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The Latin America Readers
The Paraguay Reader: History, Culture, Politics
Hemmed in by the vast, arid Chaco to the west and, for most of its history, impenetrable jungles to the east, Paraguay has been defined largely by its isolation. Partly as a result, there has been a dearth of serious scholarship or journalism about the country. Going a long way toward redressing this lack of information and analysis, The Paraguay Reader is a lively compilation of testimonies, journalism, scholarship, political tracts, literature, and illustrations, including maps, photographs, paintings, drawings, and advertisements. Taken together, the anthology's many selections convey the country's extraordinarily rich history and cultural heritage, as well as the realities of its struggles against underdevelopment, foreign intervention, poverty, inequality, and authoritarianism. Most of the Reader is arranged chronologically. Weighted toward the twentieth century and early twenty-first, it nevertheless gives due attention to major events in Paraguay's history, such as the Triple Alliance War (1864–70) and the Chaco War (1932–35). The Reader 's final section, focused on national identity and culture, addresses matters including ethnicity, language, and gender. Most of the selections are by Paraguayans, and many of the pieces appear in English for the first time. Helpful introductions by the editors precede each of the book's sections and all of the selected texts.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
488 pages, Hardcover
First published December 31, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 14, 2020
More than just harps and ñanduti lace
If all the books in the Duke University Press’ series of country “readers” are as good as this one, they will have succeeded in making an excellent contribution to area studies. It’s a compendium, as I assume all of the series are, of short excerpts from original documents, speeches, novels, eye-witness reports, recipes, and books about Paraguay, its history and culture. The material covers the country from the 16th century Jesuit reducciones to 21st century politics. Given such a format, nobody will find every single item fascinating or useful, but one is left with the overall feeling that you have learned a lot without vast amounts of jargon or irrelevant detail. A better map or at least, a set of maps, would have been desirable, but otherwise I have no criticisms.
Paraguay is little-known in the world, but its story is worth knowing. It is the only country in all the Americas---and we can throw in Australasia as well---where the European invaders wound up speaking the indigenous language, and still do today. I recall visiting Nueva Australia, a settlement in the red dirt plains of southern Paraguay, where small, blond, red-cheeked children spoke only Guaraní until they went to school. I sat on buses full of country people who often looked European, but spoke softly in Guaraní. On top of that, if you read Paraguay’s tragic history, you’ll find that in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) between Paraguay and the combined forces of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, 90% of adult males were killed! Surely for a nation state in the modern period of human history, that was unprecedented and has never been repeated despite the huge slaughters of the two World Wars, the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, etc. Due to that disaster, Paraguay became a nation of immigrants, including those Australian and British utopian socialists, whose descendants I met back in 1990. But “The Reader” introduces Paraguay’s history of autarky, terrible wars, political instability alternating with dictatorship, the struggle to avoid domination by bigger and more prosperous neighbors (Argentina and Brazil), and an economy based either on smuggling or on environmental degradation. The second big war, with Bolivia in the 1930s, is covered along with the oppression of the Indians, sold into slavery well into the 20th century. The editors included poems and sections of diaries along with overblown political speeches, and many views of Stroessner, the dictator who ruled with an iron fist from 1954 to 1989 with firm backing from the good ol’ USA. There's a wide selection of rare photos, cartoons, and soccer lore. In short, as in “Alice’s Restaurant”, you can find anything you want, exceptin' Alice, and if she had been Paraguayan she'd probably be in here too!
If all the books in the Duke University Press’ series of country “readers” are as good as this one, they will have succeeded in making an excellent contribution to area studies. It’s a compendium, as I assume all of the series are, of short excerpts from original documents, speeches, novels, eye-witness reports, recipes, and books about Paraguay, its history and culture. The material covers the country from the 16th century Jesuit reducciones to 21st century politics. Given such a format, nobody will find every single item fascinating or useful, but one is left with the overall feeling that you have learned a lot without vast amounts of jargon or irrelevant detail. A better map or at least, a set of maps, would have been desirable, but otherwise I have no criticisms.
