Haven to Nazis, smugglers’ paradise, home to some of the earth’s oddest wildlife and most baroquely awful dictatorships, Paraguay is a nation waiting for the right chronicler. In John Gimlette, at last it has one. With an adventurer’s sang-froid, a historian’s erudition, and a sense of irony so keen you could cut a finger on it, Gimlette celebrates the beauty, horror and–yes–charm of South America’s obscure and remote “island surrounded by land.”

He takes readers from genteel drawing rooms in Asuncion–where ladies still gossip about the nineteenth-century Irish adventuress who became Paraguay’s Empress to the “Green Hell” of the Chaco, a vast, inhospitable tract populated by aging Mennonites and discouraged Indians. Replete with eccentrics and scoundrels, ecologically minded cannibals and utopians from every corner of the earth, At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig" "is a madly entertaining book.

At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels Through Paraguay

The year is l854. In Paris, Francisco Solano -- the future dictator of Paraguay -- begins his courtship of the young, beautiful Irish courtesan Ella Lynch with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and a horse named Mathilde. Ella follows Franco to Asunción and reigns there as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated imperial dream -- one fueled by a heedless arrogance that will devastate all of Paraguay.
With the urgency of the narrative, rich and intimate detail, and a wealth of skillfully layered characters, The News from Paraguay recalls the epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.

The News from Paraguay

In The Nine, acclaimed journalist Jeffrey Toobin takes us into the chambers of the most important—and secret—legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, revealing the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land. An institution at a moment of transition, the Court now stands at a crucial point, with major changes in store on such issues as abortion, civil rights, and church-state relations. Based on exclusive interviews with the justices and with a keen sense of the Court’s history and the trajectory of its future, Jeffrey Toobin creates in The Nine a riveting story of one of the most important forces in American life today.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

The year 1989 was crucial for Paraguay. After a long period of 35 years of dictatorship, General Alfredo Stroessner was finally overthrown by a violent coup d'�tat. In a sort of prophetic way, he once said ..."I came to power by arms and I will only leave by arms" and that came true on 2 February of that year.

The 1989 Coup d'�tat in Paraguay discusses Stroessner's climb to power during a coup of 1954, fraudulent elections that got him re-elected seven times, and the ways Stroessner kept himself afloat through cooperation with the armed forces, a right-wing political party, and the USA. Arguably, longing to maintain his popularity, the dictator launched a large number of major development projects, including construction of roads, water and sewage facilities, three big hydro-electrical power stations, and a build-up of an airline. At the same time, abuse of human rights and oppression of any kind of political opposition became a norm: dozens of political prisoners were tortured and even executed, and thousands driven into exile.

As could be expected from a dictator with a military background, Stroessner prompted a major expansion and a build-up of the armed forces and the police, too. Nevertheless, it was the armed forces of Paraguay that brought about his demise: the coup that finally ended Stroessner's rule was planned by General Andres Rodriguez, the Commander of the I Army Corps - and then with full support of large segments of the Army, Air Force and the Navy of Paraguay.

A detailed description of the coup in question, and how Stroessner was driven into exile in Brazil, is the centrepiece of this narrative.

Thirty years since the fall of Stroessner's regime, many things have changed in Paraguay: still, many remain the same.

Containing over 100 photographs, colour profiles, maps and extensive tables, 'The 1989 Coup d'etat in Paraguay' is a unique study and a source of reference about an important episode in Latin American history.

The 1989 Coup d'�t�t in Paraguay: The End of a Long Dictatorship, 1954-1989

Macintyre describes his 1991 journey to the Paraguayan site where Elisabeth Nietzsche and her husband founded a utopian Aryan colony in 1886. He also traces her return to Europe in 1889 to care for her sick brother, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and her orchestration of his rise to fame. Photos.

