Original subtitles

[Music]

[Music]

[Music Intensifies]

To some she is a marvellous national header

and to some she is the virtually reincarnation of the devil himself.

[Mystery Music]

[Camera clicking]

[Music]

[Soft Music]

[Noise Of Thunderstorms]

[Music]

[Noise Of Thunderstroms]

[Loud Music]

My name is Eliza Aelizia Lynch

[Soft Music]

For a long time, perhaps too long,

I have maintained a profound silence.

Over my good name has been attacked by the most determined of enemies.

My individual to sought michious and fame by writing about me the most appauling filth.

Representing me as a whore.

A subject of scandal, so I were a wild beast

who do I have satisfaction of extermination of society itself; no worst than that.

What a beast!

A she devil,

I am no that.

Nor have I caused to be

Nor I have caused to be.

[Music tempo changes]

[Music tempo changes]

[Soft music]

I must fact beside write certain facts about myself.

These facts may or may not be determined.

But I lay them down here for the record of the sane because,

[Sighs]

This story - My story is all that remains.

[Wind Whooshing]

My soul request to the world.

[Scribbling sound]

I was born in an island in the year 1833 of honourable and decent parents.

I lived outside charleville, a prosperous town in the country of Cork providence of Munster.

For there was a doctor.

Of island I remember of a liitle or choose to

I remember the cold, wet grey mist that lay luggish around upon the frozen fields, the day my father died.

[Music]

There was hunger too and disease.

[Music]

A great famine.

[Music]

Still upon the land and death everywhere.

Starvation is an unspeakable thing..Unspeakable.

The famine, even though it was rich, agricultural land.

The famine hit the tribal area pretty severely.

A..A a talking, mass graves, mass burials; her relation afterwards that she never ever spoke of her childhood.

[Muisc]

And those memories stayed with her and were then redirected during the tribal war in Paraguay.

Where cholera was one of the main killers.

We don't know for the certain. But it seems very likely

and then something goes terribly wrong, father dies

And I think it is significant that her relations afterwards that she never ever spoke of her childhood.

Human suffering on a terrifying scale and a..

I suppose it must have been a great relief to get out of violent.

[Music]

Impranta was schooled by the nuns,

geometry, French, history, crochet, music

[Soft Music]

[Speaking in foreign language]

[Music]

On summer evenings, we would roam around the city walls.

And..Dream glorious dreams.

[Music]

English sea farer, elegant persians, exotic adventurous.

I would watch them all, their swish and swagger,

and I would notice them watching me too.

Hungrily.

The serious intent of me.

[Music]

People can't forget the 19th century context.

The other one halves were poor.

[Music]

And the safetynet between being one of the halves and being an object poverty

is very thin.

Marriage is the pivitol movement.

At the age of 16 she marries; and that's her way out.

[Music & Birds Chirping]

Marriages it is absolutely the pivitol movement, around which everything hinches.

[Music]

And in Eliza's case she was duped.

[Music]

While that key discovery here was the research at french military archives;

which itself disclosed an extraordinary thing,

where there is no mention of whatever of the marriage

between Eliza Lynch and Catopher.

It's clear that this was a deception by Catopher's of her and her mother.

There is no record of Catopher's getting married but this two entirely different women.

Under French marity law this was by french journalist concerned, they are not married at all.

So she is placed in a position of being his private whore.

[Music]

Camp traveller;

completely no vestige respectibility of any kind.

And they remained together for three years but at no stage during that three years could

she have been presented as his wife or even as his fiancee.

The hope was to suffer the situation preassumably dawned on her.

And after three years in what was then very much hardship pose to know Algeria.

She leaves; she is back to Paris.

[Music]

So this must have been a great courageous women

clearly she was running from something and she was running to something.

[Music]

Shortly after my seperation from my husband I returned from Algeria here to Paris.

The city of light.

[Music]

Here enemies accused here for being a courtesans or a prostitution.

[Music]

Those who have tried to represent me as a women of evil, the life in Paris are confirmed by the evidence of the facts.

[Music]

There was simply not enough time for me to have given myself over to

the lured the senseous life they have sought to charge be with.

I could never have been that woman painted by my enemies.

[Music]

No.

Now she is probably on the fringes of the dummy Monge. She is not a respectible women.

She is the woman who left her husband who under a French marital law wasn't her husband.

So you are not talking about respectible society.

