Charleville-born paraguyan national heroine continues to stimulate interest

THE life of Charleville born Paraguayan national heroine Eliza Lynch continues to stimulate interest among people. The latest manifestation of this was when members of Charleville Heritage Society were contacted recently by Noel Murphy, a presenter with Shannonside Northern Sound radio, which is based in Carrickmacross, Co. Monaghan.

Mr. Murphy is presently involved in compiling a series of radio programmes on Irish people who were major influences in different countries in South America. He was just back from a visit to Ascunión, the capital of Paraguay, where he met lawyer Esteban Burt, who has had a life-long interest in the life of Eliza Lynch and the history of his country, and is one of Paraguay’s leading historians.

Noel visited the grave of Eliza Lynch in La Recoleto cemetery in Ascunción, where she was re-interred from Paris in 1961, when she was declared the National Heroine of Paraguay by the then dictator, General Stroessner.

Noel was met in Charleville by Heritage committee members, vice-chairman Ian Doyle and Michael McGrath at the local community hall, which was the town’s former Catholic church, where Eliza was baptised in May 1834. He viewed the plaque that was unveiled by Eliza’s great-grandson, Miguel Solano Lopez, who was the then Paraguayan Ambassador to the U.K. and Ireland, in September 2014, at the commemorative weekend dedicated to the memory of Eliza and organised by Charleville Heritage Society.

Noel also saw the house at Clanchy Terrace where she was born to Dr. John Lynch and Jane Lloyd in 1833. The house is located a short distance from the church where she was baptised, and from where the family lived until they emigrated to England in 1839.

He interviewed the Heritage committee members on their knowledge of the Eliza story, on their association with the former ambassador, who last visited Charleville last November.

Noel Murphy’s series of programmes will be broadcast across the Shannonside Northern Sound radio network when completed. This covers the border counties, midlands and west of Ireland. The popular radio station is a name synonymous with quality, award winning broadcasting in the area it covers.

Eliza Lynch (1833-1886) lived a very varied and colurful life and has been described as ‘the most vilified woman in Latin-American history’.

Paraguayan Ambassador to the UK and Ireland Miguel Solano Lopez, Eliza Lynch’s great-grandson, unveiled a plaque in her honour, in Charleville in September 2014.

The now derelict Sanders’ Park House in Charleville, the birthplace of Olympian Terence Beaumont Sanders who won an Olmpic gold medal on the rowing team for Britain at the 1924 Olympics in Paris.