Forgotten Fatherland: The Search for Elisabeth Nietzsche

The War of the Triple Alliance was one of the longest, least remembered, and, for one of its participants, most catastrophic conflicts of the 19th century. The decision of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay to go to war against Paraguay in May 1965 has generally been regarded as a response to the raids by the headstrong and tyrannical dictator, Francisco Solano Lopez. While there is some truth to this view, as Lopez had attacked towns in Argentina and Brazil, the terms of the Triple Alliance signed that same month reveal that the motivation of these two nations, at least, was to redraw the map in their favor, at the expense of Paraguay. That the resulting conflict lasted five years before Lopez was defeated and his country fully at the mercy of its neighbors was a tribute to the heroic resistance of his people, as well as to the inadequacies of the allied command.

The military campaigns, which took place on land and on the rivers, often in appalling conditions of both climate and terrain, are examined from a strategic perspective, as well as through the experiences of ordinary soldiers. Leuchars looks in detail at the political causes, the course of the conflict as viewed from both sides, and the tragic aftermath. He brings to light an episode that, for all its subsequent obscurity, marked a turning point in the development of South American international relations.

To the Bitter End: Paraguay and the War of the Triple Alliance

In "Colonial Kinship: Guaran�, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay", historian Shawn Michael Austin traces the history of conquest and colonization in Paraguay during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Emphasizing the social and cultural agency of Guaran�--one of the primary indigenous peoples of Paraguay--not only in Jesuit missions but also in colonial settlements and Indian pueblos scattered in and around the Spanish city of Asunci�n, Austin argues that interethnic relations and cultural change in Paraguay can only be properly understood through the Guaran� logic of kinship. In the colonial backwater of Paraguay, conquistadors were forced to marry into Guaran� families in order to acquire indigenous tributaries, thereby becoming brothers-in-law ("tovaj�") to Guaran� chieftains. This pattern of interethnic exchange infused colonial relations and institutions with Guaran� social meanings and expectations of reciprocity that forever changed Spaniards, African slaves, and their descendants. Austin demonstrates that Guaran� of diverse social and political positions actively shaped colonial society along indigenous lines.

Colonial Kinship: Guaran�, Spaniards, and Africans in Paraguay

The novel opens in Paris, in the midst of the sexual embrace that makes Eliza Lynch the mistress of Francisco Solano López, the third dictator of Paraguay. She is nineteen years old but wise beyond her years-initiated into sex by a Mr. Bennett, a friend of her family's, while still at school, she has had many lovers and even been married, to an abusive Frenchman named Quatrefages from whom she escaped in north Africa to return to Paris. She is currently a society paramour who maintains a respectable façade even while sleeping with a dressmaker in exchange for credit. López is a young comer in Paraguayan politics, the son of the current dictator, who is in Europe on a diplomatic tour and to recruit engineers and others to help on his plan to build the first railway in South America. He goes to Eliza Lynch for French lessons, but history has other plans for them. A few months later, Eliza realizes she is pregnant.

Eliza accompanies López on his tour of the continent and they are now aboard the Tacuarí, having made the Atlantic crossing and navigating the Rio Parana towards Asunción, Paraguay, López's home. Hugely pregnant, Eliza swings in a hammock feeling simultaneously imperious (she drinks champagne, cooled by being dragged through the river's water on a rope; she presides over card games which mimic the high society she has left behind and gets to know the English engineer and Scottish doctor her husband has hired) and helpless, completely out of her element in a tropical, buggy landscape. But Eliza is a quick study-she befriends Miltón, her husband's Guaraní Indian servant, who teaches her to starch her dresses with porridge to combat the humidity, as the locals do, and quickly begins to think about fixing up Francine, her maid, with one of the men her husband has recruited to assist in his nationalist ambitions. Eliza proves herself a formidable woman, with exactly the right combination of strength, will, resources, and the strategic ability to make allowances for the powerful that will prove her, over the course of López's rule, his most powerful ally. When it becomes clear López-"my dear friend" as Eliza calls him-wants to sleep with Francine himself, Eliza sends the girl off to him, consolidating her own power even as she betrays herself. As they arrive in Asunción, she dresses in a lilac gown that is at the cutting edge of Paris fashion, astonishing the crowd at the pier with her poise, her beauty, her blonde, physical foreignness, even as she is going into labor. Throughout the book, chapters that tell the story of the journey up the Rio Parana, written in Eliza's voice, are interspersed with chapters narrated mostly by Dr. Stewart, the Scottish physician, telling of the legend she later becomes, of the war her husband wages, and of its consequences for her and the men whose company she kept in the elegiac, innocent days aboard the Tacuarí.

