TOP STORY

The Weird and Wonderful World of Paraguay’s Mickey Mouse

Visit pretty much any Paraguayan supermarket or convenience store and you’ll see a familiar — and surprising — sight.

Packages of herbs, condiments, and baking ingredients decorated with a cheerful, button-nosed mouse: labelled with the name Mickey, and all but identical to Mickey Mouse.

When you first spot the red-and-yellow packaging, you might assume its part of a licensing agreement with the Walt Disney Corporation.

The impression of a corporate tie-up is only strengthened when you see the Mickey mascot out and about around Asunción.

Mickey — pronounced locally as MEE-kay — gives out free samples at supermarkets, presses the flesh at food industry events, and is even known to appear as the guest of honour at weddings.

But the true story is much stranger: and speaks volumes about Paraguay’s distinctive history, gastronomy, and popular culture.

The legend of Mickey — as I wrote for a story that featured on the front page of The New York Times — began in 1935.

The Blasco family, recent immigrants from Italy, opened an ice cream parlour in downtown Asunción. Perhaps inspired by the early black-and-white movies of Mickey Mouse, they called their shop Mickey.

Their cheerful branding was a hit with Paraguayans still suffering from the aftershocks of the cataclysmic Triple Alliance War (1864-70) as well as the Chaco War (1932-5), which saw 100,000 Paraguayans and Bolivians perish in the parched, thorny outback.

By 1969, the family business was selling packages of baking soda decorated with the famous rodent.

In 1978, they moved into a larger premises — the company’s current location on Avenida Félix Bogado — topped by a 62-metre Christmas tree. Some say the tree being switched on is the official start of the festive season.

Today, Mickey is a household name whose spices, seasoning and herbs — from boldo to begonias to yerba mate — fill cupboards, stews, soufflés and yerba mate gourds across the nation, including the Chaco.

Mickey scratches the sweet spot in the Paraguayan psyche, the TV chef Euge Aquino, who promotes the company’s products to her Instagram following, told me.

It conjures up sentimental images of Christmas, of Disneyland, of your abuela’s cooking — and even nationalistic pride.

On August 16, Paraguay celebrates Children’s Day. The date commemorates the massacre of Paraguayan child soldiers by Brazilian troops at the Battle of Acosta Ñu during the Triple Alliance War.

The Mickey mascot marks the occasion by handing out sweets and popcorn to a horde of children outside the factory gates.

“People came from the countryside to see him,” Aquino told me, recalling how she lined up with friends to meet Mickey in the 1980s. “It was a religion.”

The firm’s commercial director, Viviana Blasco, asked me not to disclose the real identity of the mascot in order to preserve the “magic” of Mickey.

But The Paraguay Post can reveal that a father-and-son duo who have worn the Mickey suit for decades — usually in shifts, to cope with the sweltering summer heat — are preparing to pass the torch.

The elder is a long-serving factory worker, the younger a mechanic. But the apprentice is a professional mascot.

“I auditioned to be the Duracell Bunny,” said the new recruit, warming up inside an office. “But it’s a nightmare to put on that outfit, with all the padding and the big battery on the back. This one’s much easier.”

“We don’t do it for the money,” he added, before donning the felt-and-fibreglass rodent head, getting into his silent character, and strolling out to his adoring public.

Mickey’s rise to the status of national treasure was nearly derailed in 1991 when Disney’s lawyers finally came knocking.

Blasco vividly remembers being given the news: “We have a problem.”

The global entertainment behemoth filed an IP violation complaint with Paraguay’s Business Ministry, then a trademark tribunal, before the case worked its way up to the country’s highest court.

Wading through stacks of the litigation, I found that one Supreme Court minister agreed people could easily confuse the Paraguayan Mickey with Disney’s Mickey.

But the Blasco family business had a formidable advocate in its corner.

Elba Rosa Brítez, a 72-year-old senior partner at local legal firm PSTBN, received me in a study lined with rusty sabres and cannonballs from the Triple Alliance War.

”I was a born litigant,” she said, recalling how her practice normally defends multinationals like AB InBev and American Cyanamid against upstart challengers and copyright thieves.

“This was the exception,” Brítez added. “I wanted to help my fellow countrywoman, a Paraguayan business. And I found a legal loophole to defend them.”

The Blasco family had registered the Mickey trademark in Paraguay decades previously — and repeatedly renewed it — without any protest from Disney.

Perhaps the Corporation simply hadn’t heard of Mickey until then, Brítez suggested.

In any case, in 1998, the Court ruled that Mickey had — through years of uninterrupted use — acquired the right to be Mickey.

“You don’t know how I jumped for joy when they issued the ruling,” Brítez told me, dismissing the popular legend that the Blascoes had hoodwinked Disney’s lawyers by registering the image of Mickey in profile rather than face-on.

I asked her if Disney could mount another challenge in the future — especially if Mickey tried to sell its products beyond Paraguay.

“Maybe,” she conceded. “Nothing lasts forever, right? But it will be hard for them to win through the courts.”

The Blasco family, she added, “has acquired rights, and that’s respected. Mickey will still be around for a while yet.”

THE POST TAKE

You can read different morals into the tale of Mickey.

One is that Paraguay has long been something of a wild west when it comes to copyright protection and intellectual property.

The authorities occasionally bust factories producing fake designer sportswear of the kind that lines the passageways of the Mercado 4.

In July, DINAPI, Paraguay’s intellectual property agency, confiscated 200,000 bottles of counterfeited perfume — probably imported — in a private port at Villeta. Overall, the country seized nearly 985 tonnes of illegal merchandise in the first seven months of the year.

Until recently, a fake “Harvard University” handed out bogus legal and medical degrees from a tower block in Ciudad del Este.

Paraguay — like Peru, Brazil, and Argentina — remains on the USTR’s Watch List, which cites “serious IP enforcement challenges” and describes Ciudad del Este as a “notorious market for counterfeiting and piracy.”

The elephant in the room — one rarely disturbed by inspectors — is Paraguay’s production of roughly 45 billion cigarettes annually when domestic demand is barely 1.5 billion. The rest are smuggled abroad.

But the enduring popularity of Mickey also speaks to Paraguay’s sense of itself as a scrappy underdog, up against the world: a societal personality trait which also came to the fore during the World Cup.

Outsiders may cry foul at Paraguay’s gutsy, physical defence on the football pitch or its less-than-spotless business practices.

But defying powerful rivals and inventing ingenious workarounds is something of a national pastime.

The trend is exemplified by the phrase — usually deployed when someone has turned their glove box into an iced water dispenser for tereré, or transformed a motorbike engine into a petrol-powered plough — “Paraguayans haven’t conquered the world because they can’t be bothered.”

In the course of my reporting on Mickey, I found many people had taken the company’s dark horse victory against Disney to heart as a symbol of national pride.

“It’s nice,” one working-class mother told me, queuing up with her kids to meet Mickey outside the factory in August. “At least we won at something.”

Also in this issue:
Cartes turns on Ueno Bank · Opposition politicians jailed · IMF highlights deficit, consumer debt · The hunt for Chinese and Cuban agents · Jailed governor hospitalised · Doctor strikes resume · Marset ally busted

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Paraguay’s health system in crisis

Paraguay’s government is struggling to calm the waters after a five-day strike by doctors and mounting resignations over pay and resources.

Medics say stagnant salaries and shortages of medicines are stretching personnel to breaking point — and putting patients’ lives in danger.

After negotiations with health ministry officials broke down last week, hundreds of staff walked out of public hospitals and marched through Asunción and other cities.

Police blocked marching medics from occupying the centre of Encarnación, which was hosting tens of thousands of fans for the World Rally Championship (WRC) over the weekend.

In Ciudad del Este, riot police clashed with white-coated demonstrators and fired rubber bullets in the air.

”All we’re asking is to be paid the same as in 2012,” Rosanna González, the secretary general of doctors’ union Sinamed, told reporters.

Sinamed says minimum salaries for physicians have remained frozen at roughly five million guaraníes ($830) per month for the past fifteen years.

It says real wages have been slashed by more than 75% during that period due to the rising cost of living, and wants the government to hike salaries by the same amount.

Doctors also want the Health Ministry to hire more staff, saying that 9,000 of Paraguay’s 11,000 medical professionals are on precarious short-term contracts.

But anger mounted as Paraguay’s president, Santiago Peña, refused to acknowledge doctors’ demands — instead dancing with his wife at the WRC’s closing party, and taking grinning selfies behind the wheel with driver Oliver Solberg.

On Friday, 141 doctors at the Acosta Ñu Children’s Hospital — equivalent to 86% of its staff, and including all of its 18 surgeons — were reportedly preparing to tender their resignation.

At the Trauma Hospital in Asunción, union leader Sara Burgos said 37 of her fellow anesthesiologists had quit, and that 19 of the hospital’s 23 neurosurgeons were ready to follow.

“We don’t have basic supplies,” she told reporters, mentioning the drugs atropine and etilefrine — essential to complex surgeries — as well as the tracheal tubes used to deliver oxygen and anesthesia. “The patients had to buy them. In an emergency, we had to buy them.”

Sinamed bosses said hundreds more resignations were on the way — and the Peña administration would be to blame for any patient deaths that resulted.

“We’re just asking the president to have a little empathy,” said Norma Ruiz, the head of paediatric intensive therapy at the Itauguá National Hospital.

Ruiz told press she is often forced to buy syringes out of her own pocket to treat children in critical condition — and that much of her salary is spent on drugs to treat a medical condition of her own.

”We’re putting our bodies on the line,” she added, through tears. “I don’t want to go and work in a private hospital, I’ve worked here for 13 years and this is like my home.”

Senior figures in the ruling Colorado Party meanwhile insisted the government couldn’t afford to meet Sinamed’s demand for a raise of three million guaraníes per contract.

Senate president Bachi Núnez — who practiced as a surgeon over twenty years ago — criticised the resignations, suggesting medicine was a “calling” that went with long low pay and responsibility to patients.

On Monday, cabinet chief Javier Giménez said health was a priority for Peña and offered to reopen talks with doctors — but ruled out any immediate pay rise, saying it was incompatible with balancing the budget.

In a short press conference with health minister María Teresa Barán and economy minister Óscar Lovera, Giménez said any increase in salaries would have to be folded into a restructuring of the profession to create a carrera sanitaria, or health-career track.

