History tends to sort people into neat categories; they can either be heroes or villains. But the reality is that it’s not always so black and white.
In the late 1800s, an Irish woman named Eliza Lynch became a national heroine of Paraguay for burying her partner and her son in the jungle with her bare hands.
She was known as “the Irish queen” and was revered for her bravery and loyalty. To this day, she is still honored in her hometown of Charleville, County Cork.
Eliza Alice Lynch was born in 1833. When she was just 10 years old, she and her family left Ireland to escape the Great Famine. They settled in Paris, France, where she married a French officer named Xavier Quatrefages in June 1850.
She was only 16 years old. She then went with him to Algeria, where he was stationed for duty.
When she was 18 years old, she returned to Paris to live with her mother after suffering from a period of poor health. In 1854, she ended up meeting General Francisco Solano Lopez, who was training with the Napoleonic army.
They struck up a relationship, and she accompanied him to Paraguay. Although they never officially married, the couple had a total of six children together.
A decade later, Francisco led Paraguay in a war against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. By then, he was the president and grand marshal.
As a result of the war, half of Paraguay’s population was eradicated. Eliza courageously fought alongside her partner, Francisco, and endured the harsh realities of bloody conflict.
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In 1870, Francisco and their 15-year-old son were killed on a jungle battlefield called Cerro Corá. In a moment that would define her legacy, Eliza buried them both in the jungle with nothing but her bare hands before fleeing to France.
She died in 1886. Years later, her story was revived.
The dictator, Alfredo Stroessner, brought her body back to Paraguay in 1961. Then, in May 2025, Paraguay’s senate voted to make her a citizen of Paraguay and to have her remains interred in the National Pantheon of Heroes, a chapel in downtown Asunción. The proposal was presented in December 2024.
While some remembered Eliza as a heroine and believed that she deserved to be honored for her loyalty to Paraguay and Francisco, others were not fans of her.
Critics who were against the proposal pointed out that Eliza had never expressed any desire to become a Paraguayan citizen.
Additionally, they claimed that she spent much of the war throwing parties with champagne and used her position of privilege to buy up dozens of Asunción palaces and several acres of land.
In the end, Eliza Lynch resists fitting under a simple label. And that’s a big part of what keeps her story alive.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
