Reborn as King of South America

Chapter 434 Paraguay in Crisis

"Look at the world today, who is the one that controls it?"

Leaning on a wooden chair in the front hall of the embassy, ​​Chen Peihu, the 26-year-old Chinese ambassador to Paraguay, looked at the dripping rain in the yard, took a sip of tea, and muttered to himself.

Outside the embassy, ​​on the street, the noise of the Paraguayan Guards searching for criminals was blocked by the chaotic sound of rain. The figures of those who were wronged and crying in fear could not be seen by Chen Peihu because of the courtyard wall.

However, even though she was inside the embassy, ​​the peaceful and picturesque scene before her eyes could not stop Chen Peihu from caring about what was happening outside the wall.

Outside the courtyard wall, most of the people being arrested were ordinary people. However, in each arrest, among the team of over a hundred people, there were always a few acquaintances who had visited the embassy in person and left an impression.

Chen Peihu sympathized with the plight of those arrested who had more or less connection with the embassy, ​​but as King Lopez Jr. became increasingly wary of the Chinese Embassy in Paraguay, he was not sure he could rescue these poor people from Lopez Jr.'s clutches.

After the end of the Second Argentine War in 1879, the relationship between the Han Kingdom and Paraguay entered a de facto breakdown stage. It was only because the two sides still had some value in utilizing each other that Lopez Jr. did not completely break off relations with the Han Kingdom.

Paraguay is located in the inland area of ​​central La Plata. The passage to and from the Atlantic Ocean along the Paraguay River is controlled by the Han State. At the end of the Paraguayan War in 1868, the small amount of industrial base accumulated by Lopez Jr.'s father for Paraguay was also destroyed by the armies of Brazil and Argentina.

Faced with blocked access to the outside world and the complete loss of the local industrial base, even if Lopez Jr. saw through the Han Kingdom's hidden ambitions, he could only maintain a superficial cooperative relationship and use the weapons and industrial products imported from the Han Kingdom to alleviate the shortage of materials in Paraguay.

The Han Kingdom and Paraguay each had their own concerns and were wary of each other. As the leader responsible for the supply and trade of materials and goods between the two sides, the Han Kingdom's Embassy in Paraguay was naturally subject to the close surveillance of the Paraguayan government.

In the eyes of little Lopez, the Han State was using its trade export advantages to secretly weave a spider web that was detrimental to the Lopez family all the time, while the Han State's embassy in Paraguay and the Chinese ambassador to Paraguay, Chen Peihu, played the roles of the command center and the spider in the center respectively.

Little Lopez's suspicion of the Han Embassy in Paraguay and his doubts about domestic officials and military officers restricted the external contacts of the Han Embassy to a certain extent. However, on the other hand, Little Lopez's increasingly crazy behavior also accelerated the speed of disintegration in Paraguay, creating extremely favorable conditions for Chen Peihu to complete the tasks assigned by the Han central government.

One after another, officials and military officers who were originally close to the Lopez family secretly transferred the looted property to the embassy for safekeeping. Groups of Paraguayan businessmen who sensed the danger fled to the Han Kingdom or other regions through the relationship with the embassy.

Although the embassy has less and less contact with various parties in Paraguay on the surface, privately, more and more Paraguayan officials intend to establish relations with the embassy.

Sitting quietly in a chair, listening to the sound of rain in the yard,
Chen Peihu was silently thinking about the completion status of various recent tasks.

First, they contacted important people from all walks of life in Uruguay, including Lopez Jr.'s lover, Mrs. Lynch, Colonel Mariano Alonso of the Paraguayan Guard, Baron Padre Fidel, a member of the House of Nobles... a total of more than 200 Paraguayan dignitaries, who expressed their attitude of establishing good relations with the Han country through various channels.

Secondly, in terms of intelligence gathering, the embassy bribed the officers of the Paraguayan garrison to obtain information about the population, geography, customs and even the location and number of the garrison in Paraguay.
Third, in terms of propaganda, according to the intelligence obtained by the embassy and the Han government, at the end of 1888, the total population of Paraguay was about 52, including 5 European whites and white descendants, 32 Indo-European mixed races, 7 Indians, 3 black mixed races, and 5 blacks. Among the various ethnic groups, whites, Indo-Europeans, and Indians are the native population of Paraguay, while blacks and black mixed races are mainly the population of the newly occupied areas of Paraguay.

According to the one-drop-of-blood principle common in European countries, the Indo-European mixed race and Indians who make up the majority of Paraguayan population belong to the East Asian race (the name given to the yellow race by the Han people).

The Chinese in Han Dynasty and the Indo-European mixed races look similar. Taking advantage of this commonality between the civilians of the two countries, Chen Peihu, as one of the best among the second batch of Chinese students studying in the United States, after taking over the position of Minister to Paraguay, began to carry out extensive propaganda in Paraguay under the banner that the people of the two countries look similar and should work together.

Public opinion propaganda is idealistic and not practical, but if Chen Peihu's propaganda is effective, then when the Han army appears in Paraguay as saviors, the resistance they encounter will be much less.

All plans were progressing smoothly. The only possible obstacle in the future, the problem of black people, had been effectively stopped with the covert intervention of the embassy.

Thinking of the issue of black people, Chen Peihu found it difficult to understand the way of thinking of some native white people in South America. The Republic of Brazil abolished the slavery of black people and gave them equal political power with white people. It also encouraged intermarriage between white people and black people in the controlled areas.

Almost all black people in South America are men, and encouraging intermarriage between blacks and whites means encouraging black men to marry white women.

The number of white people in the southern Republic of Brazil is originally lower than that of black people, and there are fewer women among the white population than men. However, when white women, whose number is already small, marry black men, even if the skin color of the mixed-race children born is lighter than that of African blacks, they are still black. If all the white women in Brazil marry black men, let alone whitening the blacks, I am afraid that all the residents of the Republic of Brazil will become black.

As for marrying women of the same ethnic group to black men, not only the old European powers, but even the United States, which was the first country to grant citizenship to black people, did not dare to do so.

From Chen Peihu's way of thinking, he could not understand why the decision-makers of the Republic of Brazil made such a decision. If anyone in the territory of Han dared to make a similar suggestion, there was a high probability that they would be eliminated by angry militia as traitors before the government issued an arrest warrant.

Of course, if there were not some kind-hearted and generous former Brazilian white people in the Paraguayan-occupied state of Mato Grosso do Sul who advocated black-white marriage, Chen Peihu would not have bothered to pay attention to those crazy officials of the Republic of Brazil.

After all, it is the white people's freedom to pursue fraternity, but if they choose the territory designated by the Han State as the object of their fraternity, then it is no wonder that the Han State would help them get rid of the harm.

The execution of several former Brazilian officials who clamored for black-white marriage by angry Paraguayan soldiers was a concrete manifestation of the Han Dynasty's determination.

After pouring out the remaining tea and refilling with a cup of strong tea, Chen Peihu opened a letter of intelligence sent by the military attaché of the embassy. When she saw the intelligence that Little Lopez was preparing to assemble the Guards to rush to Mato Grosso do Sul to support the front line, she smiled with her slightly closed mouth: "His Majesty Lopez is seriously ill and has gone thousands of miles away to suppress the Indian rebel forces. If the war drags on for a long time, I wonder if His Majesty the King can hold on?"

(End of this chapter)