Eliza becomes a scandal when they reach Paraguay. From the moment of their arrival in Asunción, which quickly gains the status of popular legend as Eliza's union with López becomes a national fact, she is a larger-than-life figure. López's family rejects her, but the strength of his will-he is a man whose ambitions may not be refused, from the quotidian desire to possess a woman, to the political desire that will shape Paraguayan history-establishes Eliza as something they will have to deal with. Her son is born, though Stewart, who was to have been her personal physician, is so horrified by her as a person that he does not attend the birth. She has the boy christened in order to make him the legitimate heir (despite his bastard origins and the existence of another son by López's previous mistress). The women of Paraguayan society shun her-she builds a beautiful Quinta (villa) where she entertains all the strategically important men, but none of the women will befriend her. She hosts a picnic on board the Tacuarí to celebrate the importation of some Basque peasants who are supposed to build a new town. All the women of Asunción attend, but none of them will speak to her. As retaliation, she has Miltón, in the role of major-domo, throw all the food overboard, and keeps the ship at anchor in the hot sun for most of the day, until the women are fainting from the heat. In an act which hastens the old López's decline and her lover's ascent to head of state, Eliza builds a gorgeous theater, modeled on the great theaters of Europe, and mounts a play written by a European actor she has imported, but based on Paraguayan national themes. It is her bid for the office, even if only symbolic, of Paraguayan First Lady. Francine, the maid, dies horribly, of a tropical illness that eats away much of her jaw and facial features-and in treating Francine, Stewart reconciles with Eliza.

In 1865, three years after his father's death, López's territorial disputes with Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay lead to the War of the Triple Alliance, with tiny Paraguay at war with all tttttthree nations. Dr. Stewart, the Scottish doctor we met on the Tacuarí (and who is now married to a Paraguayan society girl named Venancia Baez, whom he has grown to intermittently love and find extremely annoying), watches as the war grows and becomes ever more bloody and farcical-it will eventually result in the deaths of what is reportedly half the national population-and López's sanity becomes more and more questionable. He envisions the war as a vast canvas of would-be heroism and actual shame and ruin. And whither López, so goes Eliza. Rumors are that it is her ambition and rapaciousness more than his that spurs on the war; that she is his procuress, providing him with an endless succession of girls whose virginity she verifies herself; even that she is a cannibal who eats the battlefield dead. Public appearances are more and more rare, but Stewart does see her in the road near a graveyard late one night, walking without her usual entourage, completely alone. He follows her for a time, then catches up and walks her home, and at the door kisses her, and magnifies that kiss in his imagination into a sexual embrace. It is not until years later that he realizes she must have been visiting the grave of a child who died in infancy. She gives a dinner-party for him and some of the rising officers of the army, and in a brief moment away from company reveals her sadness to him. All of the officers are a little in love with her, Stewart reflects. She reveals that Benigno, her husband's brother, hates her and plots against her, which is why she has come to the front. She has now borne López several sons.

