014, pp. 73–77.
  3. ^ Calzada 1913, p. 10.
  4. ^ Calzada 1913, p. 17.
  5. ^ Calzada 1913, p. 12.
  6. ^ Decoud 1925, p. 123.
  7. ^ "José Segundo Decoud". anr.org.py (in Spanish). ANR - Partido Colorado. Archived from the original on 16 May 2022. Retrieved 31 October 2022.
  8. ^ Aquino 1985, p. 48.
  9. ^ Prado 2022, pp. 41–45.
  10. ^ Prado 2022, p. 45.
  11. ^ Warren & Warren 2014, p. 73.
  12. ^ Warren & Warren 2014, pp. 299–300.
  13. ^ Warren & Warren 2014, pp. 170.
  14. ^ Prado 2022, pp. 90–98.
  15. ^ Warren & Warren 2014, p. 101.
  16. ^ Warren & Warren 2014, pp. 92–93.
  17. ^ a b Calzada 1913, p. 61.
  18. ^ Catálogo de la Biblioteca Paraguaya "Solano López". H. Kraus. 1906. ISBN 9780274437306. Retrieved 2022-10-30.
  19. ^ Calzada 1913, pp. 62–63.
  20. ^ Doratioto 2005, p. 84.

Sources[edit]

  • Aquino, Ricardo C. (1985). La Segunda Republica Paraguaya 1869-1906. Arte Nuevo. ISBN 9789996712906.
  • Calzada, Rafael (1913). Rasgos Biográficos de José Segundo Decoud.
  • Centurión, Carlos R. (1947). Historia de las letras paraguayas. Ayacucho.
  • Decoud, Hector F. (1925). Una década de vida nacional. H. Kraus. ISBN 978-9-995-30859-9.
  • Doratioto, Francisco (2005). "Guerra e regeneração: três estudos sobre o Paraguai". Diálogos (in Portuguese). 9 (2). Universidade Católica de Brasília.
  • Esteves, Gomes F. (1983). Historia contemporánea del Paraguay (1869-1920). NAPA. ISBN 978-9-992-55043-4.
  • Catálogo de la Biblioteca Paraguaya "Solano López". H. Kraus. 1906. ISBN 978-0-274-43730-6.
  • Mosqueira, Silvano (1908). Semblanzas paraguayas. H. Kraus.
  • Prado, Mário L. F. (2022). O Processo de Recuperação Econômica do Paraguai após a Guerra da Tríplice Aliança (1870 - 1890). Universidade de São Paulo.
  • Warren, H.G.; Warren, K.F. (2014). Paraguay and the Triple Alliance: The Postwar Decade, 1869-1878. University of Texas Press. ISBN 9781477306994. Retrieved 2017-01-07.
  • Yegros, Ricardo S. (2014). Ensayos sobre cuestiones políticas y económicas. Tiempo de Historia. ISBN 978-9-996-76096-9.
  • Zubizarreta, Carlos (1961). Cien vidas paraguayas. Nizza. ISBN 978-9-995-30281-8.
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