[Music]

You are talking about the edges.

And here is the fact that when she left Castopher she had penny

and the temptation certainly was there for a girl in those circumstances.

To get into that world but we have not planned any evidence that she did.

[Music]

And then January 1854 she meets Francisco Sileanor Lopez.

It was there in Paris that I came to know Mariska Lopez

[Music]

I didn't know who he was that should be stated from the start

Francisco Solano Lopez.

A fine name, a name fit for a gay.

[Music]

Almost certain that they met at a great ball in Tuileries in Paris in early January 1854.

We don't know for a fact but there is a reference to the fact that after that he went out on his own for several nights

which was most unusual and we have concluded that he had met her beauty and he wanted to meet her again

and normal enough instead I think provoke by very beautiful, charming girl.

[Music]

He asked me to dance. I said - Yes.

He held me close, his arms strong. We danced

We danced.

I think you can use analogy when probably come to contempory times.

Is one of the sheikhs from old witch from Middle East country

who is just fabulously wealthy.

[Music]

and he was in infact a billionnaire.

[Music]

According to much caricature of him which came during the war period he was actually rather handsome chum.

He came to Europe to buy arms he was then minister of defence Martial Lopez, he was known as

he met queen Victoria and looking at emperor province here in Paris.

He bought gumboot and that was the primary purpose of his trip to Paraguay with mordern weapons.

Paraguay did became more technologically advanced

in military sense at that point then any other countries in South America.

I think what would have been striking and what would have been immediately apparent

to Aliza was this was a very very wealthy man

and she needed a very very wealthy man as she was going to reinvent her life.

And they travelled together throughout Europe and she was presented in the courts of Europe wherever they went

as his partner.

[Music]

I was beautiful once,

[Music]

Who were beautiful than I fully appreciated.

[Music]

After..afterwards he would often watch me secretly.

He thought I was asleep

[Music]

I would feel his eyes around me.

[Music]

The curve of my back, the stretch of my legs, the hole of my breast.

These things kept awaited him.

Calmed him somehow.

[Music]

I would sense him inhaling my smell.

My dark musky odour my bare self.

[Music]

For a moment, it would be still.

[Music]

As if hold in his breath.

[Music]

Breath fixed.

[Music]

I liked him watching me.

His desire, excited me.

[Music]

She has if I not used to express and teamed up with Lopez.

So obviously things are looking good. But the next thing is she's pregnant.

You might have expected to happen in those dramatic circumstances.

Lopez could have exited the situation. And I think it's an extraordinary, he didn't do that.

Much for a lot of young man are tempted to do with those circustances

and were extremely tempted to do in those circumstances.

In the middle of the 19th centuary

it's clear Lopez fell in love with her and remained in love with her for the rest of his life, by the way.

[Soft music]

Didn't I know anything then? Did I? Since anything special about him.

[Music]

Izadora I smin'nt wants this much later when dark lonely night.

[Music]

Any intimations of love I supposing in precise is of what was to come, she asked.

No, I replied.

I am a practical woman, Izadora.

[Music]

But I didn't know something.

[Music]

Something promps if my I kept a secret for myself.

[Music]

Forgot all dear, I knew this was

my dance.

[Horse Trotting]

with destiny.

[Horse Trotting]

[Music]

Once she makes out decisions is very brave decision she's already pregnant

she crosses the Atlantic and the company to proform and a maid. He goes back at the same time but he goes back on the gumboot.

She goes to B..B..Buenos Aries.

[Music]

We stayed in a fine house in San Telmo to recover ourselves before the last boyage of privative ascension.

I loved Buenos Aries.

It's elegant and newsant.

Fine restaurantes, it's music and song, it's smell.

[Music]

That is the great watershed in her life.

She must have known when she embarked on that. There was no turning back. And she never wave us in that commitment.

Becaause she can't, she can't go back.

There could be no retrieve once she has taken back the decision.

And their was unquestionably, the gamble.

[Music]

After Vanshido was born we journyed up river for three weeks.

It seems that I was leaving the whole world behind and entering a new one.

A strange parallel world where I was destined to live

[Music]

a world apart.

[Birds Chirping]

There they were on the, in the river pleasure. Alligators on all sides, you know. It's gonna totally, new stuff.

And she comes to the port of Asuncion.

And obviously Lopez has told her that, you know, he was the, going to be the next president.

