[Paraguay, Country of Rivers]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

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Country of Rivers
Published by the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs Commerce Department Building, Washington, D. C.
July, 1944
Ruins of Jesuit Mission at Trinidad
Although Asuncion, her capital, is one of the oldest cities in South America, Paraguay is still largely a frontier Country. Partly tropical, partly
ktemperate, two-thirds of her land is in the Gran Chaco, much of it known only to the soldiers of the Chaco War and the men who get out the forest products, that are among her chief contributions to world trade. On the remaining third of the land, between her two great rivers—the Paraguay and the Parana—live most of her million people, tilling the rich red soil and tending cattle.
Paraguay has known what isolation means. A thousand miles from the sea, her early colonists had an independence enjoyed by few Spanish colonies and later she was shut away from the world for a quarter of a century by order of the dictator, Dr. Jose Gaspar Rodriquez de Francia. Yet, although neutral in World War I, she broke with the Axis in Januaty, 1942, during the Third Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs in Rio de Janeiro.
Her climate is much like that of southern Florida, but subject to stimulating changes. The beauty of her land, with its towering palms, its deep forests of flowering hardwoods, its ^orchids and its ever present orange trees, is as legendary as the
bravery of her people—a well-amalgamated blending of Spanish and Guarani, which in the Indian tongue means ‘ ‘warrior. ”
Paraguay was settled early in an attempt to find a “northwest passage’’ to the mines of Peru and, Bolivia. Alejo Garcia, exploring for Portugal, pushed westward in 1524 from what is now Brazil to Bolivia and, in 1527, Sebastian Cabot explored the Plata-Parana-Paraguay river system. The first permanent settlement was not until 1536, when Pedro de Mendoza built a fort at Buenos Aires and me at Asuncion.
Spain was far away, and the colony early acted independently of the mother country. In 1539 it ivas the first in South America to choose its own
governor, a practice formally granted by Madrid in 1591 • Also in 1539 the garrison at Buenos Aires, which was near starvation, moved to Asuncion, and was not reestablished until 1580. For many years the river settlements of Paraguay were the only ones in the whole Plata basin.
In 1609 the Jesuits established colonies which for more than a century and a half were to form a powerful “state within a state’’. At the height of their power there were thirty-two.
of these colonies (reduciones) in Paraguay, formed to “reduce” the Guarani Indians to civilization, . with some 150,000 Guaranis as willing subjects under autocratic rule. Two priests ruled each settlement, one the religious leader, the other the secular. What little money the self-sufficient colonies needed came from the sale of yerba mate, the Paraguayan tea which has become the popular beverage of southern South America. The Jesuits were often distinguished scholars, who made of Guarani a written language (there were about 1,000 books in the native tongue in their libraries), built handsomely decorated churches, t trained their armies (equipped with guns they themselves had forged), and schooled the Indians, who had little artistic tradition of their own, not only in agriculture but also in weaving, carving, metal-working and even painting.
An order for the expulsion of all Jesuits from all Spanish colonies came in 1767. Secular administrators and priests of other orders tried to carry on, but the Indians slipped away, Hand within a quarter of a century the churches had begun to fall into ruin, the orange trees went wild, the yerba mate plantations were a mass of jungle, and the 800,000 or so head of cattle lost.
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Example of Paraguayan Lace
Outside of the Jesuit colonies, Paraguay had been the scene of one of the first popular uprisings against the Spanish crown. For more than a decade (1721-1735) comuneros (men of the people) held out against Spanish officials, declaring: “The authority of the people is superior to that of the king himself. ”
Independence itself came in 1811 without bloodshed. Blood had been spilled, however, the year before, when Paraguayans defeated an expedition sent by the revolutionary junta of Argentina to persuade the inland colpny to join a confederation of La Plata states. Argentine prisoners talked of liberation, and the benefits of independence became apparent to the Paraguayans, although they did not desire union with any other country. They formed a self-governing council, one of the members of which was the Spanish governor himself.
* In 1816, Dr. Francia (“El Supremo” to his .people), a scholarly lawyer son of a Paraguayan mother and a father from Brazil, was made dictator for life, and ruled his country with an iron hand. After a plot to overthrow him in 1821, Francia instigated a reign of terror, closed Paraguay to all but a little trade which he himself arranged, and cut off all diplomatic relations. Ruthless with his enemies, Francia was a patriot, and his integrity was incorruptible. At the time of his death in 1840, the national treasury was well filled.