The final action of the war takes place with Eliza's black coach-a carriage she has had painted with twelve coats of black lacquer, and drawn by midnight-colored horses-leading the Paraguayan army into retreat. López's madness is full-blown. He is demanding absolute, blind allegiance from all of his countrymen and executes men daily for disloyalty, including his own family (particularly the brother who alienated Eliza). Stewart, exhausted after five years at war, is led through the battlefield by a Guaraní Indian girl who becomes obscurely comforting to him in the long absence of his wife. He finds comfort in her arms once but realizes she is younger than he thought and, after that, merely relies on her for someone to warm himself against in the night. He has become López's personal doctor which requires him to examine his stool and dress his gonorrheic penis in chalk to prevent (or stave off) its drip. Eliza, too, is losing her mind-her firstborn son, who has become a kind of golden symbol for the possible new Paraguay, reveals that she does not sleep at night, subsisting on naps for a few minutes at a time. At night, Stewart can hear her in her tent, fighting with López. "When will you marry me?" she shouts. But López's irrefutable will takes her over once again and soon they are making love.

It is only a matter of time, however, before the Brazilian army overtakes them, and when they do López is immediately shot and killed (though, like Rasputin, there is some suggestion that he was still alive when he fell off his horse into the river and drowned). Stewart, still on the battlefield, manages to avoid being killed himself by brandishing his forceps, and the men watch (unable to join in on penalty of being shot) as Eliza, iron of will to the end, digs a grave for her lover and their dead sons and buries them with her own hands.

Stewart's last glimpse of Eliza Lynch occurs three years later in Edinburgh, where he has brought Venancia and his family. He and Venancia have rediscovered a sweet, middle-aged love and she has taken to life in Scotland. One day he is strolling the main road with his daughter when he sees the Indian Miltón, still in Eliza's service, standing by her coach. Then he sees Eliza herself, walking up to a door, regal as ever and her golden hair flaming in the sun. He realizes she must have made some sort of deal with Camarrá, the Brazilian general, recalling her exodus in chains (but alive, and accompanied by all of her belongings and retinue). And now she is in Edinburgh, likely visiting her lawyers regarding money Stewart brought with him out of Paraguay, taxes on the export of yerba mate which were granted to him by López years before.


The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch

"The Government of Beans" is about the rough edges of environmental regulation, where tenuous state power and blunt governmental instruments encounter ecological destruction and social injustice. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Paraguay was undergoing dramatic economic, political, and environmental change due to a boom in the global demand for soybeans. Although the country's massive new soy monocrop brought wealth, it also brought deforestation, biodiversity loss, rising inequality and violence. Kregg Hetherington traces well-meaning attempts by bureaucrats and activists to regulate the destructive force of monocrops, only to discover that the tools of modern government are at best inadequate to deal with the complex harms of modern agriculture, at worst complicit in making them worse. The book simultaneously tells a local story of people, plants, and government; a regional story of the rise and fall of Latin America's new left; and a story of the Anthropocene write large, about long-term, paradoxical consequences of destroying ecosystems in the name of human welfare.

The Government of Beans: Regulating Life in the Age of Monocrops

The Paraguayan War (1864–70) was the deadliest and most extensive interstate war ever fought in Latin America. The conflict involving Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, and Brazil killed hundreds of thousands of people and had dire consequences for the Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano López and his nation. Though the Paraguayan War stirs the same emotions in South Americans as does the Civil War in the United States, there have been few significant investigations of the war available in English.

In this first of two volumes, Thomas L. Whigham provides an engrossing and comprehensive account of the war's origins and early campaigns, and he guides the reader through the complexities of South American nationalism, military development, and political intrigue. Whigham portrays the conflict as bloody and inexcusable, though it paved the way for more modern societies in the continent. "The Paraguayan War" fills an important gap in our understanding of Latin American history.

