House of History
- jakob usandivaras
- Feb 14
- 5 min read
What could the Triple Alliance War, Yerba Mate, a world-renowned poet, and the first Miss Paraguay possibly have to do with each other?
Towards the end of the Triple Alliance War Brazilian troops managed to advance and occupy the capital in January 1869. Victor Hugo Heyn was an officer in the Brazilian army and was only 19 years old when he arrived in Asunción. However, despite his age, he was named sub-deputy officer of the Occupation Army. His high role meant that he was well connected and well positioned for any opportunity that might arise, so naturally, he came to meet and earn the trust of Thomas Laranjeira.
Thomas Larenjaiera was a Brazilian Yerba mate merchant and a supplier of Yerba Mate for the Brazilian military. Although he usually operated in Rio Grande Do Sul (a Brazilian state on the border of Paraguay), after Brazil advanced into Paraguayan territory, he was given farmland in Concepción and Guiará, Paraguay. Heyn, wanting a new opportunity, and Laranjeira with now much more land to manage, decided to appoint Heyn as the administrator of the Yerba Mate company in Concepción.
It was in Concepción where Heyn would fall in love with his future wife, a local woman by the name of Anselmita Denis y Espínola. Heyn began to settle down and focused on having a family, where they eventually would go on to have 12 children.
In the meanwhile, Thomas Laranjeira continued to grow his business. Laranjeira was given close to two million hectares (about the size of the state of New Jersey), which eventually expanded to 5 million hectares.
Victor Heyn, an associate of Laranjeira, thus now had accumulated a large amount of wealth. The soldier turned merchant was known to have reached millionaire status – who would be a billionaire in today's age. With his newfound wealth, Heyn began the construction of a variety of estates in the late 1800's.
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On the corner of Palma and Montevideo Street in the now quaint downtown Asuncion area, you will find the Palacio Heyn, one of the most adorned and richly decorated buildings in the area. He also built a Quinta – a vacation home – 3 kilometers away in 1897 and his main residence in the city of Concepción. Concepción is in the northeast of Paraguay, closer to the border of Brazil. It takes 6 hours to get there nowadays, which would have been an over 30-hour trip by horse North.
But his house in Asuncion was by far the most beautiful. It was designed by the Spanish architect Jose Marsal – possibly based on the design of a Swedish architect, Carl Rehnfeldt – in the late 1800s to early 1900s. It was definitely fit to be labeled as a palace. It would be that very Palace that would become a crossroad of history.
Amongst his 12 kids was Anselmita Heyn, who, in 1915, became the first Miss Paraguay. She was so beautiful that the famous Paraguayan poet and musician Manuel Ortiz Guerrero fell in love and would go on to dedicate poems to her. How their love turned out will forever go down in history unknown. But Guerrero's poem gives us a glimpse. In 1915, he published the poem where he recounts first seeing her in the Teatro Municipal Ignacio A. Pane de Asunción, where they held the competition for Miss Paraguay. The poem goes:
Ya antes te he visto tras sueño lejano [I have seen you before after a distant dream]
Y anoche en el teatro con fe y devoción [And last night at the theater with faith and devotion]
Tomaba, señora, con mi propia mano, [I took, lady, with my own hand,]
Para que no caiga de mí el corazón. [So that my heart does not fall from me.]
To thank Guerrero for his poem, Ofrendia, dedicated to her, she decided to send him a payment as a sign of thanks. The legend goes that he took one of the 50-pound bills from the payment and sent another poem on the back.
The best evidence of this mysterious "back of a bill" poem is Endoso Lirico by Manuel Guerrero Ortiz. In the book "Ortiz Guerrero - Complete Poems" by Catalo Bogado, he states that the poem Endoso Lirico (Lyrical Endorsement) was written on an ordinary piece of paper and folded between bills of cash. But what is so unclear is: why would Ortiz wait till 1928 to publish this poem, and not in 1915 when they first met? The poem goes like this:
No todo en este mundo es mercancía [Not everything in this world is merchandise.]
Ni tampoco el dinero es el blasón [Nor is money the emblem]
Mejor pulido por la cortesía [Better polished by courtesy]
Para la ufanía de mi corrección, [For the pride of my correction,]
Sobre la torre de mi bizarría [On the tower of my bizarreness]
Sin mancha flota el lírico pendón, [Without stain the lyrical banner floats,]
Como ebrio de azul, hago poesía, [As if drunk with blue, I make poetry,]
Pero honrado es mi pan, como varón [But honest is my bread, like a man]
Devuélvole este billete a Ud., precioso [Give this bill back to you, precious]
Con mi firma insolvente por endoso; [With my insolvent signature by endorsement;]
Sométalo a la ley de la conversión [Subject it to the law of conversion]
Que, a pesar de juzgárseme indigente [That, despite judging me destitute]
Lleva un potosí de oro viviente [He carries a potosí of living gold]
Que pesa como un mundo, el corazón [That weighs like a world, the heart.]
He might have held onto the bill, and only when his death was coming did he decide to spend it and publish the poem. We will never be sure.
The Palace sang a similar tune and slowly began to get lost in time. The Palace was turned into a headquarters for the Uruguayan legation, then transitioned to be the storefront for multiple businesses before finally becoming a hotel. But once the hotel moved, it was entirely abandoned and continues to be till today.
It is unclear what happened to the other estates and kids. However, the Quinta was given to Anselmita Heyn, and she held onto it until her death. The house still stands today. It is now attached to the new Brazilian embassy building and serves as the cultural center of Brazil.
Think about your home? How much can someone else learn about you by stepping into your home? Buildings in Asuncion's center tell a story about a transition from colony to independence. But the cramped downtown has become less and less fashionable over the years as people move to more modern suburbs. However, buildings can transcend history and time and tell us the days of the past. There is so much to learn from architecture, and while many buildings have been demolished and archives lost, there is still much to learn from a building that you might drive by.
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This post was written using information provided by @BellurasDelCha
Image credit: @BellurasDelCha
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