Eliza Lynch buried Paraguay's dictator and their son in 1870, was expelled when she came back for his lands, and Paraguay voted in 2025 to move her bones to its Pantheon of Heroes

Eliza Alicia Lynch was born in Cork on 19 November 1833. She met Francisco Solano López, son of Paraguay's ruler, in Paris in 1854 and went with him to Asunción. López became president in 1862 and led Paraguay into war against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. In 1870 Brazilian troops killed him and their eldest son, Juan Francisco, aged about 15, at Cerro Corá, and Lynch buried both with her own hands. She was deported to Europe. In Scotland she pursued Dr William Stewart, López's former army surgeon, claiming he and his brother had misappropriated money and yerba shipments she had entrusted to him; she claimed 40,000 pounds and accepted 7,000^†. About five years after the war, on promises from President Juan Bautista Gill, she returned to Asunción to recover lands López had left her. She was tried and expelled again. She died in Paris on 25 July 1886. In 1961 the Paraguayan government brought her remains back intending to place them in the National Pantheon of Heroes. The Church refused because the building is also a chapel and she and López were not married, and in 1970 a tomb was built for her in Asunción's Recoleta cemetery. In December 2024 the Chamber of Deputies, and in May 2025 the Senate, passed a bill granting her posthumous nationality and moving her remains to the Pantheon. Whether President Santiago Peña signed it and the transfer took place is not confirmed in the sources found^†.