The Paraguayan War, Volume 1: Causes and Early Conduct

The first serious biography of Francisco Solano Lopez in English for decades, this richly researched book tells the dramatic story of Paraguay's most notorious ruler. Despite the heroic stature he gained after his death, Lopez was a monumentally flawed leader who made the disastrous decisions in 1864 and 1865 to invade Paraguay's powerful neighbors, Brazil and Argentina, initiating the most devastating interstate conflict in South American history. Drawing on a trove of primary sources, James Schofield Saeger offers a critical analysis of Lopez's personality and often-irrational persecution of enemies, adherents, and siblings. He traces Lopez's preparation for high public office, work habits, control of his nation and army, propaganda, and execution. Concluding with an examination of Lopez's posthumous rehabilitation, Saeger shows how the tyrant who ruined his nation became its most highly honored hero, crowning a campaign by revisionist publicists from 1870-1936, and a useful symbol for later authoritarians. Still largely unchallenged in Paraguay today, this glorification of a martial president is definitively put to rest in Saeger's meticulous study.

Francisco Solano L�pez and the Ruination of Paraguay: Honor and Egocentrism

The Chaco War was the first modern conflict in South America. Over time, it became the topic of many volumes published in both Bolivia and Paraguay - first by veterans, such as the commanders-in-chief, and the commanders of army corps', regiments or battalions, and by other ranks, in the form of personal memoirs or wider histories, and using a wide variety of sources. Subsequently, the conflict attracted attention of many foreign writers, foremost from the United States of America and Europe, who researched it with great interest. Hundreds of related articles have also been published.

Nevertheless, 'The Chaco War, 1932-1935' is the first ever concise history of this conflict, providing the reader with the full background to this conflict, the military build-up of the Bolivian and Paraguayan armed forces, a blow-by-blow account of Bolivian penetration of this territory since the early 20th Century, precise details on troops mobilised for the war by both sides, all of the battles fought between the belligerents, and their casualties.

Two very different military concepts faced each other: the German General Hans Kundt, a First World War veteran, hired by the Bolivian Government, was a proponent of the typical Prussian tactics of front attacks regardless of cost, but also of the strategy of taking and controlling as much territory as possible without annihilating the enemy.

The Paraguayan Lieutenant-Colonel Jos� Felix Estigarribia (later promoted to Colonel, and then General), took his specialization courses in Chile and France, and was a proponent of tactics of using trench warfare for defence, and flanking the enemy when in the offensive.

Eventually, Estigarribia's ideas proved their worth - partially because his forces managed to capture huge stocks of Bolivian arms and ammunition throughout the war.

This is also the first book to provide an exclusive collection of photographs from the archives of the Institute of History and Military Museum of Ministry of National Defence of Paraguay, and several private archives in Paraguay and Bolivia.

Perfectly complementing the earlier volume 'The Chaco Air War' of the Latin America@War series, 'The Chaco War' provides an indispensable, single-point-source-of-reference for enthusiasts and professionals alike.

The Chaco War, 1932-1935: Fighting in Green Hell

In the first half of the XX Century, there were several revolutions in Paraguay, starting in 1904, then 1908, 1911-12, 1922-23, 1936 and finally 1947. In 1922, a huge internal crisis in the Liberal Party led to a bloody revolution and for the first time in the history of the country, both sides decided to use aerial power against the enemy. There were not any airplanes available in Paraguay at that time, and very few pilots, just three, so both, the government led by President Eusebio Ayala, and the revolutionaries led by a couple of Army Colonels, Chirife and Mendoza, searched for foreign pilots and planes in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Many WWI veterans immigrated to Latin America in search of a better life, either opening flight schools or offering their services in local conflicts. And that is how some of them came to Paraguay with their own aircraft, which were bought by either the government or the revolutionaries. The three Paraguayan pilots offered their services to the government which soon established the first Air Base near the capital, in a wide open field called "Nu-Guazu" (a Guarani name meaning "Big Field"). Meanwhile, the rebels organized their own air base, first near the city of Villarrica, and later in Cango. The main types used by both sides were the Ansaldo SVA5 and SVA10, but the government could also purchase a Breguet XIV, an Armstrong Whitworth FK.8, a SPAD S.20 and a couple of SAML A.3. Inevitably soon the first dogfights took place, and also bombing raids, strafing enemy troops, and recce missions on both sides. Finally, in mid-1923, the revolutionaries were defeated and one of the consequences was the foundation of the Military Aviation School. On the other hand, the Revolution of 1947 lasted just a few months but it was as bloody as the previous one, if not more so. The government, supported by the Colorado Party, fought against the revolutionaries composed by almost 70% of the Army, Navy and Air Arm, supported by the Liberal, Febrerista and Communist parties. Regarding the Air Arm, it split in two, but at the beginning, most of the aircraft in flying conditions were used by the revolutionaries, whose main base was the city of Concepcion, in the north of the country. Soon, the government air arm had some aircraft in flying conditions although most of the Italian types purchased in 1939 were out of service. Only Lend-Lease trainers such as PT-19, BT-13, AT-6 were used for recce and light bombing raids, using mortar ammunition. Some weeks later, the loyalists could repair some Caproni AP-1s to be flown against the rebels. There were a few dogfights but no aircraft were shot down in them, although some were due to AA fire. In the end, the government could defeat the revolutionaries, mainly because the lack of tactical organization in the rebel forces. This is the first in-depth account of them with data, pictures, maps and profiles, some of them never published before.