To his successor, another lawyer, Carlos Antonio Lopez, he bequeathed a unified Paraguay and a jgood army. Carlos Lopez opened up the country to trade, decreed in
A Quebracho Tree
POPULATION OF PARAGUAY
1844 that all children of slaves would be born free, started building one of South America’s first railroads in 1854, and further developed the country’s resources. His was an abso-t lute rule, although not bloody, and instead of the austere thrift of “El Supremo’’, he encouraged his family to become wealthy. He sent his eldest son, Francisco Solano Lopez, to Europe as envoy-at-large and for university study.
Young Lopez learned much of military lore abroad, and came home with a handsome Irish-Parisian companion, Madame Elisa’Lynch. At his father’s death in 1862 he assumed power, made the army the best in South America, and two years later exploded a war (1864-1870) with his two powerful neighbors, Argentina and Brazil, plus Uruguay. In one of the most devastating conflicts in history, the Paraguayans held the combined armies at bay, fighting and starving with Lopez until nearly every able-bodied man had been killed. Boys and grandfathers filled the ranks, and women’s work battalions were formed. Even after the fall of Asuncion, whep Lopez fled with fewer than 100 men, 10,000 filtered through the lines to join him. The ranks were reformed, but when Lopez was killed by a Brazilian lancer, the war was over..
Madame Lynch with her own hands buried Lopez and their eldest son, and escaped to Europe. Paraguay, occupied for a time by troops of her enemies, lost some 50,000 square miles of territory.
Of Paraguay’s million and a quarter people, fewer than 300,000 survived the war and its aftermath of disease and starvation. Of these, only 29,000 were men, mainly boys and “ancients.” For generations, the women were the breadwinners. Repopulation and rehabilitation has been slow but. steady. Today Paraguay, in spite of the recent bitter Chaco War with Bolivia over the disputed territory lying between the two nations, once more has passed the million mark in population.
There are again five head of cattle for every inhabitant-These reach the world market in the form of canned meat, beef extract, dried beef and hides, and, along with other livestock products, account for more than a third of her foreign trade. To improve her herds, Zebu and other tropical cattle bbreeds are being introduced.
The red soil of the republic is rich, and yields more than one crop a year. Her fields (mainly in clearings in her great forests), produce enough grain to feed her people, as well as
CATTLE PER PERSON
sugar cane, tobacco, and the cotton which accounts for more than a fourth of her foreign trade. For nearly half a centuryg she has had a Bank of Agriculture which not only lends money to farmers but has an.extension service as well. Since the war, as part of the hemisphere-wide food production program, experts from the United States and Brazil have been working with her own specialists to improve methods of cultivation.
Oil and fiber producing plants thrive, with castor, tung, peanut, coco (from her many palm trees), sun-flower seed and sesame oils supplementing cottonseed oil. Paraguay produces 70 percent of the world’s petitgrain oil (from bitter-orange leaves), used in the making of perfumes.
With Argentina she controls the production of quebracho extract, secured by boiling *the chips from the tall red “axe-breaker” tree which is so indestructible that it is prized for railroad ties. So heavy they will not float, quebracho logs are piled on rafts of cedar, popular for building. Downstream, both are sold. Yerba mate is still an important export.
With the smallest population in South America, Paraguay has encouraged immigration. In 1893 Australians, under
PARAGUAYAN PRE-WAR EXPORTS
William Lane, tried to establish a socialist colony near Villa-rrica, but “New Australia” failed. More successful have been the Mennonites, from Canada, the United States and Europe, who started settling in the Chaco in 1926.
With so many of her people working the land, and with transportation difficult, rural education has had many handicaps. However, within the last twenty years, pupils in her free and compulsory schools have multiplied six times. The National University has seven faculties.
The Paraguay and Parana Rivers, which meet to form the Plata, have been the country’s main transportation arteries. In fact, in 1812, three years before the Congress of Vienna, the principle of free navigation of international rivers, as well as of the sea, had its origin in Paraguay. The Central Railway and an expanding highway program supplement river traffic, and trucks are expected to supplant the high-wheeled oxcarts (much like our pioneer covered wagons), which have cut deep furrows across the land.
Still in the early stages of development, Paraguayan industry is concerned mainly with processing meat and sugar, extracting tannin and oils, and some textile and fiber work. Her spiderweb lace, adapted from old Portuguese patterns, is particularly fine. Paraguay has iron. Some of the mines have been worked for a century and today the national arsenal is turning out plows. She has no coal (even her railroads burn wood) and while the spectacular Guaira Falls have more volume than Niagara or the higher Iguassu Falls just over her border where Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay meet, they are too far from her centers of population for present development of heavy industries.
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