Higinio Nicolás Morínigo Martínez (January 11, 1897 – January 27, 1983) was a military officer, politician and Paraguayan dictator. He participated in the Chaco War (1932–1935) as a prominent officer of the Paraguayan Army. After the war he was appointed Chief of the Cabinet of the Ministry of War and Navy during the presidency of Félix Paiva. He was Minister of the Interior between January and August 1939, then appointed Minister of War and Navy and promoted to brigadier general in May 1940 during the government of José Félix Estigarribia. When the latter died in a plane crash a few months later. Morínigo became President of Paraguay, a position he would hold until 1948. Early life and military career Morínigo was born in 1897 in Paraguarí, Paraguay, to a merchant family of mixed European and Guarani descent. He was fluent in the Spanish and Guaraní languages. Little else is known of his early life. He attended military college and entered the Paraguayan Army in 1922. He participated in the Chaco War and was appointed the Army's Chief of Staff in 1936. Morínigo gained fame in Paraguay during the February Revolution of 1936 by heading an expedition to the site of the Battle of Cerro Corá to retrieve the remains of Francisco Solano López. President José Félix Estigarribia, himself a Chaco War hero and supporter of the Liberal Party, promoted Morínigo to general and appointed him as Minister of War on May 2, 1940. After Estigarribia's unexpected death in an airplane crash on September 7, Morínigo was chosen by the army and Liberal ministers as interim President for the two-month period leading to new Presidential elections. Dictatorship On September 30, 1940, after growing disagreements with the President, the Liberal ministers resigned from the government. On October 16 Morínigo announced that the Presidential elections would be postponed for two years. Soon afterward he announced a policy of "discipline, hierarchy and order" (disciplina, jerarquia, y orden) and stated that persons who spread subversive ideas would be "subject to confinement". On November 30, Morínigo banned all political parties and assumed dictatorial powers under a state of siege. In a midday radio address announcing these measures, Morínigo declared, "The people and the Army from this moment will be under a single command." In his self-coup and subsequent rule, he was greatly assisted by the 1940 Constitution, a severely authoritarian document written by the Liberals and