Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"In South America, Paraguay was governed from 1814 to 1840 by a most unusual caudillo. Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia was a scholar, a doctor of theology, rather than a war hero. An austere conservative dictator who permitted no dissent, El Supremo, as Francia styled himself, tried to seal off Paraguay totally from European cultural influences. He allowed only a few European merchants to visit Paraguay, and generally they returned wide--eyed with tales of El Supremo’s omnipresent spies. . . . Francia’s strategy of isolation seems paranoid, but it more or less worked. Paraguay became independent, self-sufficient, and relatively prosperous, with no thanks at all to Europe. The Paraguayan caudillos who followed Francia lessened the country’s isolation but continued the emphasis on national autonomy." [Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America, 4th Ed., p. 137-8]