To date, it has been the deadliest war in Latin America, considered by many historians to be the American genocide; however, it left us with the example of a noble and generous gesture from the government of Colombia, which offered citizenship to all the Paraguayans who entered its territory.

Something entirely different happened in 1939 when the St. Louis ship left Hamburg with about a thousand passengers—mostly refugee Jews fleeing Nazi persecution—and was not allowed to land in Cuba or the United States, instead being forced to return to Europe to deliver its passengers directly to the gas chambers.