Paraguay is little-known in the world, but its story is worth knowing. It is the only country in all the Americas---and we can throw in Australasia as well---where the European invaders wound up speaking the indigenous language, and still do today. I recall visiting Nueva Australia, a settlement in the red dirt plains of southern Paraguay, where small, blond, red-cheeked children spoke only Guaraní until they went to school. I sat on buses full of country people who often looked European, but spoke softly in Guaraní. On top of that, if you read Paraguay’s tragic history, you’ll find that in the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) between Paraguay and the combined forces of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, 90% of adult males were killed! Surely for a nation state in the modern period of human history, that was unprecedented and has never been repeated despite the huge slaughters of the two World Wars, the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides, etc. Due to that disaster, Paraguay became a nation of immigrants, including those Australian and British utopian socialists, whose descendants I met back in 1990. But “The Reader” introduces Paraguay’s history of autarky, terrible wars, political instability alternating with dictatorship, the struggle to avoid domination by bigger and more prosperous neighbors (Argentina and Brazil), and an economy based either on smuggling or on environmental degradation. The second big war, with Bolivia in the 1930s, is covered along with the oppression of the Indians, sold into slavery well into the 20th century. The editors included poems and sections of diaries along with overblown political speeches, and many views of Stroessner, the dictator who ruled with an iron fist from 1954 to 1989 with firm backing from the good ol’ USA. There's a wide selection of rare photos, cartoons, and soccer lore. In short, as in “Alice’s Restaurant”, you can find anything you want, exceptin' Alice, and if she had been Paraguayan she'd probably be in here too!
July 12, 2025
"[T]he past in Paraguay does not exist but as legend.This is why we do not have historians but troubadours, emotional singers of epic tales, tear-jerking, guitar-playing poets of the past. This is why we do not have human heroes, but have instead marble statues, without even the smallest stain of birdshit which, dropped by some iconoclastic pigeon, might blemish their pure white surface." (quoting Helio Vega, 159-60)
"'I saw Stroessner,' I said to one friend, a man who knows as much about Latin American dictators as anybody. 'Did he say much?' he asked. 'No,' I replied. 'I'm not surprised,' he said. 'They never do.'" (quoting Isabel Hilton, 319)
"The Colorado Party has been reduced to nothing more than an overcrowded public sector employment agency. At the same time is has also become a kind of football club that lives off primitive emotions, fueled by the rhythms of a joyful polka and the waving of bright red flags. The polka always concludes to enthusiastic applause and the color is reproduced in a sea of red shirts and handkerchiefs. I should make it clear that I have nothing against either the polka or the color red, except when the latter makes a mocker of some poor soul forced to squeeze his ample midriff into a red shirt, giving him the appearance of a huge mollusk. Even here, my objections are merely aesthetic rather than political." (quoting Helio Vega, 332)
"'I saw Stroessner,' I said to one friend, a man who knows as much about Latin American dictators as anybody. 'Did he say much?' he asked. 'No,' I replied. 'I'm not surprised,' he said. 'They never do.'" (quoting Isabel Hilton, 319)
"The Colorado Party has been reduced to nothing more than an overcrowded public sector employment agency. At the same time is has also become a kind of football club that lives off primitive emotions, fueled by the rhythms of a joyful polka and the waving of bright red flags. The polka always concludes to enthusiastic applause and the color is reproduced in a sea of red shirts and handkerchiefs. I should make it clear that I have nothing against either the polka or the color red, except when the latter makes a mocker of some poor soul forced to squeeze his ample midriff into a red shirt, giving him the appearance of a huge mollusk. Even here, my objections are merely aesthetic rather than political." (quoting Helio Vega, 332)
November 8, 2024
Amazing history of Paraguay, especially the political/military relations with nearby South American neighboring countries.
November 27, 2025
A really good introduction to Paraguay becomes it combines excerpts from so many disparate primary sources chronologically in one place.
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October 2, 2015These are a series of country studies that provide a valuable overview of various Latin American countries. They use both primary and secondary sources by eyewitnesses and important scholars respectively to illuminate key periods of each country’s history. They also include a trove of images, maps, and fine art. Each volume focuses on a single country. Currently, Duke has published readers about the Dominican Republic, Chile, Paraguay, Guatemala, Ecuador, Perú, Costa Rica, Cuba, México, Argentina, and Brazil
January 5, 2014
I found this book extremely enlightening. I spent 10 weeks in Paraguay as a volunteer and am very happy that I read this book beforehand, to give me a good idea of the history of the country along with it's people. Some of the essays about Stroesnner were very difficult to read, but worthwhile knowing. Wherever I travel next, I am certainly going to get the "____" reader for that country too, as there are plenty of these types of books.
June 4, 2015
The history of Paraguay is so bizarre - almost unbelievable with the number of dictatorships and suicidal wars it's had - it's a shame so few people know about. This book's easily the best history of the country and one of the best history books I've ever stumbled across just because it's built on such a huge range of sources: from letters to songs, diary entries to novel extracts, few of which outstay their welcome. Curated like a good mixtape, really.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews