I the Supreme

by Augusto Roa Bastos

  What are you doing there on that paper? Scratching out the o of rumors, Sire, and writing it with an i instead. So as to change, if only by one letter, the fate of ex captain Rolón.

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  I have before me that other pusillanimous poultroon, the ex commandant of Itapuá, Ojeda. The worthless reverse of what a real commander of a garrison ought to be. He abandons Candelaria to Ferré’s troops, who invade our territory in an attempt to extend theirs and seize Misiones, long the property and possession of Paraguay. My garrison commander retreats without putting up any resistance, before the first shot has rung out. Arms melt away in the hands of those chicken-hearted hens in uniform the moment they’re forced to make use of them. He leaves his line of retreat strewn with baggage, equipment, supplies that cost the country blood and sweat. I summon him. You’ve made a mess of everything, including your own underdrawers. And disgraced the Republic thereby. Dishonor without equal. Ignominy without precedent. And finally, you have shamed me by your inexcusable, simple-minded lack of discrimination, which caused me to lose Candelaria, an indispensable bastion for the security of the country; the last crack left open to us for trade with the outside. What will those foreign traders say? What will people in Paraguay say, when your compatriots find out what happened? They will spit in your face, and instead of being the commandant of the most important garrison in the Republic, you will be the lowliest spittoon for the scorn and the mockery of one and all.

  I for my part forbear to spit. I am trying my best not to be enraged at you. I do not allow myself to nurse a rage against men as good-for-little, as good-for-nothing as you. Nursing a rage against miserable scoundrels is the same as allowing such counterpersons to come to rule for a time the ideas and the feelings of our Person. This represents a double loss.

  For the moment, I shall not send you to the orange tree. Not out of goodness or mercy, mind you. I cannot excuse your utter folly. Tolerance, source of all evils. Utter foolishness. I stress the point once again: I am trying my best not to fall into useless rages against worthless sorts such as you.

  I do not ask my men to act at all times with the certainty of automata. A frontier commander, you have allowed yourself to become a lesser man, to be overcome with a vain fear, for no reason, needlessly, and done nothing. This is a lack of energy, of resolution, hence very little can be expected of you. And don’t try to wriggle out by claiming you were awaiting orders. At the slightest rumor or sign of the enemy, every commander has the obligation to ready the defenses at his disposal. This does not prevent him from awaiting orders that will be forthcoming if circumstances permit. Things must not be thrown into complete disorder on the pretext that there are no orders. Placing yourself in a state of alert, since you had the necessary means at your disposal, is the least you should have done. When in the course of a battle one fights by all possible means to secure the position of a given chapel or stronghold, one must fight for it as though it were the most important national sanctuary, even though such objectives may have a merely tactical value at the moment, perhaps only for that one engagement. You had more than enough forces to send up to five thousand men to Santo Tomé, with good artillery, plus infantry and cavalry reserves, plus two elite squadrons of lancers. You had the opportunity to make of this sector the beginning of a real military campaign for the defense of our frontiers, and given the proper circumstances, turn it into a long-range crusade aimed at extending and ensuring our control of the rivers all the way to the ocean sea against the hordes of savages and sham governments that stand in the way of our right to free navigation on the rivers, offend our pride, and hinder our foreign trade.

  Due to bungling such as yours, these savage enemies go on retailing their idle gossip. They take Paraguayans to be simple-minded, lukewarm patriots, and hence easily tricked, taken in by most anything, even bright little bits of mirror, just as the Spaniards went about tricking and deceiving the Indians.

  They would hold their tongues if the Supreme Dictator of Paraguay had an army man worthy of his rank and of the honor of the Republic. An army man, not an ass, trained in the art of making war. Capable of sallying forth like a general, though he might be no more than a sergeant, or at most a captain, to raze Corrientes and La Bajada, as payment and punishment for their ladronicides, depredations, and mockeries.

  A good rank and file, but above all good chiefs, have a different spirit, a different energy, a different determination. The fire of the fatherland burns in their veins, keeps them from turning tail to the enemy, from getting their rifles jammed. Within each chief, each ranker, the entire country is on the march. Seeing enemies who insult them, they all fall upon them at once and reduce them to dust. But soldiers under the command of yellow-livered officers have ice in their veins. Nothing matters to them. If everything is of no importance to their chiefs, why should the rank and file care?

  Through your fault, my dear caponed commander who’s escaped the orange tree, I have been obliged to close the Salto camp, so as not to be kept hopping chasing down other cowards who have decamped. Foreseeing further disasters, I have padlocked the gateways of San Miguel and Loreto.

  For the time being I am not ordering you to be shot, on condition that you not give an inch in future skirmishes with the enemy. You are hereby ordered always to march at the head of your troops during engagements and attacks. You are not to retreat under any pretext. And to keep you from committing further derelictions of duty, I order you to read to the troops, for three days, at reveille and retreat, the Supreme Proclamation enclosed herewith, in which I authorize and order company sergeants, corporals, and every last private to put a good round of birdshot in your back at the slightest sign that you are about to turn it on the enemy again. I generously offer you this commutation of your sentence and leave in your hands, or rather, to your feet, the alternative of being shot dead in combat. You are to read the Proclamation in person.

