Chaco historical timeline

The Chaco resisted outside settlement for four centuries, and then was fought over.

Before

Hunter-gatherer and horticultural peoples occupied the region for millennia, adapting to a landscape with almost no permanent water. Spanish expeditions crossed it in the sixteenth century looking for a route to the silver of Potosi and mostly died; Jesuit and Franciscan missions on the fringes had limited success, and the interior remained outside colonial control into the twentieth century.

Mennonite colonisation

Paraguay, wanting to occupy territory Bolivia also claimed, offered land and extraordinary privileges. Menno colony was founded in 1927 by Mennonites from Canada, Fernheim in 1930 by refugees from Stalin’s Soviet Union, and Neuland in 1947 by a further wave. The early years were lethal — typhoid, heat and no water — and many died or left.

The Chaco War

Bolivia, landlocked after losing its coast to Chile, wanted the Paraguay river and believed there was oil. Between 1932 and 1935 the two poorest countries in South America fought the largest war in the Americas of the twentieth century here. Around 90,000 men died, a great many of them from thirst and disease rather than combat. Paraguay held most of the territory and it was confirmed by treaty in 1938.

The tannin towns

Before the war, British and Argentine companies built factories along the Paraguay river to extract tannin from quebracho, with company towns, private railways into the forest and a workforce of indigenous and Paraguayan labourers. Puerto Casado and Puerto Pinasco were among them. Synthetic tannins killed the industry, and the remains — rusting plant, abandoned rail, decaying company housing — are still there.

Since

The Trans-Chaco highway was pushed through from the 1950s, and cattle ranching has expanded rapidly since 2000, with the deforestation that follows.