Portal:Paraguay

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Paraguay (/ˈpærəɡwaɪ/; Spanish pronunciation: [paɾaˈɣwaj] (listen)), officially the Republic of Paraguay (Spanish: República del Paraguay; Guarani: Tavakuairetã Paraguái), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. It has a population of around 7.4 million, nearly 3 million of whom live in the capital and largest city of Asunción, and its surrounding metro area.

Although one of only two landlocked countries in South America (Bolivia is the other), Paraguay has ports on the Paraguay and Paraná rivers that give exit to the Atlantic Ocean, through the Paraná-Paraguay Waterway.

Spanish conquistadores arrived in 1524, and in 1537 established the city of Asunción, the first capital of the Governorate of the Río de la Plata. During the 17th century, Paraguay was the center of Jesuit missions, where the native Guaraní people were converted to Christianity and introduced to European culture. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish territories in 1767, Paraguay increasingly became a peripheral colony, with few urban centers and settlers.

Following independence from Spain in the early 19th century, Paraguay was ruled by a series of authoritarian governments characterized by nationalist, isolationist and protectionist policies. This period ended with the disastrous Paraguayan War (1864–1870), during which the country lost half its prewar population and around 25–33% of its territory to the Triple Alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. In the 20th century, Paraguay faced another major international conflict—the Chaco War (1932–1935) against Bolivia – in which Paraguay prevailed. Afterwards, the country came under a succession of military dictators, culminating in the 35 year regime of Alfredo Stroessner, which lasted until his overthrow in 1989 by an internal military coup. This marked the beginning of Paraguay's democratic era, which continues to the present.

Paraguay is a developing country, ranking 105th in the Human Development Index. It is a founding member of Mercosur, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the Non-Aligned Movement and the Lima Group. Additionally, the city of Luque, in metropolitan Asuncion, is the seat of the South American Football Confederation.

The majority of Paraguay's 7 million people are mestizo, and Guarani culture remains widely influential; more than 90% of the population speak various dialects of the Guarani language alongside Spanish. Paraguay's GDP per capita PPP is the seventh in south america. In a 2017 Positive Experience Index based on global polling data, Paraguay ranked as the "world's happiest place". (Full article...)

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I the Supreme (orig. Spanish Yo el Supremo) is a historical novel written by exiled Paraguayan author Augusto Roa Bastos. It is a fictionalized account of the nineteenth-century Paraguayan dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, who was also known as "Dr. Francia." The book's title derives from the fact that Francia referred to himself as "El Supremo" or "the Supreme." The first in a long line of dictators, the Supreme was a severe, calculating despot. The central themes of the novel are power and language and the relation between the two. The Supreme believes himself to be above all power and history: "I don't write history. I make it. I can remake it as I please, adjusting, stressing, enriching its meaning and truth." Yet this assertion is constantly challenged by the very fact that while he achieves power by means of writing and dictating, these very same methods can be used by others to dispute his authority. Not even his own identity, represented by the personal pronoun I, is safe and can easily be usurped as is demonstrated by the incident of the pasquinade. Language, as powerful as it is, can never be controlled and can just as easily be used as an instrument of coercion as an instrument of resistance.

During the time the book was written, Paraguay was under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner, who went on to rule the country even longer than Francia did. Many consider the book to be at least in part a thinly disguised attack on Stroessner who used methods similar to Francia's to achieve and maintain the effective control of the country, including the swift elimination of opposition, the employment of torture and intolerance of dissent. In its portrayal of Francia and criticism of Stroessner, I the Supreme belongs to the genre of novelas de dictadores or dictator novels, and also to the Latin American Boom, a literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The book was first published in Spanish in 1974, and in English (translation by Helen Lane) in 1986. (Full article...)

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This page was last updated at 2023-08-29 13:04 UTC. Update now. View original page.

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