  A good militia is the only sort capable of remedying these ills. We are not going to perpetuate military castes. I do not want a bunch of parasites good for nothing but attacking/conquering their neighbors; reducing to bondage/enslaving the entire citizenry of their country.

  I want each of them to be citizen soldiers through and through, despite the fact that they may lack complete military training, even though they begin to receive it in grade school as they are learning the alphabet. When attacked by the enemy, all our citizens will automatically turn into soldiers. There is not one of them who will not sooner die than see his Fatherland invaded, his Government in danger.

  Citizens can become excellent soldiers in a month. So-called regular army troops don’t lost their vices in a hundred years.

  Functionaries, a category in which the two superior classes of the State must be included, the one serving as magistrates, the other as aides or executors armed with the decisions of the former, should receive a rigorous education that will enable those in the first category to defend the Nation against its enemies, the others to administer justice in the people’s favor, thereby putting an end to the injustices that continue to exist even after our Revolution.

  The military, the magistrates must sedulously avoid accumulating wealth with their right hand while their left hand holds the reins of power, thus destroying the egalitarian foundation of society.

  Hence I have prescribed for them a totally austere way of life; the way of life that I have imposed upon myself. Neither you nor I are to have material possessions of any sort. I enjoin you to perpetual celibacy in order that you may not leave widows. We are forbidden to establish our own family, since that would lead us to unjust acts of favoritism. Warriors, magistrates, aides, armed saints so to speak, possessing nothing of their own, without a conjugal life, are obliged to defend others with a total disregard for any other consideration. I wish this to be clearly understood. Reread my orders. Commit them to memory. I do not want my position to be rendered less than clear by your supp
osition. The saying has it that it’s through bloody behinds that letters enter, but I want to see you get them through your heads.

  I ask, I demand of all of you the strict supervision of public goods, funds, expenses. The strictest vigilance so as to prevent ladronicides, bribes, illegal collections, exactions, extorsions, subornations. Peculation in which some of you appear to be more expert than in the proper application of regulations. I shall come back to this matter of piracy on the part of functionaries. I intend to tighten the pegs of the strings around your necks so as to fine-tune each one of you. Cross out this paragraph. After subornations, write: Cleaning up the administration is an indispensable step toward carrying out the plan of public salvation that we must effect through our conjoined efforts.

  The Republic is the totality, the union, the confederation of all the thousands of citizens who constitute it. All patriots, that is to say. Those who are not patriots must not be counted or considered part of it, save as the bad money that risks being taken for the good, as you have been taught by the Patrial Catechism.

  We have the cheapest State in the world, the richest Nation on earth as regards natural resources. After the many, the uncountable years during which we have enjoyed the greatest peace, tranquillity, well-being ever known on this Continent, we must now bend our efforts toward defending this incommensurable good.

  The state of perpetual peace will be succeeded by the state of permanent war. We shall not attack anyone. We shall not allow anyone to attack us. Paraguay will be invincible so long as it remains hermetically sealed round about the nucleus of its own strength. But should it issue forth from this nucleus, its power will decrease in inverse proportion to the square of the distance in which its forces are dispersed. The law of gravity holding sway horizontally. It’s not every day that Newton sees the apple fall. Cross out apple. Write orange instead. No, that won’t do either. Strike out the whole paragraph. Who is there around here who has any idea who Newton is?

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  With an eye to reorganizing the population statistics you are to take immediately an absolutely complete census of all the inhabitants, including the natives, who are located in the particular jurisdiction of the twenty Departments of the Republic that each of you is in charge of, so as to have current records concerning our population. This census is to include, on the questionnaires provided for the purpose, complete information as to the number of adults, age, sex, occupations, aptitudes of each man or woman, family background, political affiliations, police records where applicable, in particular in the case of heads of family; plus a notation indicating their affection and disaffection as regards the Cause of our Independence. Number of children, from those newly born to those old enough to begin military service. Situation of those children who are receiving instruction. You are to submit lists of the children in school. Those who already know how to write are to provide a sample. As for the most advanced, they are to answer in the form of a written composition the question: what do they think of the Supreme Government? They have full freedom of expression. The Government will assign inspectors to each one of these schools to verify and provide adequate proof of the progress of the pupils, their average attendance, industriousness, attainments, and application, as well as the causes responsible for any diminished output, absenteeism, or repeating of grades. Today it is more necessary than ever before to make an old saying come completely true: In Paraguay there is not a single citizen who does not know how to read or write, and as a consequence express himself correctly.

