By Marcos Pérez Talia
Paraguay’s political history is full of presidents and leaders of all kinds. Intellectuals, charismatic, corrupt, sullen, irascible, authoritarian, etc. The one who stands out is Manuel Gondra -twice president of the Republic- who remains a rara avis in our political fauna. This March 8 is the 95th anniversary of his death, so this article seeks to address a side of Gondra that is still little explored: his lack of ambition to retain power, despite being the ideal and virtuous political reference of the time. To do so, we will recover some classic ideas of Machiavelli whom we assume -just metaphorically- that Gondra did not read or, even worse, did not want to follow his teachings.