Aerial Operations in the Revolutions of 1922 and 1947 in Paraguay: The First Dogfights in South America

Paraguay had the oldest one-party regime on earth. Under the 60-year dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner's Colorado party, wealth and power became concentrated in the hands of a small few; until elections in 2008 broke the party's hold on the country and promised a newer, more egalitarian future, particularly for the country's indigenous people. 

 In The Priest of Paraguay Hugh O'Shaughnessy tells the story of how Fernando Lugo, a bishop from a deprived diocese, swept to victory and what this means for his country, Latin America and the wider world. He traces Lugo's life alongside the turbulent history of Paraguay - from his early years in a family which fell victim to Stroessner to his release by the Vatican in order to follow a political calling to the outcry following revelations of illegitimate children. The book also examines what may lie in store for the newest addition to Latin America's 'pink tide' of socialist and social democratic countries. 

 This is history of a fascinating but largely unknown country by one of the most respected commentators on Latin America.

The Priest of Paraguay: Fernando Lugo and the Making of a Nation

"From the author of "City of Silver", a beautifully rich and puzzling"" historical mystery set in" "Paraguay"", 1868"

A war against Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay has devastated Paraguay. Ninety percent of the males between the ages of eight and eighty have died in the conflict and food is scarce. In the small village of Santa Caterina, Padre Gregorio advises the women of his congregation to abandon the laws of the church and get pregnant by what men are available. As he leaves the pulpit, he discovers the murdered body of Ricardo Yotté, one of the most powerful men in the country, at the bottom of the belfry.

There are many suspects: Eliza Lynch, a former Parisian courtesan who is now the consort of the brutal dictator, Francisco Solano López, and who entrusted to Yotté the country's treasury of gold and jewels; López himself, who may have suspected his ally Yotté of carrying on an affair with the beautiful Eliza; Comandante Luis Menenez, local representative of the dictator, who competed with Yotté for López's favor, and a wounded Brazilian soldier who has secretly taken up with one of the village girls.

Lynch is desperate to recover the missing gold, and the comandante is desperate to prove his usefulness to López. To avoid having an innocent person dragged off to torture and death, a band of villagers undertake to solve the crime, including Padre Gregorio, the village midwife, her crippled husband returned from combat, their spirited daughter, and a war widow. Each carries secrets they seek to protect from the others, while they pursue their quest for the truth.

Lyrical, complex, and meticulously researched, Annamaria Alfieri's "Invisible Country" is an ingenious cross between Isabel Allende and Agatha Christie.

Invisible Country: A Mystery

Weep, Grey Bird, Weep is the story of the most extraordinary love story of the 19th century, set against the background of the most disastrous war ever fought. The war saw the tiny republic of Paraguay fighting against the combined forces of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. By the time the war ended, in March 1870, Paraguay's population had been reduced by more than half, and 80 per cent of the male population had been killed. Paraguay's leader in this war was Francisco Solano Lopez and by his side was his devoted lover, a girl from Ireland called Eliza Lynch. He was killed on the last day of the war and she buried him and their eldest son, who died trying to protect her, with her bare hands.

