Paraguay historical timeline

Origins

Guaraní peoples farmed and hunted between the Paraná and the Paraguay rivers long before Spain arrived. Asunción was founded in 1537 and became the base from which much of the southern cone was settled — it was called the mother of cities for a reason. From 1609 the Jesuits built reductions: mission towns of several thousand Guaraní each, running their own farms, printing presses, orchestras and workshops, and defending themselves against slave raiders from Brazil. Spain expelled the Jesuits in 1767 and the towns emptied; the ruins at Trinidad and Jesús are UNESCO sites.

Turning points

Independence in 1811 came almost without fighting. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia then ruled until 1840 and sealed the country off from the outside world almost entirely. What followed was the War of the Triple Alliance of 1864 to 1870 against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay simultaneously — proportionally the most destructive war in modern history. Paraguay lost territory and, by most estimates, well over half its population, including the great majority of its adult men. The Chaco War with Bolivia in the 1930s was, unusually, won. Alfredo Stroessner then ruled from 1954 to 1989, the longest dictatorship in South America at the time, and the Itaipú dam built with Brazil during it remains one of the largest power stations on earth. Democracy arrived in 1989, though the Colorado Party has held the presidency for all but a few years since 1947.

Influential people

Dr Francia, the isolationist. Francisco Solano López, who led the country into the Triple Alliance war and is treated as both national martyr and national catastrophe depending on who is speaking. Stroessner. Augusto Roa Bastos, whose novel Yo el Supremo is among the major works of Latin American fiction and was written in exile. And Josefina Plá, who shaped twentieth-century Paraguayan art and letters.

Cultural evolution

Paraguay is the only country in the Americas where a majority of the population, Indigenous and not, speaks an Indigenous language in daily life. Guaraní is co-official, used in parliament, on television and at home, and most Paraguayans move between it and Spanish mid-sentence. Tereré — yerba mate drunk cold from a shared guampa, usually with herbs crushed into the water — is UNESCO-listed and is drunk more or less continuously. Ñandutí lace, named for a spider’s web, and the Paraguayan harp are the other things that travel.

Present-day significance

Itaipú and Yacyretá make Paraguay one of the largest per-head exporters of electricity in the world, all of it renewable. Soy and beef carry the rest. Landlocked, it moves its exports down the rivers on a barge fleet that is among the biggest anywhere. The population is young, the informal economy is large, and Ciudad del Este on the Brazilian border is one of the busiest trading points in South America.