História escondida - a guerra de Paraguay

Paraguay - The never-ending war
"... The war, known in Paraguay as the “War of ’70” or the “Great War”, was among the worst military defeats ever inflicted on a modern nation state. According to Thomas Whigham of the University of Georgia, as much as 60% of the population and 90% of Paraguayan men died from combat or, more often, from disease and starvation. Other researchers put the figure considerably lower—but still atrociously high. Federico Franco, Mr Lugo’s successor, recently called the war a “holocaust”. Yet it is little known outside the region. Even in Paraguay its moral ambiguities have caused generations of leaders to shroud it in myth...
According to a rough-and-ready post-war census, just 29,000 males over the age of 15 were left in Paraguay. One observer called the survivors “living skeletons…shockingly mutilated with bullet and sabre wounds”...
The war’s worst atrocity occurred in Piribebuy, 80km (50 miles) east of Asunción by road. There Brazilian troops cut the throats of everyone they could find, and locked the doors to a crowded hospital before setting it alight..."
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