“If we’re going to give a raise,” said Giménez, “Let it be according to speciality, merit, and length of experience.”

THE POST TAKE

Anyone who has set foot in a public hospital in Paraguay knows how much doctors do with so little.

Seriously ill patients languish on makeshift ICU beds in hallways. Toilets are disaster zones, often lacking running water.

Queues form for hours before dawn for vaccines and diagnostics. No luck? Come back tomorrow and get in line again.

Even middle-class families are forced to hold raffles or barbecues — or sell possessions, or simply get into debt — to pay for life-saving medicines.

The constant drip of medical misery anecdotes reflect the data. Paraguay spends just 4% of GDP on health: well below the 6% that the Pan American Health Organization sets as the minimum for universal coverage.

In February 2024, President Peña and First Lady Leticia Ocampos recorded a sombre video where they said they had been shocked by conditions at the National Hospital — and promised to turn things around.

“We are committed to changing this reality,” Peña added. “If we can’t change this, we won’t be able to change anything in Paraguay.”

Some relief for Paraguay’s creaking public health system may finally be on the way.

Released on Tuesday, the government budget for 2027 suggests Paraguay will spend $2.8bn on public health next year: up a striking 77% from this year.

Accounting for nearly 11% of government spending, this will be the highest single budget item, well above education ($1.65bn) and infrastructure ($1.4bn).

The amount destined for medicines and supplies in particular is due to rise by $220m to $760m in 2027 — which just so happens to be the year when presidential primaries are held ahead of national polls in 2028.

In social media posts on Wednesday morning, Peña said he would put nearly 2,400 doctors on permanent contracts, spend half a billion dollars on improved infrastructure, and build seven new major health centres.

“We will keep working without pause for solutions so each Paraguayan, wherever they are, receives a complete, dignified and more human health service,” he wrote.

But experience with previous budgets suggests there’s a big difference between promising to spend money on something and actually spending it.

And after the Peña administration admitted last month that — having fessed up to some questionable accounting techniques — the deficit will rise to 3.9% of GDP next year, some are asking where the money will come from.

Predictably, some have called for slashing government waste and clawing back cash from corruption.

Or, trimming entitlements for penpushers: like the $101m the government forecasts spending this year on private health insurance for civil servants, mostly in the Supreme Court and Ministry of Justice.

The reality is that even if Paraguay were to reach Scandinavian levels of probity, it wouldn’t recoup enough money to reanimate the country’s moribund public services.

That kind of cash can only come from borrowing — an unpopular option, given public debt has nearly doubled to 41.2% of GDP since 2019 — or touching an even greater taboo: taxes.

Opposition senator Rafael Filizzola argues that levying a 2,000-guaraní ($0.30) duty on every pack of cigarettes sold in Paraguay would recoup $700m every year: more than covering the $500m the treasury spends on treating smoking-related illnesses.

Given that the fortunes of Peña’s patron, former president and tobacco baron Horacio Cartes (2013-18), rest on producing cheap smokes — most of which are later smuggled outside the country — this particular proposal seems unlikely to fly.

Yet even some members of the ruling Colorado Party are breaking ranks and questioning Paraguay’s allergy to taxation.

“There’s no two ways about it,” senator Silvio “Beto” Ovelar told a meeting with doctors last week. “We have to raise taxes: if not today, tomorrow.”

“Even if all us senators and civil servants went without a single guaraní, we still couldn’t … reach 6% [of GDP] on health,” he added.

The senior Colorado politician said Paraguay’s famous “triple 10” formula — the percentage levied on corporate, personal income, and value-added taxes since 2012 — had been “very beneficial” but has now run its course.

He argued for increasing the personal income tax to 14%, VAT to 12%, or corporate taxes to 15% — while acknowledging that such proposals would likely be shot down by the Peña administration, which has repeatedly resisted calls to raise taxes.

“Those of us who earn more should pay more,” Ovelar added. “That’s my own, very personal opinion.”

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Also in this issue:
Prieto in court in a bulletproof vest · Colorado takeover of watchdog · No traffic cops, no clamps? · Meet Andy Rivas, Paraguay’s Cerimedo · Evangelical Day declared · More Ueno questions · EV Boom · Much, much more

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Read in English

A Sandra Paredes, modista y madre de cuatro hijos, de 56 años, le emociona hacer disfraces, jugar con los detalles, divertirse en el proceso. Cuando se le pregunta por qué, responde que quizás es porque, cuando era niña, no tuvo muchas oportunidades de jugar.

Sandra nació en Argentina con un padre paraguayo y una madre argentina. Cuando su mamá murió a los 37 años, ella y sus hermanos junto a su papá y madrastra vinieron a vivir a Asunción. La primera vez que Sandra vivió como “criada”, con una familia extraña, fue cuando tenía 11 años. Fue solo un par de meses y recuerda que su rol era cuidar a dos niñas, más pequeñas que ella.

Pero la segunda vez, fue distinta. Se fue a los 13 años, a una casa en Luque, y se quedó hasta casi cumplir los 18 años. También en principio, su tarea era cuidar a los niños, pero terminaba haciendo de todo: limpiaba, cocinaba, lavaba.

“Según mis papás, ellos hablaron con esa gente que yo quería seguir mi colegio, que quería seguir estudiando. Pero no fue así. No me hicieron estudiar jamás. Me tenían que vestir, supuestamente hacer estudiar y no cumplieron con eso. Me compraban ropa, pero ropa usada. Y yo de aquí para allá con ellos, con las criaturas, sí o sí encima de las criaturas”, cuenta Sandra a The Paraguay Post.

Sandra, como miles de niñas y adolescentes en Paraguay, vivió en situación de criadazgo. Se trata de una práctica en la que una niña, niño o adolescente es entregado a otra familia, de mejor posición económica, para que realice tareas del hogar y de cuidado, con la promesa de darle techo, comida y estudios. Voces conservadoras —incluyendo altos cargos del Partido Colorado oficialista— sostienen que forma parte de la identidad nacional, y que es tan paraguaya como el tereré, la popular infusión fría de yerba mate.

Pero en la realidad, ese “acuerdo” entre familia de origen y receptora no siempre se cumple. Una creciente lucha para eliminar el criadazgo argumenta que la situación muchas veces deriva en trabajo infantil forzoso y explotación, e incluso genera casos de violencia física y sexual. Además, conlleva el trauma de separar a las niñeces de sus padres, sus hermanos y hermanas, y su hogar, en una cadena de desarraigo y dolor que puede llegar a perpetuarse por generaciones —y afectar a varios miembros de la misma familia—.

Cuando Sandra recuerda su pasado, pareciera como si volviera a vivir aquella época. Su mirada se aleja, sus ojos se cristalizan y dice: “Primero se fue la mayor con una gente. Dios mío, fue un dolor inmenso. Era como si se murió, ¿entendés? Sentíamos ese dolor. Después, cuando me fui yo, mis otras hermanitas se sintieron así también. Y así fuimos cada una. Realmente no le deseo a nadie”, lamenta.

El criadazgo tiene sus orígenes en la colonia. Uno de sus antecedentes históricos, de acuerdo a expertas como Adelina Pusineri, es el sistema de encomiendas, en el que indígenas eran entregados a hogares españoles para formar parte de la servidumbre. Conocida como “Naboría”, “la mayoría de las veces eran niñas o niños de corta edad que servían en las casas de los señores españoles o criollos”.

Luego de la Guerra contra la Triple Alianza (1864-70), se intensificó, teniendo en cuenta la cantidad de niñeces que quedaron sin familia. Durante los conflictos, dictaduras, y desarraigos del siglo veinte, se normalizó aún más. La última encuesta que el Estado realizó al respecto, en el 2011, mostró que aproximadamente 47.000 niñas, niños y adolescentes vivían en situación de criadazgo.

Organizaciones como Global Infancia y Grupo Luna Nueva sostienen que el criadazgo constituye una forma de trata de personas: implica el traslado de niñas y niños vulnerables bajo falsas promesas, para su explotación laboral o sexual, sin remuneración ni libertad de movimiento.

En palabras de Camila Corvalán, socióloga, especialista en Estudios de Género e investigadora de la ONG Enfoque Niñez, el criadazgo es un fenómeno extremadamente complejo. Aunque en casi todos los casos hay separación de la familia, puede o no haber incomunicación con la misma, puede o no haber abandono escolar, falta de recreación, explotación laboral y acceso a la salud.

“Reviste una complejidad de vulneraciones”, explica Corvalán. “No podemos decir que tiene exactamente las características del trabajo en condiciones de explotación o totalmente las características de la trata de personas, porque no es igual”.

De acuerdo con la investigadora, muchas familias optan por este camino porque el apoyo estatal es casi ausente y la consideran la mejor opción para ese futuro de esa niña o niño. En el caso de Sandra, muy a su pesar, confiesa que, prefería estar en otras casas, antes que en la suya, donde sufría maltratos por parte de su madrastra: “Y pasamos muy mal con ella y prefería estar en una casa ajena al final, porque por lo menos comíamos bien, nos vestíamos, estábamos bien”.

Pero lo que más siente Sandra de la situación que vivió como “criada” es que no pudo terminar el colegio: hasta ahora, una de sus mayores frustraciones. Y Corvalán agrega que, en muchos casos, la situación “se vuelve inviable o la violencia que ocurre en las condiciones de explotación son realmente mucho peores para la adolescente”.

Según el reporte de junio de 2026 de Fono Ayuda 147, la línea telefónica gratuita de denuncias del Ministerio de la Niñez y Adolescencia, solo en el mes de junio se registraron 1.264 hechos de vulneración de derechos a niñas, niños y adolescentes, entre los que se destacan violación del deber del cuidado, maltrato, abuso y explotación sexual. Sin embargo, desde 2020, no hay un número que corresponda al criadazgo.

En una entrevista del mismo año, el actual ministro Walter Gutiérrez —entonces viceministro— advirtió que la crisis socioeconómica y sanitaria podría haber agravado el fenómeno.

En un informe del gobierno nacional, basado en los registros de Fono Ayuda, del 2014-2016 se registra que, de 59 casos de criadazgo, 47 correspondían a niñas y adolescentes.

