The Kingfish Does Paraguay

If you visit  Asunción, Paraguay, you may wish to walk the street—one block, really—named for former Sen. Huey Long of Louisiana. There’s even a plaque for The Kingfish.

It’s what remains of the nation’s once grander tribute from 90 years ago to the wildly corrupt (and wildly entertaining) Louisianan who, at the height of his power, drew some 7 million Americans into his Share Our Wealth Society with the promise “every man a king.” His weekly radio broadcasts on NBC in 1934 were among the most popular in the nation and he was, at the time of his assassination the next year, a credible threat in the Democratic Party to President Franklin Roosevelt’s renomination in 1936.

Long hardly invented the idea of confiscating the fortunes of the super rich and spreading the money around, an appealing proposal from before the very start of American politics. But in times of economic distress and perceived extreme economic disparity, redistribution tends to be particularly popular. Even now. And in the second dip of the Great Depression, Long was the preeminent populist.

Master of the soundbite, first as governor of Louisiana and then as a bomb-throwing freshman senator, Long was a favorite of the press for his colorful colloquial language and stunts. He’d spar with reporters, who would bait him with the charges of his many critics and get lots of good copy in return. Asked if he was a demagogue, Long retorted, “I would describe a demagogue as a politician who don’t keep his promises …” 

But Long was not a joke. At a time when many Americans, including prominent and influential ones, envied the modernity and flexibility of European fascism, Long was bringing the same view from the bottom up. “A perfect democracy can come close to looking like a dictatorship,” he opined. “A democracy in which the people are so satisfied they have no complaint.” 

What any demagogue—especially an aspiring populist authoritarian—needs most of all are the right enemies. And there, Long was uniquely blessed.

The famous villain of the Progressive era in which Long first rose to power was John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil. Even after it was broken up by federal regulators in 1911, Standard Oil remained in the minds of many Americans synonymous with greed and monopolistic power. That was especially true in Louisiana, where the petroleum industry found bountiful reserves, an ideal place for its refineries, and frequently pliant local officials who were looking to bring jobs for their voters and, too often, line their own pockets.

After running for governor as a kindly reformer in 1924, Long reinvented himself for 1928 as the sworn enemy of big oil in general and Standard in particular. It worked. And when the company threatened to pull its operations out of the Pelican State because of Long’s draconian measures, he crowed, “If they got to leave, they can go to Hell and stay there.”

Long would add other enemies to his demonology when he came to Washington as a senator in 1933, but his favorite villain would always be Standard. 

That’s why when Long was looking for ways to make national news, he was immediately drawn to a simmering conflict in South America. The Chaco region, straddling the border between Bolivia and Paraguay, and the Paraguay River running through it had become a flashpoint because of, you guessed it, oil. 

Both countries are landlocked, so when oil was discovered there, the river took on new strategic importance. Access to the Atlantic Ocean and North American markets depended on controlling the river. 

Bolivia had always been among the friendliest Latin American nation to the U.S., and it had the superior oil reserves, drawing big investments from Standard Oil. On the other side was the smaller but feistier Paraguay, and its deep-pocketed European oil backers at Royal Dutch Shell.

The conflict was the bloodiest on the continent in the 20th century in part because of the well-financed backers of each side. The Chaco War saw the first deployment of many new military technologies that had been developed during and after World War I. Like the civil war in Spain, it was a terrible foretaste of what was to come in the 1940s.

This all proved to be a major headache for the new Roosevelt administration, which was not looking for foreign entanglements as it tried to put the New Deal in place. Neither was Washington interested in seeing major disruptions to petroleum supplies. The answer was a studied neutrality that American diplomats hoped would eventually lead to the larger and better armed Bolivian military wearing down their opponents.

The wearing down took longer than the Americans had hoped, and by 1934 the conflict was becoming a substantial embarrassment to the Roosevelt administration as the new president’s critics at home and abroad alleged Yankee imperialism and petro-fueled disregard for the oppressed.

That was too good an opportunity for Long to pass up, and when he had the chance, he took to the floor to denounce Roosevelt as the handmaiden to Standard Oil and of America as supporting “domestic murderers” and an  “international conspirator.” He timed his speech for exactly the moment when U.S. officials were trying to force Paraguay to the treaty table. 

Which is why when the Paraguayan army captured a Bolivian fort soon after, they renamed it Fort Long in his honor. His pressure on the Roosevelt administration had played its small part in keeping the conflict going and letting Paraguay end up with the better end of the eventual truce. 

And that’s why you can take a walk, albeit a very short one, on a South American street named for a Louisiana politician.