He probably talked about Asuncion is been a terrifics town which she was building up all other restaurant.

But actually it was a drail little place

when she saw it from the boat.

[Water Rippling]

The day was overcast and strange pallet fell upon the low buildings.

[Water Rippling]

Native women washed clothes there in the muddy shallows staring at us as the ship glided slowly towards it's moorings.

[Music]

In the squares and market place,

other women drifted like ghosts in pale shawls, emits the dust.

And the men and their beasts.

[Sighs] Marisca Lopez was there to quintas.

By my science her first child did a punchito, his son and air.

And I, Eliza Alizia Lynch, ma'dama Lynch.

[speaking in foreign language]

The reality is that compared with Europe is probably compared with Paris, compared with London

is probably 150 years behind.

There could be no question in their eyes of his marrying her.

But, they seem to return to blind eye or to if just forgot it, the nature of his relationship. I mean

he is setup in the town house,

he bought her country's stage. And family don't seem to have a problem with that.

But their was no shortage of money, anything she wanted, she could have.

Lopez would come at night, see herself and her baby.

But she wasn't introduce into ascension society which should've been, you know, her stages.

[Harp playing]

She was exotic, she was stange and in their eyes, entirely their eyes meant to be because she was evil.

[Harp playing]

One of the things happens in her Eliza's life with all of her Paraguain associations is, she's never officially ventured.

It's quite extraordinary. As she never mentioned in the government controlled newspaper.

She was just in her way, for wow.

[Harp playing]

[Wind Whooshing]

No women did not liked me from the start [Snicker Laugh].

[Sighs]

It was ladies of high standing in Paraguay those dark matriarches in their

[Wind Whooshing]

funereal plumege.

Was arbiters of what past for high society insouciant.

And that's why she changes ascension. She says, they said of her..her house stank of Paris was one hisher said.

[Music]

Hundreds of dresses as you can imagine she had played grammer style and wowed everybody.

She wasn't part of society but everybody wants to cape up with her.

[Music] [Birds Chirping]

She created her own kind of society

[Birds Chirping]

which was a society in which anybody who was a founder or the diplomanic core for this instance

She was this centre.

But it's quite seperate from the much more conservative stage stuffy.

Church when world of Lopez's parents.

[Music]

Sometimes

I could stand outside myself and observe as if from the far

[Wind Whoosing]

figured I couldn't.

[Wind Whoosing]

They observed me too.

[Wind Whooshing]

Take hint I sought, take hint.

Let them stare.

Let them envy.

She was not very popular with the local ladies because she had got the best catch in town.

So the ladies of society clearly wouldn't have liked her but the ordinary people seem to like her alot

[Playful Music]

I love to walk amongst these street sellers. Speaking with them and their Gaurani tongue.

They were my people. They know it I did not screwened them.

They know then as they know now.

These people know me who I'm, who I was.

[Music]

That's why she is remembered. She is revered by that common people.

[Music]

I'm saying is Eliza Lynch had the double personality.

[Music]

I borrow him seven children, but fact is of to forgotten in all this

Seven children is not a small thing.

In my memory, those days along with the children were some of my happiest.

I returned there in this memories, these dreams more and more now.

The lightning on the fields at end of day.

The children are almost back.

The fire flies flickring and flaring in the dusk.

[Music]

[Speaking in foreign language]

Izadora called me one morning.

I reached for him but he was not there, gone.

I ran it to her room. Dawn light cause a strange crimson shadow on the coth.

Izadora was screaming now but I could no longer hear.

A glance that the witners she was

standing in a window smoking a huge cigar, impressive!

The dark face surrounded in smoke, I knew that my baby was death.

Calling athelete, Lopez Lynch,

dead.

It was a 14th of February, 1857.

We burried her in Ecolanta cemetery.

[Music]

My little girl.

[Music Intensifies]

My best..self

[Music intensifies]

[Music continues playing]

1862 Charastiano Lopez dies.

Elizer is out of the social closet.

And I was a cause of great celebration.