“Sin duda, todo eso también está atravesado por una cuestión de género”, puntualiza Corvalán. “Hay toda una construcción sobre cuáles son las oportunidades que puede tener una mujer, a las cuales puede aspirar una mujer. Si no es a ser una ‘serviha’ (palabra en guaraní que significa literalmente ‘la que me sirve’).”

“Es un poco para mí la palabra que le da esa columna vertebral al criadazgo”, agrega la experta. “El tema del servicio”.

¿Decisión o coacción?

Existen varias normativas y convenios internacionales que el Estado paraguayo está incumpliendo al no generar políticas públicas para hacerle frente al criadazgo.

El artículo 54 de la Constitución Nacional establece las bases para la protección de los niños, niñas y adolescentes “contra el abandono, la desnutrición, la violencia, el abuso, el tráfico y la explotación” y su “desarrollo armónico e integral.”

La ley 57/90 —que corresponde a la Convención sobre los Derechos del Niño de las Naciones Unidas, adoptada en 1989— obliga al Estado a garantizar la protección, el desarrollo y la participación de todos los niños, sin distinción.

Desde Enfoque Niñez, las investigaciones en las cuales participó Corvalán indican que incluso niñas y adolescentes que ya contaban con medidas de guarda judicial por situaciones de violencia en sus familias terminaban en hogares ajenos, trabajando como criadas.

También, que el fenómeno ha mutado desde la época en que Sandra experimentó el criadazgo. Si antes las niñas o adolescentes perdían el contacto con sus familias, ahora la cosa cambió, ya que la mayoría cuenta con dispositivo móvil y se encuentra en conexión constante. Sin embargo, según Corvalán, eso también ha provocado otro tipo de controles y violencias.

“Hoy el criadazgo es una adolescente que quiere comprarse un celular, que tiene una agencia, que decide, y cuesta muchísimo escuchar esto, pero que decide (ser criada) como una opción frente a toda la precariedad que existe, frente a un sistema que no le puede retener en la escuela, que no le da otras opciones de formación para el empleo, que es una cultura que le dice que su cuerpo es lo único que tiene para ofrecer como fuerza de trabajo”, manifiesta.

Según la Encuesta Permanente de Hogares Continua 2025 (EPHC), en Paraguay, del total de niños, niñas y adolescentes de 10 a 17 años (827.843), alrededor de 5,3% están ocupados, es decir, aproximadamente 44.261 se encuentran realizando trabajo infantil.

Frente a un Estado ausente y una familia que no puede proveer las condiciones necesarias para ese niño, niña y adolescente, ¿qué caminos le quedan? Desde la Coordinadora Nacional de Niños, Niñas y Adolescentes Trabajadores (CONNATS), adolescentes como Fabiola Fernández, 17 años, delegada nacional, y su hermano Junior Fernández, 15 años, delegado latinoamericano, vienen ensayando respuestas.

Para Junior, lo más importante es la concientización de sus compañeros y compañeras, que ellos y ellas puedan identificar, analizar su propia realidad y ver la manera de contrarrestar esa situación. Como también, promover el apoyo del Estado a las familias, para que no tengan que recurrir a esa práctica.

“Nosotros desde la CONNATS, defendemos el trabajo digno de niños, niñas y adolescentes. Algo que pasa mucho es que la gente no sabe diferenciar eso. El trabajo se supone que te tiene que ayudar a desarrollarte, a aprender, a mejorar, a ayudar a tu familia”, se expresa segura y enfática Fabiola, a través de una videollamada desde Ciudad del Este, en la frontera paraguaya con Brasil, que no impide que su energía arrolladora traspase la pantalla.

Fabiola comparte que la posición de la CONNATS es firme: el criadazgo no es trabajo infantil, es un delito, un trabajo forzoso, que te saca horas de estudio y de recreación.

La que acompaña a los chicos en la videollamada es Doris Ramírez, trabajadora social y coordinadora de la ONG Callescuela. Valora como positivo el trabajo que vienen haciendo desde la organización apostando a la participación protagónica de los niños, niñas y adolescentes, como Fabiola y Junior, quienes lideran y llevan adelante charlas, talleres participativos, y conversaciones con padres, pares y la comunidad.

“Necesitamos sensibilización para desmontar la idea de que el criadazgo es algo beneficioso para la familia o para los NNA. Junior y Fabiola la tienen clara porque fueron construyendo esa conciencia. Creemos que esa es una de las estrategias”.

Según Ramírez, es necesario hacer una diferenciación: una cosa es el criadazgo y otra es la solidaridad.

“A veces escuchamos que ponen como criadazgo situaciones de familias de sectores populares que también reciben parientes que vienen a estudiar del interior a Asunción, porque en nuestras comunidades no tenemos oferta educativa pública y algunas veces ni siquiera privada, entonces se da la migración y el desarraigo, pero en el marco de una solidaridad entre familias”, puntualiza.

Un intento legislativo fallido

En 2024, se presentó en el Congreso Paraguayo el proyecto de ley “Que garantiza el derecho de niños, niñas y adolescentes ante la protección del criadazgo”.

Fue impulsado por las diputadas Johanna Ortega (País Solidario-Asunción) presidenta del Frente Parlamentario por los Derechos de la Infancia y la Adolescencia, y Dalia Estigarribia (PLRA-Central), quien está al frente de la Comisión de Niñez y Adolescencia.

La propuesta planteaba una mirada integral de la problemática: prevención, acompañamiento, reinserción, ayudas a las familias, capacitación a la comunidad educativa, líderes comunitarios y autoridades, entre otros. Además, contemplaba el impulso y la promoción de actividades económicas alternativas y de proyectos productivos para las familias vulnerables a esta práctica.

De la elaboración participaron organizaciones de la sociedad civil como Global Infancia y Plan Internacional, instituciones públicas como el Ministerio de la Niñez y el Ministerio del Trabajo, asimismo, organizaciones de niños, niñas y adolescentes.

Pero el 20 de mayo de 2025, el Senado paraguayo rechazó el proyecto. Uno de los principales opositores de la ley fue el senador oficialista Gustavo Leite, quien comparó la práctica con el consumo del tereré. “Esta es una ley antinatura, anti paraguay, anti cultura paraguaya,” había expresado el parlamentario y posteriormente embajador paraguayo en los Estados Unidos.

En intercambio con The Paraguay Post, Leite asegura que ya hay suficientes leyes que protegen a los niños, niñas y adolescentes de vulneraciones de sus derechos. Considera que el criadazgo es una figura cultural negativa en Europa, no así en Paraguay.

“No se puede aplicar en Paraguay conceptos de otras culturas por imposición. Es el mismo caso de la igualdad de género, el titular es el mismo. No estoy a favor del abuso infantil, por el contrario, tampoco estoy a favor de aplicar conceptos globalistas en Paraguay. El abuso infantil es un delito deleznable y debe ser penado y ya está legislado en Paraguay”, afirma el legislador, quien fue impulsor en el 2023 de un proyecto de ley fallido “para prohibir la ideología de género” y de la ley conocida como “Anti ONG”, promulgada en el 2024.

La diputada Ortega menciona que las argumentaciones que dieron para rechazar la ley son simplemente excusas. Sostiene que quienes buscan justificar estas prácticas “son los mismos que históricamente han sido cómplices de sostener un sistema de explotación y desigualdad. Hay una élite que aún piensa que las niñas pobres deben tener un único destino: ser sus criadas o sirvientas”.

Para la legisladora el gobierno utiliza lemas como ‘provida y profamilia’ pero solo por conveniencia electoral, porque cuando se trata de votar a favor de la protección de la vida y las familias, lo hacen en contra. “Si es un proyecto de miembros de la oposición, cualquier excusa es válida para ellos para no aprobar”.

Transformar el dolor en motor

Hay quienes, a pesar de haber vivido en situación de criadazgo, también tuvieron otras oportunidades. Como el caso de la activista y antropóloga, Tina Alvarenga, de 60 años. Es militante de la alegría, de los derechos de los niños, niñas y adolescentes y de las mujeres indígenas.

Fue una de las primeras personas que vivió esa situación y teorizó al respecto. Junto a otras pensadoras y especialistas desarrollaron abordajes para hacerle frente. Entre ellos, el material Criadas, hasta cuándo…, en el que invitaron a escritoras y escritores a ficcionar historias reales de criadazgo, publicado por primera vez en los 2000.

“A veces me dicen, ‘pero si no hubieras sido criadita no ibas a llegar a ser quien sos’. Yo creo que no me ha determinado. Evidentemente, yo iba a ser algo más allá de una ama de casa, madre de familia y esposa feliz”, afirma sin dudar. Tina, a diferencia de otras niñas y adolescentes que vivieron en situación de criadazgo, sí pudo acceder a educación y recibir acompañamiento para seguir formándose.

Entre 2000 y 2003, Tina Alvarenga y otras activistas de Global Infancia se iban al Congreso, a los ministerios, a las iglesias y a las escuelas para sensibilizar sobre el criadazgo y generar un cambio de paradigma.

“Las maestras fueron fundamentales para hacer esta transformación, porque en principio ellas también tenían ‘criaditas’. Después, cuando se dieron cuenta, cambió la cuestión. La educación fue el ámbito que modificó muchas cosas”, rememora con orgullo.

Que el criadazgo siga siendo una práctica justificada, para Tina Alvarenga describe una mirada clasista y utilitaria, en la que el otro te dice “no somos iguales”. Añade: “Se trata de no mirarle al niño o niña como sujeto pleno de derecho, sino como un objeto. Tal vez, si fueran más varones los criados, sería muy diferente”.

“Es como una hija más” es una de las frases que se repiten en casi todas las historias de vida de mujeres que vivieron en situación de criadazgo. Y aunque en el discurso suena lindo, muy pocas se sintieron realmente parte de la familia durante su estadía.

“La pregunta es: ‘¿Qué pasa si se equivoca igual que el resto de tus hijos?’ Y va a volver a su casa. Entonces ahí está la línea, ahí está la diferencia. En realidad no es una hija más, porque tu hijo no se levanta a las cinco de la mañana y se va a dormir a las 11 de la noche y no falta a la escuela porque hay que cuidar al bebé”, expresa Corvalán.

