The inhabitants are extremely lazy, and on the estancias the men live in indolent ease, their many concubines doing the real labor. Strangers living in Paraguay become in time like the natives, taking their siesta at noon and putting off all work until the morrow. The business is in the hands of the Spaniards, Germans, and Italians. There are over five thousand Germans in the republic but like the Spaniard they are unpopular with the natives. There is much wealth in Asuncion according to the Paraguayan standard but very little according to the European standard. The town teems with millionaires but a million pesos Paraguayan amounts to only twenty-five thousand dollars. These people can make a great splurge and live in great style in Asuncion where food is plentiful and good, qualifying a luxury. The women of these people assume great airs. There are only two real millionaires according to their wealth in North American currency. One is Saccarello, an Italian estanciero and the other is Jorba, a Spaniard, who has a general store and who is an extensive exporter with an office in Barcelona. Angulo, another exporter and storekeeper, is wealthy as well as Urrutia and Uguarte, bankers; but these last named people are not millionaires. For $7500 can be built a palace of a house. Land is cheap all over the republic. There is a market for all native products which are lumber, cattle, mandioca, sugar cane, tobacco, yerba maté, and tannic acid. But little is exported on account of the scarcity of labor for the men will not work. What labor there is, is cheap. For example, the old Spaniard who is bartender, table waiter, floor sweeper, and general factotum of the Hotel Hispano-Americano only receives $10 a month, with practically no income from tips. With this, he supports his English wife and four children. Poverty in Paraguay is unknown. About 5000 acres of rich soil can be purchased for $10,000.
Paraguay is one of the few South American countries which has iron but as yet it is not exploited, although in the period of the Five Years' War it furnished material from which the cannon were manufactured in Asuncion. The language of the country is Guarani, phonetic, expressive and rich in vowels. Foreigners learn it easily and it is the vernacular of all excepting those people dealing with strangers. The newspaper was formerly published in it and Lopez was at one time thinking seriously of making it the official language of the country. Outside of Asuncion it is essentially spoken throughout the country and in certain districts Spanish is of no avail.
Some of the Asuncenas are gems. If the reader of this work has previously read my South American Travels he may remember of my stating that I saw in the telegraph office in Asuncion, working as clerks, two of the most beautiful girls that I have ever gazed upon. This time while in the city I returned to the telegraph office ostensibly to send a message, but in reality to see if the same maidens were still on the job. The youngest was there, a marvelous work of God, but three years' lapse of time had slightly undermined her beauty. Although we had seen each other but one brief moment before and had met thousands of people in the interval, recognition was at once mutual. I told her how beautiful she was, how she attracted me and how I longed to make her acquaintance. She reciprocated my attentions, told me that her name was Marcelina Espinosa and that I had permission to call on her. This happened on the eve of my departure for Motto Grosso, and I assured her that when I returned to Asuncion in the course of two months that I certainly should avail myself of the pleasure of her kind invitation.
Not wishing to seem egotistical in making this statement, I was not long in Asuncion, before I discovered that I appealed to Paraguayan womanhood. Oftentimes of an evening while passing along the residential streets I would notice women in the act of closing the doors or the shutters. On seeing me they would desist from this occupation and regard me longingly and sympathetically until I had disappeared from sight. At a printing establishment which had picture postal cards for sale, a fine looking woman on whose face was depicted latent passions which only needed encouragement to become a reality, waited on me. As I paid her for a trivial purchase, she let her hand linger in mine looking at me appealingly for reciprocation.
An old native woman in the market-place admired a gold ring with jade setting which I always wear as a lucky stone. She was not content only in admiring it, but she went through the market and got her friends to come and look at it. Many of these were comely girls. They not knowing that I understood a word of Guarani remarked on its beauty, and then fell to discussing me in most charming terms.