Two more years before the war starts - And the period when she's more lessly unofficial clean path by

And and, high point if you like for her

She is the dominent lady in society, she

Incredible Parties, celebrations and even the elite women have to sort off

to able to buy and straightn even though,

the teeth are grinding with the detestation as they do so

And she makes many new friends and she builds her summer palace

Her life is perfect

This is very short

Time span

In the early 18s to 60s, when she is really on the top of eipe

Well, it doesn't last for very long

[Music]

While she arrives in Paraguay, I remember she arrives

Attached to the president son, she from the very beginning knew

that sooner or later he would be president

What she could not have known in the early years

Is other relationship would be so marked by the World

[Music]

[Soft Music]

Well, I think he was spoil brat.

He thought he could do but then, but then he wanted

in the rest of the world

The consequence was a Catastrophe

[Cloud Clatters]

Why does the war start?

[Truck passes]

[Soft Music]

Before this he, he died, his father

advised him

not to do the war with Brazil

He said he should roove with the pen and not with the sword

But he had this fascination

With military glory

And the lopez did not have the wisdom

That old cal San Atonio had

He always avoided military confrontation

lopez always wanted us, which is a great tragedy

And he pretty well set up the confrontation

And in November, 1864

By taking over

The Brazilian navy vessel

That was an important essential

and which contain high officials of the Brazilian government

That was an act of war, it was done deliberately,

it was planned

his army had been built up for long time the war started.

People accused mariscal lopez of having trigger the war by seizing the ship

But a consummate diplomate

who had negotitiate treaties with Britian

treaties with Napoleon the third,

treaties with Italy,

Someone with that background

would not, just on a whim

have seized the foreign vessel

Knowing the consequences

To the this day

Paraguayans believe

That the Marcus olina was carrying arms

[Music Intensifies]

The war started very well from

He invited mato grosso

That's the part of Brazilians to the Northen Paraguay

And he was successful

In a deficiently local Brazilian forces

It was incredibly messy campaign, But he won

He was sure rather, he was in a very strong position

The Brazilians would have to send their soldiers

Thousands of miles to try in this lodge

It's a very compiling argument

The sad thing is he didn't stop there

Because my own view would have been

that he could have actually negotiated, a very favourable outcome

Instead, he turned to the south

And a centrals army, and two different streams

Intended to attack Brazil at its heart

In order to do that, they had to travel as

Argentanian territory

but across when paraites got them the, the um..

Diplomatic note from their case that for a ministry

seeking this permission and they eventually responded

By insulting lopez and charging him with um

building up armies on their borders

and saying that they supported the new dictator of Paraguay

[Music]

So in a short period of time

Lopez had unforfunately, converted a war with one country

Brazil, into a war with three countries

and that's why it's called the war of the triple alliance

which was of course

[Sighs] a disaster for Paraguay

Whatever sympathy one may feel for Lopez

it's hard not to blame him for the huge mistake at this point

Because of this thing Britian would have that kind of alliance

Brazil, Argentina would go by against Paraguay

The outcome is inevitable but he didn't see that to begin

[Gun Shots]

The emperor, Donphredo, the second a very civilized man, a scientist, a man of great culture

personally hated the Lopez

and he insisted and his influence on this way absoluetly radical

He insisted on pursuing the war against a Paraguay

for the years after the war had ended in resounding Brazillian victory.

And that was source of tremendous suffering for Paraguayan people.

Everything gets completely out of control I think it is at a certain point.

The death tried to dissuade Mariscal Lopez from waging war

against the cruel and mighty trio efforts, no.

I did not, nor would I

war is men's work

Men's passion. War is it's bloody mistress.

[Music]

Death in violence lie deep

within innocence of the very fibre of his body

War was Mariscal Lopez's true mistress, not I

[Scoffs] Not those others

[Music]

But war is the opposite of love.

Yet there can be love in its mists

[Music]

And he did love me that much as true

[Music]

Francisco Solano Lopez loved Eliza Aelizia Lynch

[Music]

And will never dispute it

The most important thing for me personally to take away from the whole story of the Paraguayan war is to heroism

of the ordinary Paraguayan people

who uhh for a various reasons

mainly because

in their folk memory

they remembered that the Brazilians,

however had more orders, had invaded their county

and slaved their people

So they were aware that these threats were not…uhh

you know

just political…umm…

retreat, they were existential threats.

[Battle Field]

After the discovery of betrayel conspiracy that Lopez became a different person.

He drank too much,

he became extremely religious.

Took his spending hours on hours in church.

As I was saying that he was paranoid

but they were trying to catch him

So he had something to be Paranoid, but

He discovered

Thankfully

And to his establishment, that his own family

His entire government, have betrayed him.