Además de una ley específica que aborde la prevención, las especialistas coinciden en que hacen falta más políticas públicas y recursos para el fortalecimiento familiar.

The Paraguay Post intentó comunicarse con representantes del Ministerio de la Niñez y Adolescencia y compartió sus preguntas para conocer sobre los esfuerzos que vienen realizando, pero no obtuvo respuestas.

Sanar una herencia colonial y familiar

Rosita Del Valle, cineasta, 33 años, no entendía a su mamá. Había una tristeza que guardaba a la que ella no podía acceder.

En 2024, decidió hacer su trabajo de tesis basado en el testimonio de su madre. Lula, un corto documental sobre su vivencia siendo “criada”. Su mamá, Julia Mendieta, de 63 años, sufrió maltratos, pasó hambre y tampoco le permitieron terminar el colegio.

“Yo, por ejemplo, sufro. Yo quería ser alguien en esta vida, pero no llegué. No estudié lo que a mí me gustaba. Tal vez me gustaba ser una profesora, enfermera o doctora. Y no pude llegar a ser eso … . Yo pedí mucho para que me dieran tiempo para estudiar y me dijeron: ‘no, andá a otro lado si querés eso’”, cuenta Julia en el documental.

Rosita, al igual que otras hijas de personas que vivieron en situación de criadazgo, considera que esa práctica es violenta y tuvo consecuencias muy negativas en su mamá. Su trabajo es una forma de visibilizar el tema y generar conciencia al respecto. En unos años, espera poder desarrollar una película ficcionada que pueda mostrar la historia en profundidad.

Cuando Rosita se recibió, su tutor le dijo algo que a ella le atravesó muy fuerte. “La hija de una persona que dice que no pudo ser lo que quería hoy está terminando un trabajo de tesis y está rompiendo esa cadena,” recuerda. “Para mí, se sintió de esa manera, como romper cadenas”.

Terminar con el criadazgo también requiere de un esfuerzo que contemple la proyección de esa niña o adolescente hacia otros horizontes. ¿Qué pasa después de los 18 años? ¿Qué proyectos de vida se construyen por fuera del cuidado y de las tareas del hogar?, Corvalán invita a pensar: en las esperanzas, en las oportunidades, en esas otras alternativas de vida posibles.

Jóvenes como Fabiola también están escribiendo otras historias para las niñas y adolescentes de su generación. Su discurso conmueve: “Quiero que Paraguay pueda llegar a ser un espacio libre de violencias para niños, niñas y adolescentes. Y que los espacios de representación realmente nos tengan en cuenta. Es muy difícil hablar de algo que nos preocupa o generar políticas públicas para nosotras y nosotros si al final no nos van a incluir”.

Reportería adicional por Norma Flores Allende.

Edición de texto: Laurence Blair y Norma Flores Allende.

Leé en español

Sandra Paredes, a dressmaker and mother of four, loves making costumes. She plays with the details, gets lost in the process. Perhaps, she says, it’s because she was rarely allowed to play when she was a girl.

Sandra was 11, and her mother had recently passed away, the first time she left home. She spent two months working as a nanny with a family she didn’t know, caring for two girls even younger than her.

The second time was longer, and much harder. When she was 13, she moved into another family’s home in Luque, on the outskirts of Paraguay’s capital, Asunción. She worked there, without pay, until she turned 18.

At first, the job was the same — looking after the children — but she ended up doing everything: cooking, cleaning, washing clothes.

“My parents said they told them that I wanted to stay in school,” recalls Sandra, now 56. “But they never let me study. They were supposed to dress me, but they only bought me second-hand clothes. And I went above and beyond for them, especially for the kids.”

Sandra, like thousands of Paraguayan children to this day, was a criada.

Under this traditional practice, known as criadazgo, kids from poor backgrounds are sent to better-off families to work as live-in, unpaid help. Usually, they’re promised food, schooling, and a roof over their head in exchange.

Conservative voices, including senior government figures, say the custom is positive — and as fundamental to Paraguayan identity as tereré, the cold infusion of yerba mate that many locals drink every day.

But the families that host criadas often fail to hold up their end of the deal. And amid a growing campaign to end the practice, critics argue that criadazgo is tantamount to forced child labour — and leaves children vulnerable to violence and sexual abuse.

The centuries-old tradition, survivors say, also splits families apart, producing trauma that ripples down the generations. In some struggling households, some or even all the offspring become criadas.

“When my eldest sister went to another family, the pain was immense,” Sandra recalls, her eyes clouding with tears. “For us, it felt like she had died, you know? Then, when I left, my younger sisters felt the same.”

“That’s how we all went, one by one,” she adds. “I honestly wouldn’t wish it on anyone.”

The origins of criadazgo, experts say, lie in the colonial period. The Spanish conquistadors that founded Asunción in 1537 shared out Indigenous children to serve their households: a practice known as naboría.

The War of the Triple Alliance (1864–70) against Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina — which wiped out nine in ten of Paraguay’s male population — left huge numbers of orphans to seek shelter in unfamiliar households.

Amid the wars, dictatorships and mass exiling of political opponents in the twentieth century, the practice became even more normalised. The most recent government survey, in 2011, found that roughly 47,000 Paraguayan boys, girls, and teenagers were living in a situation of criadazgo.

Camila Corvalán, a sociologist and researcher with the NGO Enfoque Niñez, says criadazgo represents a “complex violation of human rights”, falling somewhere in between labour exploitation and human-trafficking.

Families often send their kids away in the hope of a better life, she adds, because they’re desperately poor and government help is all but absent.

Sandra recalls how her stepmother mistreated her, and how leaving home was almost a relief: “In the end I wanted to be anywhere else, because at least we ate and had clothes.” But forty years later, she still bitterly regrets not being allowed to stay in school.

And Corvalán explains that criadas often find themselves trapped in “violent and exploitative situations that are far worse” than where they came from.

According to Paraguay’s Ministry for Children and Adolescents, in June 2026 1,264 calls were made to a helpline recording human rights violations against children, including lack of care, mistreatment, and sexual abuse.

In 2020, the ministry discontinued a dedicated phone number for reporting cases of criadazgo. But in an interview in the same year, one top official said that the number of criadas was likely on the rise due to the economic fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic.

One 2016 government report found that in 59 cases of criadazgo reported to the helpline in the previous two years, 47 involved young women and girls.

“There’s clearly a question of gender behind all this,” says Corvalán. “There are very fixed ideas about what a woman can aspire to, beyond being a servant.”

“For me, that’s the word at the core of criadazgo,” the researcher adds: “Servitude.”

A forced choice

Campaigners say Paraguay is violating multiple laws — both internationally and at home — by failing to curtail criadazgo.

Article 54 of Paraguay’s constitution requires the state to ensure the “harmonious and holistic development” of children and protect them against “abandonment, malnutrition, violence, abuse, trafficking and exploitation.”

Law 57/90, in line with the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, similarly requires the authorities to guarantee the wellbeing and participation in society of every child in the country.

But research by Enfoque Niñez indicates that even children who have supposedly been protected by court orders after suffering violence at home have ended up as criadas in other households.

Corvalán has also found that the phenomenon has mutated due to new technologies. If Sandra’s generation of criadas lost contact with their families for years, criadas today often have mobile phones and are in constant connection: although this can produce other kinds of violence and control.

“Criadazgo today is a teenager who has agency,” she explains. “She’s someone who decides, even though it’s hard to hear it, [to be a criada] as an escape from economic precarity, when faced with a system that can’t keep her in school and doesn’t train her for work, and a culture that says that her body and physical labour is the only thing she has to offer.”

According to a 2025 government household survey, 44,261 Paraguayan children and adolescents — 5.3% of the total — are engaged in some form of work.

CONNATS, a nationwide union of child workers, defends the right of young people to earn a living — but is categorical that criadazgo is a forced labour and a crime.

“Work is supposed to help you grow, to learn, to improve yourself, and help your family,” says Fabiola, a passionate 17-year-old who is one of the union’s spokespeople.

Criadazgo — she says via videocall from Ciudad del Este, on Paraguay’s border with Brazil — does the opposite by starving young people of opportunities to play, study, and socialise.

Junior Fernández, Fabiola’s 15-year-old brother, says their peers need to be taught to identify and prevent situations of criadazgo. The government, he adds, should support families so giving their kids away doesn’t feel like their only option.

Also on the other end of the call is Doris Ramírez, a social worker and the coordinator of Callescuela, a non-profit that supports child workers. She describes how CONNATS is sparking conversations about criadazgo through workshops and talks with parents and young people.

”We need to overcome the idea that criadazgo is somehow beneficial for families or kids,” she says. “Junior and Fabiola are clear on that, because they’ve been building that awareness.”

But Ramírez cautions that families from the countryside sending their children to live with relatives in the capital to get a better education shouldn’t be tarred with the same brush as criadazgo.

“In our communities, there often aren’t public schools or even private ones,” she explains. “That’s why many people migrate and are uprooted, but as part of solidarity between families.”

A failed legislative attempt

In 2024, members of Paraguay’s opposition proposed a law that would have enshrined legal protections for children against criadazgo.

Sponsored by congresswomen Johanna Ortega and Dalia Estigarribia, and drafted in collaboration with non-profits, government ministries, and children and young people, the bill took a holistic approach to the issue.

It sought to reinsert criadas in the school system, spread awareness among teachers, government officials and community leaders, and offer livelihoods to low-income families that might otherwise send their children away.

But in May 2025, Paraguay’s senate rejected the proposal. One of the most vocal opponents was Senator Gustavo Leite: a senior figure in Paraguay’s governing Colorado Party, who recently served as the country’s ambassador to the US.

“This law is anti-nature, anti-Paraguay, and against Paraguayan culture,” Leite argued at the time, comparing criadazgo to football and tereré.

Contacted by The Paraguay Post, Leite said Paraguay already has laws that protect children and teenagers from abuse, and that efforts to eliminate criadazgo belong to a foreign agenda.

“The ideas of other cultures can’t be imposed on Paraguay,” added Leite, who has in recent years backed bills seeking to clamp down on NGOs and so-called gender ideology. “I’m not in favour of child abuse, far from it, but nor should we apply globalist ideas.”

Ortega, the congresswoman, called such arguments excuses from the conservative movement that has dominated Paraguayan politics since the late 1800s.

