Grappling with Paraguay, her history, culture and attitudes is a many faceted brainteaser, you think that you’ve got her and her citizens understood and then something so obscure and unlikely happens there and your knowledge is rendered useless.
There have been various attempts to harness Paraguay in a literary sense and place her curiosities into print for all to see, and perhaps enjoy, but so much of it doesn’t make for too pleasant reading, dictatorships, flawed battle plans, assassinations and contraband.
Here we detail and review four essential books to read prior to making a trip to Paraguay that deal with vital elements of the makeup of the country such as its reliance on rampant corruption, rising crime, history and peculiar traditions.
At the Tomb of the Inflatable Pig: Travels in Paraguay
By far and away the most comprehensive, erudite and witty compilation of anecdotes written about Paraguay, John Gimlette’s tome of just under 400 pages, makes admirable headway, reading like a travel novel, of Paraguay’s history and present. If there has to be a criticism and this comes very reticently, perhaps there are a few too many familiar sarcastic notes of Gimlette’s recognition of being the awkward British man overseas. This unfortunate practice in turn glosses over the serious nature of how to address the political instability and lack of infrastructure in Paraguay for the future, but, it is a worthwhile romp and the first port of call for anyone interested in this country.
Paradise with Serpents: Travels in the Lost World of Paraguay
Robert Carver is a first class writer and has delivered a fantastic read regarding the difficulties of getting anything and everything done in Latin America, hardly groundbreaking but often amusing. Carver grapples with various elements of the corruption and insecurity that do affect Paraguay but all too often this reads like a continual stream of unjustified paranoia until of course he is victim of a vicious mugging in downtown Asuncion. I would say that you should read Paradise with Serpents, and like everything, take it with a pinch of salt since the author in this case is far better in describing his own fears and worries and not those of the layman.
The Shadows of Elisa Lynch
Sian Rees details in minute detail the life of the Irish courtesan who somehow was able to manipulate Francisco Solano Lopez, then dictator of Paraguay at the end of the 19th century, into engaging in an unwinnable war against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, decimate the country’s male population and set the course for misrule in Paraguay for decades to come. Supposedly Lynch buried Lopez with her bare hands on the battlefield and such are the romantic notions of the tale that contemporary Paraguay too has been deceived by the lady from County Cork and which led to former dictator General Alfredo Stroessner to have her remains exhumed from the cemetery in Paris where she died in obscurity in 1886 and relocated to Asuncion. Rees’ work is exhaustive and serious and goes a long way to organizing much of the myth and realities surrounding this enigmatic character who appeared on the scene long before the far better known Eva Peron from neighbouring Argentina.
I the Supreme
No list of essential reading on Paraguay would be complete without a hat tip to the work of the incredible Augusto Roa Bastos, quite possibly Paraguay’s greatest ever author. In this novel the author blurs the lines of fiction and reality recounting in quite gruesome detail the nature of the beast that is a South American dictator, in this case, Gaspar Francia. This novel is obviously and inevitably grouped with the Colombian Garcia Marquez’ Autumn of the Patriarch and the Guatemalan Asturias’ Mr. President, but it stands alone in its literary technique and reach. This is the novel to read in order to fully understand the trappings of absolute power and to get inside the mind of a truly savage dictator.
Richard McColl - I am a freelance writer from deepest darkest London but for the past 10 years or so I have been maintaining my extended "writing break" in ...