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  Reflect at length on these points that constitute the foundation of our Republic. Focal points of its progress in the future. I want chiefs, delegates, administrators who are skilled in their various functions. I want to find integrity, austerity, valor, honesty in each of you. I want patriots with wills of steel and stainless virtues. Note down any doubt, opinion, suggestion that you may wish to put forward concerning the principal subject dealt with in this Circular. It is my intention to hold a conclave shortly, that is to say a sort of Congress of chiefs, functionaries, employees from the highest rank to the lowest, so that between all of us the future policy of the Supreme Government may be strengthened and made uniform.

  Each one of you is to prepare yourself to render an account of all your activities in the various functions that have been assigned you since your entry into public administration. A rendering of accounts that will be studied by the Supreme Government before the Conclave. Your reports on your comportment, that usually you distort, must this time conform to the forms that will be sent you by the next courier. These service records, along with the population census and the educational census that I have ordered must be sent in within a month, that is to say, by the end of September of this year at the latest.

  The reason behind this rendering of accounts, naturally, is not to remove you from your posts for errors you might have perpetrated in the past; the very thought is absurd. Condemning you for stupidities you might have committed would merely be a further stupidity. What has been done with good intentions is well and good. What has been done with bad ones we shall try to do better in the future. My idea is to guide each one of you in order that you may become master administrators, irreproachable civil servants of the Republic. Hence I want your messages, your dispatches, your reports to be made to accord with the reality of the facts. Do not allow yourselves to drift along the riverbanks of your imagination. I want no more of your piles of onionskin you’ve strained to fill with nonsense. And I’ll soon peel any hardcore troublemaker down to size, without wasting a single tear on you. I want you to take my warnings not as those of a Supreme Chief, but rather as those of a friend who not only esteems you but loves you. Perhaps much more than you yourself may suspect.

  The days we are living in may well be the last; hence the right time to mend our ways, proceeding backwards. For the sake of inconvenience rather than personal convenience. Having been taught little by good examples, which have never abounded in our country, I place bad ones before you instead. While the lesson to be learned from them by turning them around is quite ordinary, an extraordinary lesson can be learned from them if they are studied exactly as they stand.

  By custom, our justice executes those who are guilty as a warning to others. To keep the bad example from spreading, the one who is punished is not the one who is hanged but the others, through the intermediary of the hanged man. It is always another who dies. And don’t try to tell me that you’re already dead or that you’ve forgotten that you are. I’m not taken in by lies. I always discover them eventually, even hidden under the soles of people’s shoes. Superstitions and cabals don’t affect me or delude me. You are all thoroughly acquainted with my clemency; you also know my inexorable rigor. This rigor is placed entirely in the service of the Fatherland. To defend it with all my strength against its enemies, be they within or without.

  Hark unto my words, my poor fellow citizens! I would rather die than see my poor Country so cruelly oppressed once again, and I have the satisfaction of believing that all the people of the Republic are of the same mind. If not, the fault will be ours. But in that event none of us will escape the disaster that befalls the Country. Why? Because each and all of us will be that disaster. The mortal remains over which the wild beasts of the desert will establish their dominion.

  It is often said that he who trusts the people builds on sand. Perhaps, when the people is absolutely nothing but sand. But such cabalistic calculations do not reign here. I am fighting not with a people of sand or of phantoms, but with a people of men with a thousand miseries and more. Paraguayans, one last effort if you would be truly free!

  Once I receive the results of the new census and general registry of citizens that I am ordering you to make herewith, you will be informed of the plan that I have conceived for the formation of a great army and a war fleet in order to free our country once and for all of the iniqu
itous blockade of navigation and reinforce our defenses, the foundation of our self-determination and sovereignty. The details of the plan will be revealed to military commandants at the opportune moment in highly confidential instructions.

  (Private notebook)

  For the moment what I am going to do is this: Once the forest of satraps has been cut down, once the plague of hydrophobic dogs slavering with abjection is exterminated, I shall order that a thick layer of lime and oblivion be spread over their remains. No more contemptible, clownish military officers. No more troops of the line idling about waiting to flee from the slightest danger. No more soldiers of a real army that exists but is utterly useless, since all of them, down to the last man, inevitably end up contracting the vices of their superiors. No more uniforms, no more ranks, hierarchical distinctions, awarded not on the basis of merit but on the seniority of uselessness. The army of the Fatherland will be the entire people, clad in the dress and dignity of being the people in arms. An invisible army, but more effective than all other armies. Its effectives, the free peasants, with a cadre of natural chiefs who will arise out of this natural army of work and defense of the Republic. By day they will work. By night they will drill. They will train in the dark so that the shadows will be their best allies. Their arms will be hidden during the day, alongside the furrows of the fields. The wooded walls of the forest will be our best bastions; the deserts and swamplands, our impenetrable fosses; the rivers, lakes, and brooks, the arteries through which there will circulate the fulminic force of our detachments joined together in small units. Let the elephants come. As compadre Confucius said, mosquitoes end up devouring elephants. When the enemy marches in, it will believe that it is entering an unarmed and peaceful country. But when the invaders, trapped in a flash by the optical illusion of a vast multitude of men and women defending their birthright in work clothes, realize their error, they will know that a people cannot be conquered unless it so wishes.