Through South America

by Harry Weston Van Dyke

With a climate similar to that of southern California, Paraguay, throughout its entire extent, is blessed with abundant rain the year round. It is well watered and quite thickly wooded, and thus protected from the intense heat usual in low-lying countries.

Eastern Paraguay resembles Uruguay in its rolling, fertile areas, but is more mountainous. On the northern frontier is the range known as the Quinze Puntas. Inclosing the country on the east are the Cordilleras of Amambay and Mbaracayú, while down the center, from north to south, run a broken series of lesser sierras and the range called Caaguazú, forming a ridge or backbone that subdivides this half of Paraguay into the two great basins drained by the Paraná River on the east and the Paraguay on the west.

Almost the whole of Paraguay proper has forests of valuable woods with occasional clear places, where settlers have made serviceable the marvelous fertility and luxuriance of the soil. For centuries this region has been the barrier between the two distinct phases of Spanish civilization in South America—the golden empire of Peru and the agricultural colonies on the Plata and its tributaries—just as Uruguay has been the buffer state between the Portuguese and Spanish peoples. These phases have merged but little and to-day present a most interesting contrast.

From the time of Cabot’s fortified settlement of Asunción (now the capital of Paraguay) at the junction of the Paraguay and Pilcomayo rivers, in 1536, whence his lieutenant, Domingo Irala, made his vain attempt to penetrate into Peru, down to the present, Paraguay has been isolated to a considerable degree from the march of progress. The six hundred adventurers who followed the fortunes of Irala stayed on the land, intermarried with the Guarany Indians and bred the mixed race that was the foundation of the nation of to-day; and the Indians developed, along with the mestizos, to a status unique in South America. Evading the abject slavery that decimated the aboriginal races throughout the Andean region, the Guaranies were taught the arts of the soil and war by the Jesuits, and, during the hundred and fifty years of the latter’s sway, achieved a stage of development corresponding to that of the peasantry of France.

GOVERNMENT PALACE, ASUNCIÓN.

VIEW OF ASUNCIÓN AND RIVER PARAGUAY FROM ROOF OF THE CENTRAL RAILROAD STATION.

The story of the Jesuit missions which occupied the Paraná basin, is an important and thrilling chapter in Latin-American history. Early in its life, the Society turned its attention to the evangelization of South America; it was the genius of its founder, Ignatius Loyola, that perfected the organization to accomplish this. In 1550 the Jesuit Fathers began their work on the Brazilian coast settlements, but were driven farther and farther inland by the Portuguese as it became apparent that their policy of education and uplift would put an end to the enslavement of the natives which was the basis of the economic scheme of the colonists. Eventually, some time about 1586, the Jesuits entered the Paraguay region, won the confidence of the Guaranies and purposed to “reduce” the tribes of the whole Plata country. They met with the same opposition from the Spanish colonists and their stronghold became restricted to the secluded and isolated region mentioned—the Paraná basin and Misiones territory of Argentina.

Here, for over a hundred years, under the protection of the official sanction won from the Spanish King, Philip III, they worked among their proselytes. They learned and perfected the native dialects; taught the men to cultivate the soil, and the women to spin and weave cotton; induced them to clear the forests and to build and live in towns, and even organized them into an effective militia, which more than once enabled them to preserve the integrity of the remarkable state—a state unique in a way, since it was virtually under the direct control of the General of the Order, although within the territorial sovereignty of Spain. This “republic” lasted until 1769, when the famous decree of the King of Spain banished the Jesuits from all his dominions; but the effects of their presence are still noticeable throughout Paraguay and Misiones.