It's True, But By Whose History?

    As the saying goes, "History is written by the victor," which is just another way of saying that history is subjective.  It may surprise you that Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th President of the United States, is revered in Paraguay.  He is a national hero: "He's our inspiration, our source of strength."  The largest state in Paraguay is named Presidente Hayes; he is commemorated in textbooks, monuments, and folklore; and he and President John F. Kennedy are considered to be in a class above all other U.S. presidents.  He is so important that that a national TV program, Tell Me A Dream, which specializes in making fantasies come true, fulfilled the dream of a 17-year-old girl who wanted to travel to the United States by giving her an all-expense-paid trip to Fremont, Ohio, President Hayes' final resting place and the site of the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center. 

    Why such interest in a president that the United States considers at best mediocre, who is viewed as such a minor historical figure that his hometown tore down his birthplace to put up a gas station, and whose most enduring achievement was his introduction of the children's Easter Egg Roll on the lawn of the White House?  Why is he a hero in a country in which he never set foot?  Because shortly after taking office, he was asked to arbitrate a bitter dispute between Paraguay and Argentina over the ownership of Chaco, a scorching and largely uninhabitable tract of grassland about the size of Colorado.  There had been a disastrous war between Paraguay and the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay.  Paraguay had lost but was negotiating for the ownership of Chaco, and Hayes' terse four-paragraph decision sided with Paraguay.  No one knows whether President Hayes was really personally involved in the decision, or what the rationale was.  "Perhaps they just flipped a coin," observed one historian.  But that makes no difference, because in the eyes of the Paraguayans, "President Hayes obviously possessed the greatness of spirit to have seen the justness of the Paraguayan cause."
 

Source:
Matt Moffett, "Paraguayans Knew JFK, and He Was No Rutherford B. Hayes," Wall Street Journal, April 10, 2000, p. A-1.