“They’re the same people who have historically been complicit in propping up this system of exploitation and inequality,” Ortega told the Post. “There’s an elite that still thinks that poor girls are destined to be their criadas or servants.”

The lawmaker with the centre-left País Solidario party said Paraguay’s government describes itself as “pro-life” and “pro-family” to win votes, but has failed to take meaningful action to protect households from being split apart.

”If it’s a bill proposed by the opposition, they’ll take any excuse to vote it down”, Ortega adds.

Transforming pain into purpose

Some of those who experience criadazgo have gone on to seize greater opportunities: and refuse to let it define them.

Tina Alvarenga spent eight years working as a criada for a Paraguayan couple from the age of 10. Now 60, she’s an anthropologist, an activist for the rights of children and Indigenous women, and irrepressibly joyful.

Alvarenga was also one of the first criadas to write and publish about her experiences, including in a volume in the early 2000s that lightly fictionalised survivor’s stories called Criadazgo: How Much Longer?

“Sometimes people say to me, ‘but if you hadn’t been a criadita you wouldn’t be where you are today,’” Alvarenga tells the Post. “I think I would have clearly always been more than a happy housewife and mother.”

Alvarenga, unlike many other criadas, did receive schooling while living away from her family. And she says education has helped erode the practice in recent decades.

At the turn of the millennium, the activist together with Global Infancia launched a campaign bringing together lawmakers, government ministries, churches, and schools to change public opinion about criadazgo.

”The teachers were fundamental to that transformation, because to begin with they also had criaditas,” Alvarenga recalls. “Once they understood the reality, things began to change.”

Still, campaigners and researchers say it’s common to hear people defend the practice: and for host families to say they treat their criadas “like another daughter.” Survivors, meanwhile, rarely say they felt that way.

“Your real daughter doesn’t get up at five in the morning and go to bed at 11 at night,” Corvalán, the sociologist, emphasises. “She doesn’t skip school because she needs to look after the baby.”

Beyond a specific law that prohibits criadazgo, specialists say Paraguay needs to commit more public policies and resources to support families with limited income and few opportunities.

The Paraguay Post asked the Ministry for Children and Adolescents about its efforts to support current and former criadas and their families, but didn’t receive a response by the time of publication.

Healing an inherited trauma

Rosita Del Valle, a 33-year-old filmmaker, struggled to understand her mother, Julia. She carried a deep sadness that her daughter couldn’t reach.

In 2024, Rosita based her university thesis on her mother’s life. The result was Lula, a documentary short based on Julia’s early experiences as a criada. She was mistreated, often went hungry, and wasn’t allowed to finish school.

“I’m still suffering,” Julia relates in the film. “I wanted to be someone in life, but I couldn’t.”

“I would have liked to be a teacher, a nurse, or a doctor,” she adds. “I begged to be given time to study but they told me, ‘no, go somewhere else if that’s what you want.’”

Rosita, in common with many children of survivors of criadazgo, condemns the practice as violent, and says it had severe consequences for her mother. She hopes in the coming years to produce a fictionalised film to explore the issue in depth: her way of raising awareness about the issue.

When she completed her degree, her professor told her something that stayed with her: that as the daughter of someone who was denied the chance to flourish, she was now ending the cycle.

“That’s how it felt,” Rosita recalls: “Like breaking a chain.”

Ending criadazgo will involve helping criadas look to their future beyond domestic work — giving them hope, opportunities, and greater prospects. Young people like Fabiola, of the child workers’ union, are also writing a new script for their generation.

”I dream of Paraguay being free from violence against boys, girls and teenagers,” she says. “And for the spaces where decisions are taken to really listen to us.”

“It’s difficult to talk about something that matters to us,” she adds, “and create public policies that benefit us, if we don’t even have a seat at the table.”

Editing and translation by Laurence Blair.

Additional reporting and editing by Norma Flores Allende.

TOP STORY

Defending the Médanos del Chaco

Hundreds of demonstrators marched through Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, on Tuesday to protest new plans to open the Médanos del Chaco National Park to drilling for oil and gas.

A young crowd convened by the #PorLosBosques coalition of eighty non-profits gathered downtown and posed for photos before continuing on to congress. Protesters carried signs reading “Paraguay is not for sale” and “Hands off the Médanos.”

“The Paraguayan state needs to protect our national park,” said Isabelino Bogado of the Guaraní Ñandéva people. He said his community, Pykasu — which lies inside the reserve — had not been consulted about the plans.

At stake is the Médanos del Chaco National Park, a remote reserve 400 miles from Asunción encompassing six thousand square kilometres of dry scrub and rare wildlife — including the tiríka, an endangered wildcat, and the guanaco, a camelid common to Andean regions but found nowhere else in Paraguay.

One of the last surviving extensions of native vegetation of any real size in Paraguay, the Médanos del Chaco features unique formations of sweeping sand dunes that give the park its name.

It sits atop the Yrenda Aquifer — the main freshwater reserve in Paraguay’s arid Chaco region — and contains historical sites from the Chaco War, a brutal conflict fought between Paraguay and Bolivia between 1932 and 1936.

Today, it’s home to Guaraní Ñandeva Indigenous communities, who have strongly opposed the search for hydrocarbons on their doorstep.

Organisations representing the native Ayoreo people say their uncontacted relatives also use the Médanos park, an ancestral territory, for shelter and sustenance — and warn of the “risk of genocide” if prospection goes ahead.

Diri Etacore, the president of the Asociación Garaigosode del Pueblo Ayoreo, said Médanos del Chaco — together with the adjacent Defensores del Chaco National Park — represents Paraguay’s “last forest.”

“Our brothers and sisters in voluntary isolation take refuge there with their families,” he told The Paraguay Post. “In the forest, in the native trees, they can find lots of medicines.”

“People with money are destroying what we, the poor, want to protect forever,” he added.

The protests follow a bill by congressman José Rodríguez — a member of a wing of the ruling Colorado Party loyal to former president Horacio Cartes — that would modify the 2016 law that declared Médanos del Chaco a protected wild area and authorise the extraction of oil, gas, and minerals.

Rodriguez notes that Paraguay’s hydropower surplus from the Itaipú dam is due to run out as soon as 2027. He argues that extracting gas from the Médanos would unlock critical resources for the country — and develop the isolated and poor Chaco region — “without depending on any foreign body.”

Supporters of the scheme have insisted the park won’t be touched unless comercially viable deposits can be found — and that it can even be explored by satellite.

But the Asunción lawmaker’s proposals explicitly authorise “exploitation” of the park’s resources, not just exploration. And they go beyond a previous failed attempt in 2023 to unlock the northwestern national park for drilling.

As well as hydrocarbons, Rodríguez’s bill would authorise the extraction of lithium and uranium: minerals crucial to the country’s nascent energy transition, and claimed by industry insiders to exist in large quantities in the arid Chaco subsoil.

The congressman also says that the 2016 creation of the park unfairly affected land — including gas exploitation rights — belonging to the Cano Martínez family firm, which briefly extracted small amounts of natural gas from the Chaco to supply generators in the town of Bahía Negra before its concession was cancelled.

The bill envisions freeing up some 40,000 hectares, or six percent of the park, to extraction. But opponents say permitting drilling in even part of the territory would put the whole ecosystem at risk.

Paraguay’s Environment Ministry, MADES, has said the proposals would set a dangerous precedent for other natural reserves — and violate international treaties that prohibit Paraguay from rolling back environmental protections.

Paraguay’s president, Santiago Peña, has not publicly commented on the bill itself. But asked about the topic in July, he spoke of the need to explore Paraguay’s mineral wealth in order to diversify the economy beyond cattle and soybean.

Ana Romero, an environmental defender and member of the Guaraní Occidental people, said Médanos del Chaco represents a “unique habitat” and feared fossil fuel prospection would have “devastating” consequences for local communities.

“We’re being sold a policy of economic development that’s based on destruction,” Romero told the Post. She said the loss of the Médanos would worsen extreme weather in the area, including heavy winds and hurricanes, and affect local water sources, flora and fauna.

“The impact will be catastrophic,” she added.

THE POST TAKE

Paraguay has been chasing the mirage of commercially viable fossil fuels in the Chaco for over a century.

Dozens of wells have been drilled in Paraguay’s sparsely-populated western outback. Many have showed traces of oil and gas. But none have led to lasting extraction.

British firm President Energy spent a decade searching. It trumpeted an “immense”, world-class prospect in 2014 — supposedly representing a billion barrels of oil — only for it to later admit that no commercial deposits had been found.

The chances that the Médanos just happens to be the only spot where Paraguay can feasibly access huge underground fossil fuel reserves — of the kind enjoyed by neighbouring parts of Argentina and Bolivia — seem remote as the park itself.

The Peña administration risks tearing up a rare untouched ecosystem and damaging its carefully constructed “green” credentials abroad for nothing. In that eventuality, of course, it’s not hard to imagine miners, cattle ranchers, and even farmers of GM soybean filling the gap and pouring into the park.

But the new urgency to search for fossil fuels, uranium, and lithium in the area reflects the undeniable — and self-inflicted — energy crunch facing Paraguay.

”The government of Santiago Peña is desperate to find alternative sources of energy because they’re giving away our hydropower at miserable prices to electro-intensive industries,” Mercedes Canese, a former energy minister, tells the Post.

The country’s electricity consumption jumped by a combined 31% over 2024 and 2025, in large part reflecting cryptocurrency mining operations and foreign-owned data centres.

Paraguay’s energy minister Mauricio Bejarano has even suggested that natural gas could be used to power these industries, according to reporting by Consenso.

“According to our laws, hydrocarbons are property of the state,” Canese added. “It’s always interesting to know what’s underground.”

But she noted that Paraguay’s constitution and international treaties oblige it to get the free, prior and informed consent of Indigenous peoples before carrying out projects on their land — something that’s impossible in the case of the isolated Ayoreo thought to live in the Médanos del Chaco.

“There’s no way of doing it,” Canese said. “It’s their land since before the Paraguayan state existed.”

Rodríguez’s proposal to tear up the park’s protections face stiff hurdles — including a 2019 Supreme Court ruling and opposition from a dissident wing of the Colorado Party led by congressman Mauricio Espínola and former president Mario Abdo Benítez.