Weep, Grey Bird, Weep: The Paraguayan War 1864-1870

Ranging from the 1840s through the early twenty-first century, this study of shared political, economic, and cultural histories fills significant gaps in our understanding of Paraguayan-U.S. relations. Frank O. Mora and Jerry W. Cooney tell how an initially rocky beginning between the two countries, marked by diplomatic posturing, shows of military force, and failed business schemes, gave way to a calmer period during which the United States backed Paraguay's territorial claims against its neighbors, prospects grew brighter for American entrepreneurs, and Paraguay embraced Pan-Americanism.It was not until the 1930s that the two countries engaged in earnest as the United States attempted to mediate the Chaco War between Paraguay and Bolivia. Then, as the authors write, "hemispheric solidarity in World War II, the cold war in Latin America, the 'balance of power' among states in the Río de la Plata, and the question of U.S. support for, or aid to, Latin American dictators" became matters of mutual interest.

The dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner (1954-89) spanned much of this era, and a shared attitude of realpolitik typified U.S.-Paraguayan relations during his rule. Post-Stroessner, the United States has stood by Paraguay during its transition to democracy, despite lingering concerns about such issues as drug trafficking and intellectual piracy. The countries should grow closer with time, the authors conclude, if Paraguay resists the continent's leftward political shift and remains a solid partner in U.S. antiterror initiatives in South America.

Paraguay and the United States: Distant Allies

In 2004, one of the world’s last bands of voluntarily isolated nomads left behind their ancestral life in the dwindling thorn forests of northern Paraguay, fleeing ranchers’ bulldozers.  "Behold the Black Caiman" is Lucas Bessire’s intimate chronicle of the journey of this small group of Ayoreo people, the terrifying new world they now face, and the precarious lives they are piecing together against the backdrop of soul-collecting missionaries, humanitarian NGOs, late liberal economic policies, and the highest deforestation rate in the world. 

 Drawing on ten years of fieldwork, Bessire highlights the stark disconnect between the desperate conditions of Ayoreo life for those out of the forest and the well-funded global efforts to preserve those Ayoreo still living in it. By showing how this disconnect reverberates within Ayoreo bodies and minds, his reflexive account takes aim at the devastating consequences of our society’s continued obsession with the primitive and raises important questions about anthropology’s potent capacity to further or impede indigenous struggles for sovereignty. The result is a timely update to the classic literary ethnographies of South America, a sustained critique of the so-called ontological turn—one of anthropology’s hottest trends—and, above all, an urgent call for scholars and activists alike to rethink their notions of difference. 


Behold the Black Caiman: A Chronicle of Ayoreo Life

Publicada por primera vez en 1956, Zama está considerada de manera unánime como una de las grandes novelas del siglo veinte en lengua española.
Con una escritura bella y precisa, Antonio Di Benedetto narra la existencia solitaria y suspendida de Don Diego de Zama, un funcionario de la corona española en Asunción del Paraguay que, víctima de una interminable espera, aguarda ser trasladado a Buenos Aires a fines del siglo XVIII.
La de Zama no es cualquier espera, se trata de una condición existencial, angustiosa y reflexiva, en un territorio caracterizado por la lejanía, la ajenidad y la disposición para el recuerdo. Zama es la novela de un exiliado castizo, con un lenguaje intemporal y arcaico, por momentos cercano al del Siglo de Oro.

Zama

This book is an innovative sociolinguistic study of New Australia, an Australian immigrant community in Paraguay in 1893, whose descendants today speak Guarani. Providing fresh data on a previously under-researched community who are an extremely rare case of language shifting from English heritage language to a local indigenous language, the case study is situated within the wider context of the colonial and post-colonial spread of English in Latin America over the past century. Drawing on insights from linguistic anthropology, sociolinguistics, Latin American studies and history, the author presents the history of the colony before closely analysing the interplay of language and identity in this uniquely diasporic setting. This book fills a longstanding gap in the World Englishes and heritage languages literature, and it will be of interest to scholars of colonial and postcolonial languages, and minority language more generally.

