Victoriano Benítez Vera

Victoriano Benítez Vera is a Paraguayan soldier and politician who leads the War Front, a clique of pro-German officers.

In-Game Biography

For a fragile country, there are few figures more uniting than its old war heroes. Merely on the ability to galvanize a nation and tell a story about its reasons to be proud is an ability that few are ordained with from the beginning. But Victoriano Benítez Vera has this, and yet has still had to fight to the very top; following the forced retirement of long-time President Higinio Morínigo, his ascendancy has been defined by the fighting of one rival faction to another.

This fight nevertheless began in the battlefields of the Chaco War, which for him was marked by the personal recovery of his brother's remains, and he turned to the Wehrmacht which he saw as a paragon of strength and a model to be emulated. His status and dedication to the army grew thereafter, being appointed commander of its 1st Cavalry Division by Morínigo personally in 1941. He then became leader of the Frente de Guerra, a clique of military commanders with aggressively fascist convictions, where he also planned his foray into politics.

His agenda is expected to focus on the consolidation of Paraguayan fascism through the means he knows best: the state and its military, even as he contends with powers many factors larger than itself. But such an end cannot be achieved without a determined leader in front, and as he says himself, "the armed forces rule the government. The cavalry speaks for the armed forces. And I am the cavalry.