I mean there were plots, there were conspiracies,

there's no question that members of his own family were wanted to

Displace him

Lopez had actually executed it his own brother Banigno

And another brother had died in as a prisoner offence

Allies that stages up the only one that’s abosolutely trusted

She is obviously intensenely nervous that

And husted make sure that his Paranoid

that is his patients are never ever

directeted her

So in that respect, she can't be seen to be challenging, and to be critizing it

And she doesn't but at the same time on the margins

There is a evidence that she tries to do which she can to help

Prisoners for just example.

To emulate the conditions which were pulling some of those who were in prison

But what she can actually do is limited, very limited.

[Music]

[Eerie Sound]

[Burning Sound Plays]

[Eerie Music continues...]

In August, 1869

The Supreme commander

of the arrival forces at the time was a Brazilian

a famous

officer called Cassius

And he wrote to the emperor of Brazil

He said he won, Its all over.

We should go home

uh..And the emperor just insisted that the war go on

When you capture capital, the wars ended

Cassius turned in his commission

two weeks later

And Rio de Janeiro, 15th January, 1869

to him the war was over

He never mind that

Mariscal lopez was still running around the country

Let him run around the country

That was his idea!

But the emperor than sent his son-in-law, who was a monster

By the time the war ends

Well, over 90 percent of the man and boys of Paraguay are dead

And half of the women and girls are dead

The worst atrocities of the war were committed in period after

Cassius turned in his commission

And the new commender

was owe

Married

to Don Pedro's daughter,

his son in law.

[ mysterious music ]

[ wind blowing ]

Burning paraguayans in military hospitals,

burning people alive, slitting the throats of hundreds of prisoners

Delivering..

Paraguayan women

into enforced prostitution.

I mean he is the monster.

Of the Paraguayan imagination and rightly so

So.But that was at the insistence of the emperor which who just wouldn't give up

on this campaign until Lopez was dead.

It is a horrific story and one of the

Umm.. most disturbing.

Of modern history.

It hasn't been forgotten the Paraguay.

The Brazilians were not content with victory.

They wanted more blood. More Paraguayan blood.

Innocent blood!

The rabbit thirst was now unquenchable.

They pursued us relentlessly,

drove us up country into the unforgiving wilderness.

[ helicopter passing by ]

[ instrumental music ]

I have seen death

all my life,

death has placed it's hand gently upon my shoulder,

first my father,

then my babe

and those to come.

And others too.

I am..

No stranger to death and decay.

The sweet smell of the charnel house

lingers long and deep within the fabric of my clothes.

My very skin,

I can taste it on my lips. It never leaves me.

The sepulchre was always..

Beginning to me

[ mysterious instrumental sound ]

[ helicopter sound ]

Cerro Cora

is on the Brazilian close to the Brazilian border.

It is a wilderness

at this stage. Lopez.

With 200 stragglers

arrives there for the last out

for the first time Lopez and Eliza

are starving

Eliza according to her daughter in law

all she had wore was an old ball gown and a pair of broken dancing shoes.

They pursued us to the end,

Lopez summoned his council of war,

the God or is can be a hero and others

they would fight to the death

for their honour

and that of Paraguay

that was understood.

They would not surrender.

I too understand what this meant.

You will wish me to speak of Cerro Cora

Of the death of those I loved the full really happened there.

I however do not wish to dwell at length upon... Sorry time

[ cars moving ]

There was a strange stillness on that last fateful day.

The silence

along in the air it takes now

here in this gallery in Buenos Aires.

How strange!

This gallery of death.

Our near forgotten or....

[ instrumental music playing ]

Finally they came

thousands of them

savage Brazilian camba with white shining eyes they came.

[ instrumental music ]

That story..

Is rather well documented

and

it is a cause of shame

for the allies

Brazilian forces run over the camp

Uh their tents are set on fire.

The women are raped.

It is a horrendous scene and Eliza

learns almost immediately

that Lopez has been killed

before he is shot.

He is invited to surrender by general

or colonel Pelotas and he says I die with my country.

That the way that Lopez died

at Cerro Cora

despite whatever you might think of them

was genuinely heroic.

Having had the possibility

of capturing him alive,

they chose

to slay him

and the commanders allowed the rank and file soldier

to cut his ear off

to deface

show lack of respect for the body.

It was a death

that caused embarrassment.