Although most Paraguayans are born out of wedlock, the inhabitants are not immoral. Like the majority of Latin Americans they are unmoral because they never had any morals to begin with. It is quite the thing in Asuncion for men forty years old and more to have lustful intentions on twelve-year old girls. Women frequently marry at fourteen years of age, but men seldom do so before they are thirty years old. Many women remain single for there are nine women to every man in Paraguay, owing to the decimation of the latter in the numerous revolutions that have taken place, and with such a disproportionate ratio on the side of the women, it is easy for the men to satisfy their desires without marriage. Excepting among the highest social classes virtue among women has no value and men who are old enough to be grandfathers lasciviously ogle girls that have scarcely reached the age of puberty. This great disparity of ages does not have the evil results that are often the case in colder countries. The women soon lose their good looks while the men seldom change until they reach old age. The girls for generations have been taught to marry men considerably older than themselves; thus the caned and bespatted young fops that haunt the cafés and moving picture shows are obliged to form mesalliances with young half-breed girls. The latter are too ignorant to make any objection to being seduced as they have been taught that it is the natural state of affairs. No matter how unmoral the people are, a Paraguayan girl is rarely to be found in a brothel. Many men going by different names are half brothers, having had the same mother but different fathers. As in all countries of lax morals, syphilis is rife. But very few of the inhabitants show outward symptoms of it, for it is so much inbred in the people that it has lost its virulence.
I had met on the train coming from Buenos Aires a man who was so Teutonic in appearance and in style of his clothes that I had supposed him to be fresh from Germany. He sat across from me at the table in the dining car after leaving Villa Encarnacion, and I was surprised to hear him answer "Chileno" when the Paraguayan immigration inspector asked him his nationality. He was the grandson of a German who had settled in Southern Chile. This man that I met was about forty years old and is so prominent in financial circles that his name is famous all over Southern Chile. He was now on his way to Asuncion to look over one of the two Paraguayan gunboats which the government wished to sell in order to obtain sufficient funds to pay off the army with. If the gunboat suited him he could have it shipped to Chile and have it remodeled as a freighter or a passenger ship. His name for obvious reasons I shall designate as M——.
Señor M—— was a very entertaining man, had traveled all over the world, and appeared to have a good knowledge of sociology. I invited him to the Hispano-Americano to have dinner with me and he in turn invited me to dine with him at the Saint-Pierre where he sojourned. We went a couple of times to the moving picture shows and to the Belvedere gardens. His discourse was always of the most moral and elevating character which was a marked contrast to that of the natives. One night I suggested that we should take in a vaudeville entertainment that was being staged at the Belvedere. He agreed and I went to the Hotel Saint-Pierre to meet him. As it was a nice evening he suggested that we should walk, although it was nearly two miles there. Soon after starting out, a tropical thunder storm, so common to southern latitudes, came up, and rain fell in such a deluge that we were obliged to take shelter in a doorway. The street became a veritable river and owing to the violence of the downpour the street cars stopped running. Just as suddenly as the storm had broken, it stopped. It was too wet to continue walking and as we were trying to arrive at a decision as to how we could best get to Belvedere, a little girl about fourteen years walked by. M—— noticed her and straightway walked out of the shelter where we were standing to say something to her. I supposed that he had gone to question her about the car service, but as they conversed at length and as I saw her smile, I thought I would walk up to see what the joke was. Imagine my astonishment when I heard M——, whom I had supposed to be so moral and before whom I was always choosing my language, in conversation with this child inducing her to allow him to seduce her. My astonishment was still greater when she accepted his approaches and walked off with him in the direction of the Hotel Saint-Pierre where we had just come from.
About two o'clock the next afternoon as I was returning to my hotel from a walk, I saw M—— on the marble stairs of the Hispano-Americano offering pecuniary inducements to any of the old women (none were under fifty) who daily sat on the bottom steps displaying ñanduti embroidery for sale, if one would come up to a bedroom for a half hour. M—— did not make such a hit with these ñanduti women as he did with the little native girl, for none would accept his terms.
I upbraided M—— roundly for his actions telling him that he should be ashamed of himself for making such propositions to young girls. "Es costumbre" ("It's the custom") he would answer, and that was all the excuse he could give for his actions. He informed me that he had discovered that the Paraguayan native was much like the Chilean of the lower stratum, and that for a few pesos he could "fix" any policeman or irate parent in Asuncion the same way as he could at his home town in Chile. This man thought he was doing nothing unnatural or to be ashamed of. I later found out that M—— was telling the truth as far as it was "costumbre," for Chile and Paraguay have among their respected citizens, men who emulate the same acts as M—— and are not arrested for them, while here in North America they would be safely behind the bars of some institution for doing the same thing.