Mangrullo Cemetery, Asuncion
On the path, long before reaching Mangrullo, wailing is heard coming from within the enclosure. At the entrance seated on the ground are aged women selling fruit with poguazú cigars in their mouths. A leper or two adds charm to the scene. They are not begging, but expect everyone waiting for somebody to slip a peso bill (2½ c.) into their spotted hands. From the iron entrance, the only road in the cemetery leads to the chapel in the center. Black clothed persons wander ghoulishly among the tombstones, their hats in their hands. A concourse of people is assembled in front of the building. Nearby is a wooden tower, and on a platform underneath its roof a hunchback is ringing the bell, making it peal at slow intervals. The bell stops and the wailing of the bare-headed assembly begins. This lasts about five minutes; the hunchback then tolls the bell anew, this time in a rapid succession of clangs. The men lift up the rude box containing the dead person from which the olfactory aroma of putrid flesh arises and carrying it to the shallow grave, they bury it to the tune of the great bell which has again started ringing. When the bell stops, the women start wailing again and the men stand aside to smoke, talk politics, and watch the scene. The wailing is not caused so much through grief as it is to see who can make the loudest noise.
A woman had lost her two weeks' old baby and her relations as far removed as the fourth generation of cousin had come to mourn. The shrieks emitted were not human. They sounded more like the snarling and growling of animals, the howling of hyenas and ululations of owls. The women worked themselves into a frenzy of hysteria, and the bereaved mother threw herself on the grave and, lying on her back, kicked, struggled, and writhed until she became unconscious through her own emotions. One of these wailing fests that I witnessed came to a sudden and untimely end. While the family and relatives of a murdered man had reached a soprano in the shrieking test, a ñacaniná (large viper) crawled from a hole beneath a tombstone and, frightened at the lugubrious wails, attempted to escape by safely crawling away. It took its course among the mourners, and the hurried scamper of footsteps to the tune of blasphemous and ungodly oaths was now the order of the funeral aftermath.
The graves in the Mangrullo cemetery are so multitudinous and so close together that it is impossible for a funeral procession to reach the newly dug grave without crossing numerous mounds. There are but few monuments, iron crosses painted black taking their places. Iron fences surround the graves of those who have well-to-do relatives. But few inscriptions tell the age of the beloved deceased; instead there hangs at each cross a photograph likeness of the dead.
The market-place of Asuncion probably offers more attractions to the stranger than in any other city. It is situated in the middle of the town and has a large covered frame building where meats are hung. Making a circumvallation of the butcher shop are benches where sit women, white, black, Indian, and mixed breed, offering for sale cigars of their own manufacture. Outside on the ground squat the rabble who cannot afford a chair at the benches. They sell parrakeets, divers song-birds, the succulent stubby native banana, curiously shaped peppers, avocados, herbs, pineapples, and cooked viands. At the entrance to the market are kiosks where caña or native rum is dispensed. At 8:00 A.M. the market-place represents great animation. Lazy, fat lousy dogs, hundreds in number, their bellies gorged with rare meat and offal, lie in glutinous stupor in the aisles and under the shade of large stationary umbrellas. They lick the grease from the roasted meat for sale and urinate in the frying pans. Ignorant natives purchase these meat roasts and greedily devour it, unconscious of its flavoring. This is the one place in Asuncion where meat and fresh vegetables are for sale, and the private families and hotel guests are obliged to partake of it or starve.
But few foreign women visit Asuncion; it should be their paradise because here for a song can be purchased the ñanduti, the most delicate silk and cotton embroidery in existence woven by the native women. This wonderful texture represents much labor and is in great demand. The guayaba flower is a popular design, a round blossom with a starlike center. Stuffed alligators and cucurús adorn the store windows and live parrots sell for a few cents apiece. In buying a parrot, one should previously enlist the services of a native. Birds under one year are most precious and those with the yellow head command the highest price. In order to make the old birds appear wild and hearty, the natives feed them with rum. This makes them flutter and their antics then create a grand show off. En voyage a few days later they die of old age and the innocent purchaser is unaware that rum was used to produce unnatural activity. It is better to purchase parrakeets in Buenos Aires because the pick of Paraguay is exported to the bird stores on the Calle Moreno. At San Bernardino can be bought lovely egrets and butterfly wings. Monkeys cannot stand transportation and soon die.
The physicians of Asuncion are poor and but few hold genuine degrees. Every bowel or stomach complaint that the patient gets, they are likely to diagnose as appendicitis, and they are anxious to operate with dirty instruments which they carry loosely in their pockets. I know of a case of a woman having a dull pain high up on her left side which they claimed was appendicitis and they wanted to operate on her for it, telling her it was a reflex pain, when in reality it was nothing but a common fatty tumor.
One of the curses in Asuncion and so acknowledged by the English residents are the missionaries from Australia classed as the Plymouth Brethren, which belief is akin to that of the Methodists. No missionaries are needed in Paraguay. These Plymouth Brethren, numbering two families, were sent to Asuncion with free transportation and a monthly salary of twenty pounds to teach religion to the poor benighted heathen which there does not exist. They hold services at their pleasure in a room in their houses to a congregation that scarcely reaches six in number. The remainder of their time they spend in indolent ease, for a person in Asuncion can live like a king on one hundred dollars per month. One of the chief Paraguayan industries is the manufacture of cigars. The native women make two classes, the poguazú and pohí. The first mentioned are long, large, strong cigars which sell at 2½ c. per half dozen. This is a favorite one with the native women who invariably have one poked half-way down their muzzle, the ashy end just protruding. The pohís are small cigars with outside wrapper grown from Havana seed. They are more aromatic and sell for 2½ c. a dozen. The factories made five cigars, that of La Veguera turning out one named "Don Alfonso" which sells for 120 pesos ($3) for twenty-five, or 12 c. apiece. This same brand sells in Buenos Aires for 50 c. apiece and is equal to the best Havanas that sell in the United States for $1 apiece. The ñandeyara guazú is a fine cigar that sells for 30 pesos (75 c.) a hundred. Paraguay is a smoker's paradise and the advantage of the tobacco is that it never causes sore spots on the tongue nor any other vocal irritation.