And though few foreigners ever visit the Chaco, the fracturing of one of its last carbon-dense native ecosystems could have “planetary consequences”, warned Romero, the Guaraní Occidental activist.

Like much of the world, parts of the Chaco broke extreme heat records earlier this year, with temperatures in some parts measuring above 42 Celsius (107.6F).

“My grandparents always said difficult times were ahead,” she added. “I think we’re living them now.”

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Also in this issue:
Peña’s bulletproof cabinet · Japanese royalty in Paraguay · Yguazú: Paraguay’s Silicon Valley? · Chinese steel · Paraguay’s unaffordable beef · New café, restaurant and bar openings · A geological wonder · Aura farming in San Lorenzo

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TOP STORY

Paraguay as a punchline

by Laurence Blair

Paraguay is used to being the butt of jokes: a pop culture byword for somewhere so faraway and obscure that merely mentioning it provokes a smile.

It’s often a throwaway reference — in The Office, Gilmore Girls, Anaconda, and Wedding Crashers — or a place to run away and hide, as in Mark Knopfler’s Postcards from Paraguay or Iggy Pop’s Paraguay.

Comparing the dismal health insurance of the United States to the generous welfare states of Canada, Europe and Japan, Homer Simpson tells Marge: “You can thank your lucky stars we don't live in Paraguay.”

But when the man reaching for the P-word punchline is the second-most powerful person in the Western Hemisphere — a man operating as Donald Trump’s de facto Viceroy of Venezuela, starving Cuba of fuel, and defending the bombing of alleged “narcoboats” off South American shores — it hits a little different.

Appearing on the podcast of former Trump administration staffer Katie Miller on 11 August, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio described how he had undergone the high-protein keto diet a few years ago.

“You go through this massive withdrawal from sugar and carbohydrates for the first 72 hours,” the US secretary of state chuckled. “It was a near-psychotic event for me.”

“It’s true”, laughs his wife, Jeanette, seated next to him.

“Like, if I did it in this job,” the US foreign policy chief continued, “I would be, ‘Mr. President, we must bomb — you know, you know — Paraguay.’”

“And it’s like, ‘Why?’ ‘I don’t know, I’m just really mad; I haven’t had any sugar.’”

The cautionary anecdote from Rubio, whom Miller described as “the funniest person in the administration,” was quick to catch press attention in Paraguay.

ABC Color called it an “unusual joke”. The tabloid Extra suggested that Rubio’s trigger-happy hangriness made him pirevai. El Nacional noted that the attempt at humour “took on a different dimension” coming from Trump’s top diplomat.

But from Paraguay’s government, which had just days previously demanded explanations from Brazilian president Lula over his comments regarding a nineteenth century war? Crickets.

THE POST TAKE

If Rubio’s low blood sugar has failed to trigger a diplomatic incident, it’s probably because the idea of the US launching an attack on Paraguay — its top ally in the Southern Cone — seems obviously ludicrous.

The government of Santiago Peña has marched in lockstep with the Trump administration: signing deals on military cooperation and critical minerals, designating Brazilian gangs and Islamist groups as terrorists, sticking up for Taiwan, cosying up to Israel, and turning its back on China.

Mere days before his Katie Miller Pod appearance, Rubio had signed a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with his Paraguayan counterpart, Rubén Ramírez Lezcano. Bombs probably wouldn’t mix too well with the small nuclear reactors envisioned as helping to power the smaller country once its hydropower runs out.

Yet Rubio’s department recently put out a bellicose video defending the Monroe Doctrine and asserting that “American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never again be questioned”.

And as the US military campaign against so-called narcoterrorists across the hemisphere heats up — including a murky series of bombings in Ecuador on land and at sea, with more operations planned for Colombia, Bolivia and Central America — some are on high alert for signs that Paraguay could be next.

The Peña administration has sought to pour cold water on the idea of a US military deployment. Top officials say deploying foreign troops in Paraguay for crime-fighting in border areas would violate national sovereignty and risk further provoking Lula’s Brazil, Paraguay’s top economic partner.

Watch the clip, and you can almost see the Cuban-American former senator and 2028 hopeful scrambling to think of a country that he can joke about bombing without causing a geopolitical crisis. Paraguay — relatively small, distant, and desperately eager to please the White House — fits the bill.

Yet many a true word is spoken in jest. And few would have guessed a year ago that Trump could invade Venezuela to kidnap Nicolás Maduro, wipe out Iran’s senior leadership in a lightning bombardment, or come to the brink of war with Denmark over Greenland. Rubio was surely joking. Right?

You’re reading The Weekly Post, your essential briefing on Paraguay.

In this issue:
Peña: three years of wins? · Cartes plots another ANR term · Estigarribia joins 2028 race · Paraguay’s big energy reshuffle · Moody’s warns on government cash flow · Maquila exports surge · SENAD killings raise questions

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TOP STORY

Paraguay’s financial reckoning

For months, Paraguay’s government insisted it was on course to bring the fiscal deficit back within the legal limit of 1.5% of GDP this year. It now admits that was never realistic.

Economy Minister Óscar Lovera has confirmed that the gap between what the state spends and what it takes in will instead reach 3.2% of GDP in 2026, more than twice the target. Worse, the government expects it to rise further to 3.9% in 2027 — before supposedly plunging back to 1.5% in 2028, Santiago Peña’s final year in office.

The reason is simple: Paraguay owes a lot more than its official accounts let on.

At the end of 2025, the state had accumulated $1.27bn in unpaid bills, according to Lovera — around $1.05bn owed to pharma suppliers and another $220m to public-works contractors. The government had treated much of this as deuda flotante, or floating debt: invoices that had not yet been paid and therefore did not show up in the headline deficit in the same way as actual cash spending.

Think of it as balancing your household budget by simply leaving several months of utility bills unopened on the kitchen table. Your bank account may look healthy, but your true financial position is not.

This is precisely what critics have long accused the Peña administration of doing.

In November, the Post reported that delayed payments to drug companies, road builders, and suppliers to the Hambre Cero school-meals programme were allowing the government to present an artificially flattering fiscal picture. Former Central Bank president José Cantero estimated that including those unpaid obligations would push the real deficit towards 3.9%.

The government’s new figures amount to a belated admission that those concerns were justified.

Lovera argues that the underlying picture is less dramatic. Strip out the accumulated arrears, he says, and this year’s deficit would be around 2%; in 2027, about 1.9%. The extra spending is effectively the cost of finally putting old invoices through the books. Slower tax revenues — partly blamed on the strong guaraní reducing customs receipts — and lower income from the binational hydropower dams like Itaipú have also complicated matters.

But this is now Paraguay’s third attempt to return to the 1.5% ceiling established by its Fiscal Responsibility Law, last achieved back in 2018 (1.3%). The original post-pandemic timetable envisioned reaching it in 2024. When Peña took office in 2023, he accused his predecessor Mario Abdo Benítez of hiding unpaid debts to make the deficit look smaller, borrowed an extraordinary $600m to clear the slate, and pushed the deadline to 2026.

Three years later, Peña’s government is doing essentially the same thing — only with an even larger pile of unpaid bills.

The political backlash has been broad. Opposition senator Rafael Filizzola accused the administration of lying to Congress and the public about respecting fiscal limits, claiming that international scrutiny from the likes of the IMF ultimately forced it to acknowledge the true situation. Dissident Colorado senator Mario Varela likewise called for a more transparent and predictable fiscal policy.

Even Gustavo Leite, one of the more combative senators from Peña’s own Honor Colorado movement, has called the deficit revelations “very serious,” demanded around $400m in spending cuts, and lashed out at “inept” Economy Ministry officials. Others, like Yo Creo senator Rubén Velázquez, suggested raising the legal limit to 2.5%, given the current ceiling has only been respected three times in eleven years of the law’s existence.

The private sector is nervous, too. Economists and bankers warn that Paraguay’s hard-won investment-grade status can’t be treated as permission to keep accumulating debt. Former finance minister César Barreto says Paraguay’s reputation has already been damaged by repeatedly missing its fiscal promises.

And the new 2028 target may prove the least believable promise of all. Hitting 1.5% would require either significantly higher tax revenues, substantial spending restraint, or both. Yet 2027 brings mounting expenditures on social programmes, thousands of new government employees, and pressure for public-sector wage rises.

2028 after all, is an election year: hardly the moment when politicians take an axe to spending.

THE POST TAKE

There is nothing inherently scandalous about Paraguay temporarily running a deficit above 1.5%.

Governments sometimes need to borrow to clear overdue obligations or invest during difficult periods. Paraguay arguably can afford to tax, borrow and spend much more on things like health, education, and infrastructure.

The scandal is the accounting theatre.

Peña came to office as the technocrat who would tidy up Paraguay’s finances. A former finance minister and IMF economist, he castigated Mario Abdo Benítez for leaving unpaid invoices off the books, borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars to clean them up, and promised that fiscal normality would quickly return. Then his own administration allowed the same arrears to pile up.

Paraguay’s economic success story is built less on spectacular wealth than on a reputation for reliability: low inflation, manageable debt, predictable rules, and conservative fiscal management. Those credentials informed decisions by Moody’s and S&P to award the country investment-grade status and underpin Peña’s relentless pitch to overseas investors.

Being seen to cook the books — even through accounting practices that may technically be legal — corrodes precisely that asset.

The gimmick wasn’t harmless. The government spent months trumpeting growth, investment and macroeconomic stability while construction companies went bankrupt and laid off workers and patients complained of missing hospital supplies. All the while, former Economy Minister Fernández Valdovinos dismissed any suggestion of raising the debt ceiling.

Cleaning up the arrears will make the headline deficit look much worse in the short term, but that is preferable to continuing the fiction. The harder question is what comes next.

Returning from 3.9% to 1.5% in a single year would demand considerable political pain. Raising taxes remains taboo. Cutting popular programmes is electorally toxic. Slashing patronage, privileges, and inefficient spending would mean confronting interests inside the Colorado Party itself.

And the timing could hardly be worse. An emerging El Niño is expected to bring greater rainfall volatility and extreme weather over the coming months. For an economy heavily dependent on soy, beef, river transport, and hydroelectric power, floods, crop losses, or disruption along the Paraguay-Paraná waterway could weaken revenues just as the government needs them most.

