During the conflict, his mother was locked up in her ranch by Blanco troops who then set it on fire however there is no other proof of this other than accounts from Suárez himself, who narrated it to Venancio Flores and the Marquis of Tamandaré after the executions that followed the Siege of Paysandú.

In 1858, he aligned with Trifón Ordóñez and Eufrasio Bálsamo and joined the Revolution of 1858 [es] led by César Díaz although, after the Hecatombe de Quinteros, he had to return to exile.

He spent a few months in Brazil recovering, and rejoined the rebels shortly before the Siege of Paysandú, in which, by his own admission, he gave the order to shoot Leandro Gómez and his closest collaborators which angered Flores and the Marquis of Tamandaré.

He refused to repress the uprising of the Colorado caudillo Francisco Caraballo, with whom he came to fraternize, but instead he fought the Revolution of the Lances against his old enemy Timoteo Aparicio, as commander of the Army of the South.

He triumphed in the Battle of Sauce culminating in the slaughter of the prisoners, a fact denounced by his own secretary, Carlos María Ramírez, who called him "Goyo Sangre".

He initially supported the coup of January 1875 but Lorenzo Latorre distrusted Suárez and isolated him completely, while at the same time he had his main collaborators meticulously assassinated such as Lucas Bergara, Fermín Bertrán, Felipe Fresnesdoso and others.