A socialist utopia.
Socialist utopias in Europe found it difficult to combine industrial production with humane living conditions and survive in the competitive world of capitalism. Similar attempts in the New World could isolate themselves from the vagaries of the market in England to some degree and could therefore exist longer than contemporary attempts in the Old World.
The largest socialist utopia was established in Paraguay by the autocratic ruler José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, an admirer of Jean-Jaques Rousseau and the French Revolution, who was elected "dictator for life" by a democratic parliament in 1816. Francia expropriated most church property and land owned by the colonial landlords and distributed it to the native Indian population. Financed through a state monopoly on forestry and other key industries, Paraguay established a self-sufficient society closed to the world and free of taxes, the first independent republic in South America.
The experiment lasted for fifty years. Paraguay remained wealthy and developed its industry; it built its first railway in 1859 - 1861. The country became such a threat to European colonialism that in 1864 - 1870 European interests used the combined forces of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay to fight a war against Paraguay and crush the country as a competitor. Three quarters of its population were massacred. When the war was over only 192,000 women and children and 28,000 men over the age of 15 were left alive. Paraguay's industry was raized to the ground.