The text highlights the main political incidences of the countries involved in the Paraguayan War and the main effects of the latter. We will treat the problems presented by the constituencies of the Triple Alliance: of the Argentinean Confederation, in the litoral as well as in the northwest; of Uruguay, very dependent of the Argentinean issues; of Brazil, we will examine the issues related to Rio Grande do Sul, the province more directly involved in the war. The hypothesis that the Paraguayan War was not a factor of consolidation of those nations that constituted the Triple Alliance begs the formulation of another question: which were in fact the political entities in the Rio de la Plata region of South America, and how the war against a foreign enemy kept or even reinforced the regional identities in counterpart to a national political unity. The present text presents the hypothesis that the "province-regions" were the real political unities in the Rio de la Plata space.
national states; "province-regions"; Paraguayan war.