Language Competition and Shift in New Australia, Paraguay

More than 150 never before published illustrations, complimented by an exhaustively researched text, document the little-known air war between Bolivia and Paraguay during the late 1920s and early 1930s. Full details of such aircraft as Fiat C.R. 20s, Curtiss Hawk IIs, Curtiss Ospreys, Potez 25s and all other types employed by both combatants, including acquisition, operations, and markings make this a must for historians, modelers, and anyone interested in golden-age aviation.

Aircraft of the Chaco War, 1928-1935

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

An Account of Paraguay: Its History, Its People, and Its Government

"Engaged, nuanced, and accessible--this untold story of Paraguay's indigenous peoples constitutes an important addition to the English-language literature on this understudied country."--John Charles Chasteen, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
  
 "Provides original insights into the makings of indigenous policy during Paraguay's Stroessner era and the democratic opening after 1989 . . . shows how state policies were buffeted by external actors but also how indigenous peoples fought back. A must-read for those interested in indigenous policy in Latin America."-- Erick D. Langer, Georgetown University

"A significant contribution to the field . . . It develops a rich understanding of continuities and change in Paraguayan history, including the role of religious missions in indigenous assimilation and/or cultural preservation."--Virginia Garrard Burnett, University of Texas, Austin

Native groups have played an important historical role in Paraguay, the most homogenous and the only officially bilingual country in Latin America. This book analyzes their complex relationship with the corrupt Alfredo Stroessner regime (1954-89), which framed its policies as inclusive but excluded Paraguay's indigenous people from the benefits of national development and the most basic human rights. However, this is not a history of oppression and victimhood but rather a study in manipulation. Horst argues that while native people struggled daily to secure food and work under Stroessner's often contradictory and heavy-handed policies, they refused to disappear anonymously into the larger peasant population. As savvy actors who manipulated difficult circumstances to foil exclusionary policies, they succeeded in publicly embarrassing the regime as often as possible through exposures of state corruption.

Working in close cooperation with the Catholic Church, indigenous peoples capitalized on Catholic legal advocacy in their struggles to defend their territories and resources. The church became the strongest defender of native land claims, drawing international attention to the plight of indigenous peoples as well as abuses of human rights. While indigenous resistance weakened support for the Stroessner regime, it also drove native leaders and peoples into closer interaction with and dependency upon the very national institutions they opposed.

Contributing their own vision of a multiethnic state, the native people of Paraguay created multiple alliances with regime opponents, found ways to draw attention to human rights, and by demanding tolerance of ethnic plurality helped lead the nation toward greater democracy in 1992. Horst's study--the only history to focus on recent social policies and national political strategies for indigenous populations in modern Paraguay-- provides an important narrative for historians of Paraguay and other parts of Latin America, as well as for anthropologists and others interested in the intersection of identity politics and human rights.

René Harder Horst is associate professor of history at Appalachian State University.

The Stroessner Regime and Indigenous Resistance in Paraguay

From award-winning author Susan Hood and illustrator Sally Wern Comport comes the extraordinary true tale of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay, an orchestra made up of children playing instruments built from recycled trash.

Ada Ríos grew up in Cateura, a small town in Paraguay built on a landfill. She dreamed of playing the violin, but with little money for anything but the bare essentials, it was never an option...until a music teacher named Favio Chávez arrived. He wanted to give the children of Cateura something special, so he made them instruments out of materials found in the trash. It was a crazy idea, but one that would leave Ada—and her town—forever changed. Now, the Recycled Orchestra plays venues around the world, spreading their message of hope and innovation.

Ada's Violin: The Story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay

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