Personal embarrassment

to the emperor of brazil.

That was only there overture.

They burned..

And pillaged and raped

[ soft music playing ]

An archie of devastation.

What happened..

In a theater of war?

A civilised country

in a country that purported to be civilised.

It's at moments like this

like these

that national character, inner beliefs,

texture of humanity

really come out

Her son

15 years of age Panchito is a colonel in the army at this stage

and he grapples with an officer of the Brazilian forces.

His mother screams to him.

Panchito surrender, surrender, surrender.

The Brazilian

officer shoots him.

He dies in his mother's arms.

The extraordinary scene is here is Eliza

in her ball gown, broken shoes, her two men dead.

She digs a deeper grave with their own hands.

And that is the iconic

scene

of Paraguayan patriotism.

Panchito.

My little Panchito.

[ emotional music playing ]

It…it must have been

a moment of

unparalleled pain.

She was right there.

She buried both of them.

They crawled around that familiar hunger

in their eyes.

I defied them.

I am Eliza Lynch

a british citizen and these are my Children.

If you defile me, you defile the crown.

I defied them

And then went about the sad and overwhelming task

of burying my dearest ones with my own hands.

My love

lay like carrion

There at the side of the river.

But I was not cowed. I did not surrender.

You must know that my love

I have a talent for survival.

It has been noted and it's true

throughout my life it has been a talent that has served me well.

But there

and at Cerro Cora

It deserted me.

I die with my sword and my country.

They were his last words they say

part of me died with him

with Paraguay.

The part I saved

the broken part of me that

demanded its survival was a part of me

that was a mother

to his Children.

[ soft instrumental music ]

Paraguay

did die on that day.

[ instrumental music continues ]

[birds chirping]

[ birds chirping ]

[music]

After war of that magnitude

The war that turns genocidal.

The winners write the history

it's an old accent but it

it very much applies in this case

Eliza survives

Her seen in the eyes of the winner is that she does survive

So she attracts all the problem

all the criticism

Almost as soon as the war started

there there was is something like private eye weekly journal

and it started ah with ahh

Carton version of Eliza

with a focus on her

lets say sexual charms

Eliza never had a chance

because it the winners who were [Stammers]

She was never going to get.

She has to be demonized

She is sort of a figure

of [ Clears throat ]

scandal in particular sexual scandal

in Latin America

I think it weighted very heavily on her

at the end.

As already recalled

on 1st of March 1870

I was taken prisoner at Cerra Cora.

By the Brazilian army.

Now I must address the accusations level against me since I was taken prisoner

and I must bring the facts to light with all there true causes

[ Bird chirping ]

The long and painful campaign that ended in 1970

had so weakened my health

that I have to endure long and difficult convey lessons

when arriving in Europe

As soon as I recovered

I through myself into clamming my rights

his ah pardon to record this

Eliza Lynch have must

housing and land properties on scale gradually unequalled.

In the modern period of the world

And they are colossal properties

in total they come to

one and half times the size of island of Ireland.

So

I believe that she must have been

largest land owning women in the world

at her time.

The case I perused in the court of Adembure City is a matter of public record

This favour will president for my rights

let me to believe that I could return to Prague

and recover my properties

[ Instrumental music ]

On the morning of the 23rd we arrived in the front field

[ Instrumental music ]

[ Instrumental music ]

I went there sure

along with my son

And was received on the steps of pier by many paraguay ladies

Who almost drown me with there affection of embarrasses

The pier was literally over flowing with people

All of them without exception saluted me warmly.

Those who sent telegram to vanszaari newspaper

stating that I have been stoned in the streets of osonsion.

Only gave further proof

of how easy it is to depart from the truth

And Calumniate the whole people and a women.

[ Instrumental music ]

Once the war was over and the winner's

And the winner's were calling the truce

and you have an Osaonisan you have a puppet government

they just decide that this all this is compactions,

she is not entitle to any of it

And basically that's that.

She only spent basically one day there.

And its a most dramatic day.

She's in Osaonisan she goes to Itadori house

her friend

and almost immediately

ah, a message comes from president,

who has already sent her seven invitations

in written in his own hands

to come back to reclaim her properties

and administer comes from the president and says

you have to leave

and few hours latter, two senior army officers

they come and tell her that she has to leave for her own protection.

But what happened was,

That the laddies of elite of paraguay society

well always hated Eliza.