Paraguay’s fiscal problem is therefore no longer mainly an accounting question. It is a test of whether Peña’s government is willing to make difficult choices or simply hand the bill, once again, to whoever comes next.

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In this issue:
Shell station on Costanera stirs scandal · Asunción mayoral race kicks off · Prieto heads to trial · Pharmacy mega-merger advances · Crypto entrepreneur found dead in Asunción · Real-estate developer calls in creditors · Cartes to the Senate?

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TOP STORY

Here comes the rain

A potentially historic El Niño is gathering strength in the Pacific — and Paraguay is preparing for months of unusually heavy rain and hugely disruptive floods.

The US Climate Prediction Center says the weather phenomenon has an 81% chance of becoming “very strong” between October and December, potentially ranking among the most powerful El Niño events recorded since 1950. In Paraguay, officials expect a wetter spring and summer, with especially heavy rains from September through December and possibly into early 2027.

Eduardo Mingo, Paraguay’s director of Meteorology and Hydrology, says the first local sign is a relatively mild end to winter. As the phenomenon gathers energy, it could then intensify the thunderstorms that normally accompany Paraguay’s transition into spring and its hot, humid summer.

Every El Niño is different, Mingo cautions. The 2023–24 event produced serious flooding along the Paraná basin in Ñeembucú, Misiones, and Itapúa, while parts of the Chaco were drier than normal. Even so, some officials are sounding apocalyptic.

Defence Minister Óscar González claimed on Monday that there was a 99% chance of El Niño affecting Paraguay “in its worst version” from late August.

He put military vehicles at the disposal of the remote Alto Paraguay department and is negotiating fuel-storage facilities with Petropar in Chaco towns like Fuerte Olimpo, where prolonged rain can turn roads and airstrips into mudbaths and isolate settlements for weeks.

Emergency Minister Arsenio Zárate has meanwhile warned that Paraguay could receive around 200mm more rainfall than usual in late 2026. Engineering units have been deployed to clear waterways in Asunción and the surrounding Central department.

Cities in Paraguay face two distinct flood risks. Intense storms can unleash raudales — violent torrents that rush through streets, damage homes, and sweep away pedestrians and cars. These are worsened by the rubbish clogging streams and drains, while asphalt and concrete make it harder for water to disperse.

A slower, more inexorable danger comes from sustained rainfall across the Pantanal and the Paraguay and Paraná river basins, which can eventually push rivers over their banks.

For riverside communities, especially Asunción’s bañados, that second danger can mean evacuation into improvised roadside camps. In Alto Paraguay and Ñeembucú, entire settlements may become accessible only by boat or aircraft. In the exceptionally strong El Niño of 2015, roughly 27,000 people were registered as flood victims in the capital alone.

For Paraguay’s export economy, however, rising rivers are a mixed bag. The landlocked country moves most of its international trade by barge through the Paraguay–Paraná waterway. More water can improve navigability, allow heavier loads and reduce delays caused by low river levels — although unusually high water, storms and strong currents can also disrupt ports and navigation.

The same ambiguity extends to agriculture. Édgar Mayeregger, the Agriculture Ministry’s risk-management coordinator, says crop and livestock yields during El Niño years often exceed national averages. Abundant rain can replenish soil moisture and revive pastures, but too much at the wrong moment can delay planting and harvesting, prevent machinery from entering fields, reduce crop quality, and favour pests and fungal diseases.

Hugo Pastore of grain exporters’ association Capeco says the sector’s biggest concern lies “outside the farm”: heavy rain can turn unpaved rural roads into mud, leaving grain and livestock stranded way before reaching silos, ports, or slaughterhouses.

Paraguay’s hydroelectric dams Itaipú and Yacyretá may benefit from stronger Paraná River inflows, lifting electricity generation after weaker hydrological conditions. But Paraguay is consuming more and more of its allocated power, meaning that less of this surplus will be available for sale to Brazil and Argentina.

THE POST TAKE

The government’s early preparations are welcome: meteorological agencies have been coordinating since March, the SEN is running simulations and stockpiling supplies, and municipalities are clearing channels and drawing up evacuation plans.

But there is a major gap between preparing to respond to a disaster and reducing the conditions that turn heavy rainfall into one.

Storms do not create rubbish-choked streams, neglected flood defences, homes built on floodplains, or roads that dissolve into mud. They expose failures that have accumulated for decades — in places officials already know, from past El Niño events, will suffer first.

The SEN is right to urge residents not to throw trash into waterways. But that message risks shifting responsibility onto individuals for failures rooted in irregular waste collection, uncontrolled urbanisation, and decades of weak drainage and housing policy. In Asunción, families are repeatedly evacuated from the bañados into improvised camps of clapboard houses in public squares — only to return to the same floodplain once the river falls.

The same contradiction runs through the economy. Record yields will mean little if crops cannot leave the farm, while extra hydropower will offer limited relief if the grid remains fragile, household demand surges, and the country continues courting power-hungry data centres.

Paraguay could emerge from El Niño with fuller rivers, stronger harvests, and greater electricity generation. Or excessive rain could swamp fields, cut off towns, spread mosquito-borne diseases, and once again drive thousands of poor families from the riverbanks.

Most likely, it will do some of both.

El Niño will therefore be a nationwide test of whether the government’s preparations amount to more than press conferences — and whether one of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies has invested enough in the roads, drainage, housing, and planning needed to withstand a predictable climate shock.

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In this issue:
2028 field gets crowded · Peña eyes extractive energy boom · New fiscal deficit ceiling? · More jobs, more underemployment · Paraguay signs US nuclear cooperation deal · Yankiguayo influencer accused of exploiting Ayoreo · Paraguay’s gift to friendship

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TOP STORY

Lula’s haphazard history lecture

By Laurence Blair

Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula de Silva has sparked outrage in Paraguay after blaming it for a nineteenth-century war thought to have wiped out half the smaller country’s population.

Speaking on Friday at the recently revived Avibras missile factory in Jacareí, São Paulo, the leftist leader described how his nation had long prioritised diplomacy to resolve disputes.

But he argued Brazil now has to invest more in defence, noting that geopolitical threats could emerge from nowhere — and reaching for a controversial historical example.

“We like peace,” Lula told the assembled ministers and military chiefs, “but we can’t forget that, one fine day, Paraguay decided to invade Brazil. It invaded Corumbá and at the same time invaded Uruguay and at the same time Argentina.”

“And that war,” he added, “which looked like it wouldn’t amount to much, lasted five years.”

Lula’s remarks have reopened painful historical wounds in Paraguay, which suffered a traumatising defeat in the 1864-70 War of the Triple Alliance.

Raúl Latorre, the president of Paraguay’s Chamber of Deputies, accused Lula of “speaking far too lightly about the greatest tragedy of our history, the greatest genocide of our continent.”

Opposition congressman Rubén Rubin said the veteran Brazilian leader was “distorting history” and called on Paraguay’s government to demand the return of war-era trophies from Brazil.

Popular historian Fabián Chamorro meanwhile said Lula, 80, was “scattered” and “confused,” and that his version of events “has half-truths at best.”

Paraguay’s strongman ruler, Marshal Francisco Solano López, seized a Brazilian vessel bound for Mato Grosso, imprisoned its governor, and launched attacks on Brazilian forts late in 1864.

But Paraguayan historians have emphasised that López’s actions were preceded by a Brazilian invasion of Uruguay that October. Troops loyal to Pedro II then installed a puppet government the following year.

López had warned that any intervention in Uruguay would be an unacceptable challenge to the regional balance of power — and that he would take measures in response. Brazil, an increasingly expansionist power, ignored him.

After López raided Brazil in response — and marched his troops across northern Argentina to come to the aid of his Uruguayan allies — the governments of Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, and occupied Uruguay signed a treaty declaring war on Paraguay and vowing to overthrow López on May 1, 1865.

Paraguay mounted a desperate defence, but was ultimately vanquished.

It lost huge swathes of territory and most of its adult men — including López, who was shot dead fleeing the battlefield after being wounded at Cerro Corá in 1870. Brazilian troops occupied the capital, Asunción, for six years: looting the city, enslaving children, and stabling their horses in López’s palace.

The victors in what many Paraguayans call simply the guerra guazú (The Great War) have long been accused of war crimes: including the slaughter of women, children, and the wounded.

In 2022, a subcomission of regional parliament Parlasur declared the Allies were responsible for “genocide in modern terms”. Brazilian delegates boycotted the inquiry.

Lula’s simplistic explanation of the war’s causes — and the implication that Paraguay could one day attack again — have yet to meet with a public response from Paraguay’s president, Santiago Peña, or his diplomatic service.

Vice-president Pedro Alliana, a 2028 presidential hopeful, said the war had “massacred our children, burned hospitals, and looted Asunción.”

In a social media post, he said he was “focused on the future”, but that the return of war-era trophies by Brazil “could be a gesture of brotherhood that helps to make amends for the past.”

THE POST TAKE

The Paraguayan War — the bloodiest inter-state conflict in Latin American history — is still being fought over.

The dominant view abroad, which Lula seems to share, is that López’s Paraguay was to blame for the bloodshed.

His delusions of grandeur arguably made López fatally overestimate the strength of his forces — and needlessly prolong the carnage.

For decades, many Paraguayans agreed. Post-war governments made it illegal to praise the marshal and his supposed megalomania.

Yet a popular counternarrative gradually emerged: that Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay — backed by London banks and even the British crown — had plotted from the outset to dismember the emerging Paraguayan superpower.

Only López’s strategic genius and heroic sacrifice, this meandering theory runs, saved Paraguay from being wiped off the map.

This point of view was championed by the Alfredo Stroessner regime (1954-89) — and more subtly by the Peña administration, which describes Paraguay as a reawakening “giant.” Today, López is claimed by every political tendency.

A splinter cell from the EPP — the leftist guerrilla group which allegedly perpetrated a deadly attack on a police station last week (see below the paywall) — called itself the Army of Marshal López (EML). Paraguay’s footballers were given a replica of López’s sabre before heading to the World Cup.

More recent scholarship has emphasised how hazy post-colonial borders and disputes over river navigation — as well as nationalistic miscalculations on all sides — set the region on the road to war.