And published a demand,

a public demand on the government for her to leave.

She ahem first ah reacts

in frustration and writes the government to arrest her

and she is defiant but

her friends finally persuade that her life is in danger

and she better leave.

[ Instrumental music ]

[ Instrumental music ]

[ Traffic sound ]

[ Footsteps ]

And I I think she becomes burnt to her case.

And I think the key element in that happening

Is probably her return trip

to Osaonisan in 1875.

And its after that when she realizes

its only than she fully realizes

the kind of image

that she have occurred in south America and kind of things,

the colonies that have been spread throughout south America

about her and it's in response to that

that she goes to witness harry's and writes this

Expedition, he protest her

You know which is her defence if you like.

For her, for her life.

Uh, and I think once that is done,

I think she's exhausted.

I I don't think she has anything left to say at that point

in the sort of reduced,

yeah

mental and spiritual condition

of Eliza lynch in the last days of her life.

I think it's one of the explanations that she felt that

she would never

escape.

Her reputation would never escape the

caricatured image of her as a

sinful, cruel bitch actually.

It was the 25th of July 1886

at my apartment on the Boulevard Barrier.

The day was

humid, close, heavy.

The shutters were closed.

I stumbled around in the dark trying to make

matty in the small kitchen.

My my

I tripped over something.

Damn that girl, She was worse than useless,

[ Gasps ]

exhausted.

I sat down.

I was suddenly tired,

desperately tired.

Soon I fell asleep.

Perhaps I heard distant music.

I dreamed of Paraguay

walking through fields.

I saw my Children and my love.

I dreamed to that I was a small girl in Charleville.

I was walking down the town

[ Distant music ]

up the lane to the workhouse

I was looking for my father.

I saw dead bodies

and open graves.

And women keening

suddenly it was snowing.

I looked up into the winter trees but I

do not recognise that

I am by a river.

Oh my to

I'm in my little garden and what was my garden?

I looked up again

It was than.

I realized I was dying

I called but the words made no sound

Marie.

Enrique princess, princess

No answer.

And then

almost casually

I was dead.

Dead. Dead.

I looked down upon myself as I

look down now upon it all and

[ Gasps ]

there I was

An old woman

lying in a pool of her own urine

and excrement already turning cold

rigid and blue.

[ Instrumental music ]

Upon a Persian floor.

[ Instrumental music ]

they buried my bones

in the cemetery at Pére Lachaise

there were not many in attendance.

No matter.

I was entered

not far from the grave of the great Sopa.

I remember the day of his funeral a long time before

a great gala affair.

Unlike my envelopes of Greece.

I heard ones that just before he died

his physician asked him was he still suffering.

Not anymore,

he replied.

Not anymore.

[ Soft music ]

We were forgotten then for a time.

The wounds must heal

and the dead must be let lie

in order to truly remember.

We must first learn to forget.

[ Helicopter passing ]

[ Indistinct radio chattering ]

General Stroessner became the

the dictator of Paraguay.

Ahh, There had always been

a

Pretty strong cult

if I may use that expression.

Patriotic cult of mariscal Lopez

and also

commensurately virtually

of Eliza lynch who strikes in her cultivated

the notion of national

patriotic sacrifice

as exemplified by Lopez and Eliza.

He arranged to have her remains brought back from paris.

Later they summoned up my spirit,

brought me home,

brought me back to life.

I was coming home, they said.

But in truth

I had never left.

[ Instrumental music ]

Paraguay recognizes her as a national heroine

in her own right

on her own merits.

Independent of the attachment to Francisco Salona Lopez.

[ Thunderstruck ]

They are always with me.

The dead.

[Dramatic Music]

[Wood Creaks]

[Wood Rattling]

[Sobs]

[Crying]

Why?

Times changed I could see that.

The old ways began to give way.

[Footsteps Approaching]

The people began to invent themselves.

Too much darkness

even I could appreciate that.

[Chanting Prayers]

We are not all perfect.

I know that.

I am not without my flaws.

By any means,

but

the world demands

that some

amongst us

have the power of imagination.

The strength to

dream a world and then smear it into reality.

It... It is an artistic impulse that of the hero.

People need heroes.

Heroes forged out of blood and death.

It find... find words

My name

is Eliza Lynch.

That, at least

should never be forgotten.

[Movie Theme Music]

[Song plays]