In my book Patria — chapter eight contains a whistle-stop journey through Paraguayan history — I describe the conflict as “a clash over the control of Montevideo city hall that had spiralled out of control, becoming a civilisational struggle with ugly racial overtones.”

Perceptions about the morality of the war also vary among the victors.

Uruguay was quick to repent, returning looted war trophies to its as early as 1885. Argentina followed suit, with Juan Domingo Perón bringing back seized weapons and flags when he attended Stroessner’s inauguration in 1954.

In the 1980s, Brazil returned thousands of documents seized during the war from Paraguay’s national archives. But popular legend in Paraguay has it that important or incriminating records have been held back.

The Christian Cannon — a massive artillery piece forged by López from church bells — still sits in the courtyard of the National Historical Museum in Rio.

(Paraguay, to be fair, still has a couple of Brazilian warships sitting on its riverbeds and at an open-air museum called Vapor Cué.)

And while the experience of mobilisation and victory paved its way to South American superpower status, few in Brazil today give much thought to the conflict.

Lula’s unexpected saunter down memory lane puts Peña in a tricky position. He has talked up Paraguay’s pre-war greatness and claims the country is once more taking its place as a regional player.

But Paraguay depends on Brazil as the buyer of 35% of its exports — especially soybean, maquila manufactured goods, and hydroelectric energy — as well as the source of a third of Paraguay’s foreign investment in 2025.

Over 20,000 Brazilians applied for residency in Paraguay last year — over half the total. Brazilian aerospace firm Embraer also sold Paraguay six Super Tucano attack aircraft.

The two countries have only recently gotten past an espionage scandal where Brazilian spies hacked Paraguayan officials renegotiating the future terms of the shared Itaipú dam.

And Brazilian buy-in is crucial if infrastructure projects like the Bioceanic Highway — and the related cross-border bridge at Carmelo Peralta, due to be completed in September — are to bear fruit.

Despite claiming to be the heirs of López, the ruling Colorado Party isn’t exactly known for standing up to Brasília or wealthy brasiguayo settlers.

Former president Horacio Cartes (2013-18) — the power behind Peña’s throne — famously told a drinks party of Brazilian investors gathered in the Palacio de López to “use and abuse Paraguay.”

There’s a broader question about how much mileage Paraguay — arguably Donald Trump’s closest ally in the Southern Cone — can get from playing the victim 150 years later.

The Peña administration has signed a controversial military cooperation deal with the White House and declared Brazilian criminal organisations the PCC and CV to be terrorists, sparking a rift with Brazil.

The prospect of a ramped-up US military presence in the next-door nation — and the abduction of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro by US special forces in January — may be playing on Lula’s mind as he faces elections this October.

And with Lula now on course to defeat the scandal-ridden Bolsonarista right and remain in power for four more years, Peña’s best option may be to apply the refrain from a popular British sitcom: don’t mention the war.

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In this issue:
Police killings revive EPP spectre · Prieto sketches 2028 platform · Residency applications surge · Paraguay apologises for journalist’s murder · Paraguayan science spotlighted · Beijing cultivates business ties

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TOP STORY

Horacio meets Marco, and Landau

Former president Horacio Cartes (2013-18) briefly met US Secretary of State Marco Rubio while attending the World Cup final, in an encounter celebrated by his allies as proof of political rehabilitation.

The warm exchange of words captured on camera at the MetLife stadium in New Jersey carried obvious symbolic weight. Cartes had been designated “significantly corrupt” by the US State Department and placed under Treasury sanctions in 2023 over alleged corruption, accusations he has repeatedly denied.

Yet those financial sanctions were lifted in October 2025 — officials said they were no longer serving U.S. foreign-policy interests — clearing the way for the tobacco magnate to set foot on North American soil once more.

Rubio’s presence in the VIP box made the moment particularly striking. During a visit to Guatemala in February 2025, the newly appointed secretary of state said changes to sanctions against officials accused of corruption and anti-democratic conduct had not been discussed by the Trump administration. His comments wrong-footed cartistas, who had expected the ouster of the Biden administration to bring Cartes immediate relief.

Yet after rubbing shoulders with Rubio and other top dignitaries over the weekend, Cartes was also formally received by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, whose father served as US ambassador to Paraguay during the 1970s.

For Honor Colorado, the dominant faction of the ruling Colorado Party, the message was clear: its leader was no longer being treated as a diplomatic liability, but as someone welcome in Washington’s political orbit.

Cartes holds no official government position beyond the presidency of the Colorado Party. Yet the encounter underlined the parallel influence he exercises over Paraguay’s government, particularly given that President Santiago Peña was not present at the Argentina–Spain final.

The timing was also striking. Days later, Peña’s government confirmed that Gustavo Leite would leave Paraguay’s embassy in Washington and return to his Senate seat on July 22, less than a year after taking up the diplomatic post.

Leite’s short tenure coincided with an unusually close phase in US-Paraguay relations. Paraguay signed a controversial Status of Forces Agreement facilitating the presence of US military personnel and contractors, while also expanding an arrangement allowing migrants rejected by the United States to be transferred through Paraguayan territory.

Yet Leite’s performance as ambassador was repeatedly questioned at home. Cartista senator Natalicio Chase described him as a “luxury ambassador,” but struggled to point to concrete achievements. Opposition senator Rafael Filizzola was harsher, characterizing the posting as a year of “diplomatic tourism” focused on Honor Colorado and one wing of the GOP rather than Paraguay’s national interest.

Leite also created friction inside Peña’s government. In April, he criticised departing Economy Minister Carlos Fernández Valdovinos and said that under Cartes there had been “not even the smell of a bribe” — something, he implied, that stood in sharp contrast to the Peña administration. Foreign Minister Rubén Ramírez Lezcano formally reprimanded him.

His early departure will not be cheap. ABC Color estimates that terminating the posting requires the state to pay Leite more than $30k in additional salary, on top of the cost of housing, representation, relocation and his months in Washington. His return also forces substitute senator Carlos Liseras to surrender the seat.

Leite’s recall forms part of a wider diplomatic reshuffle. The moves cover eight embassies and mix routine rotations with more politically awkward removals — including a career diplomat in Lebanon accused of swiping on Tinder during working hours. But Leite’s successful matchmaking mission between the Trump White House and HC is the one making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

THE POST TAKE

Leite’s Washington mission now looks less like an ordinary diplomatic appointment than a political assignment with a defined objective.

His return to the Senate was announced almost immediately after Cartes secured the photographs Honor Colorado had been seeking — first beside Rubio at the World Cup final, then in a formal meeting with Landau. The sequence has the feel of a mission-accomplished statement.

Measured by that standard, Leite’s brief posting may have been successful. His public defense of Cartes, his attacks on Peña’s own officials, and the lack of clearly identifiable national-policy achievements all reinforce the impression that the embassy served as an extension of factional politics.

Peña may formally direct Paraguay’s foreign policy. But the World Cup photograph suggests that, when it comes to the relationship with Washington, his political patron is once again the figure Honor Colorado most wants in the frame.

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In this issue:
Investment grade (and fiscal strain) confirmed ⋅ Property buyers beware⋅ Spanish casino giant arrives ⋅ The asphalt mafia strikes ⋅ A new mega-dam? ⋅ Paraguay adds three restaurants to 50 Best ⋅ Did the Guaraní invent football?

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TOP STORY

The Post Presents: Parts Unknown & Los Paraguayos

by Laurence Blair

“For most people, Paraguay is an empty space on the map of Latin America,” a voice intones, over shots of a dustblown downtown Asunción.

The country is best known, the narrator continues, as a “refuge for fleeing Nazis and a long line of extremely unpleasant dictators”, where even the guidebooks tell you “to buy a gun.”

Cue harp music, and a freewheeling 40-minute documentary in which Anthony Bourdain gently challenges the clichéd version of Paraguay as a dangerous, godforsaken den of vice.

Bourdain said this 2014 episode of his popular CNN travel show Parts Unknown — which The Paraguay Post is screening tomorrow with our friends at Cineclub Itinerante — was some of his crew’s “best work”.

The globetrotting chef samples fish stew in the Mercado Cuatro and tries sopa paraguaya, Paraguay’s famously solid soup. He wolfs down a lomito at a roadside copetín (“all my greasy meat dreams have come true”).

And he heads upriver with a cigar-smoking East German exile — friend of the Post Peter Gardner — coming across a shotgun-wielding capybara hunter in a rowboat and the detritus of a failed French colony called Nouvelle Bourdeaux.

The show has a deeply personal dimension, too.

The “spine” of the documentary, Bourdain later wrote in his fieldnotes, is a quest to find his lost great-great-grandfather: a French hatmaker called Jean Bourdain who reputedly emigrated to Paraguay in the 1850s.

And Bourdain, then 58, also seems to be searching for solace amid the glare of global fame.

Over beef empanadas at the storied Lido Bar, the Kitchen Confidential author tells a private investigator called Pedro that he’s “the longest living male Bourdain in possibly ever.”

“So you’re lonely in the world,” the grizzled PI replies, in a penetrating malapropism.

“I’m lonely in the world,” Bourdain agrees, his eyes telegraphing a flash of vulnerability.

Four years later, Bourdain — who had spoken openly of his past addiction to hard drugs, and his struggle with “existential despair” — would take his own life in a French hotel room.

But despite lingering on themes of death, corruption and decay — cue multiple shots of the crumbling ballroom ceilings at the Gran Hotel del Paraguay — the show ultimately strikes out for a sunnier conclusion.

Bourdain pokes around the ransacked tombs of the Recoleta cemetery, jumbled bones exposed to the elements, before breezily concluding: “Nobody here I know.”

B-roll shows regular Paraguayans of all shapes and sizes hanging out in the park, drinking tereré, and smiling at the camera: a far cry from a Hobbesian hellhole.

A satisfying twist meanwhile suggests a family legend about Jean Bourdain’s real profession may not be too far off the mark.

And the episode ends with the chef happily sharing a barbecue with all the trimmings on a ranch among the peaceful, forested hills of Piribebuy, serenaded by the strains of Bienvenido, hermano extranjero.

“This was not the Paraguay I expected at all,” Bourdain concludes.

THE POST TAKE

Parts Unknown doesn’t exactly offer a politically correct take on Paraguay.

Bourdain plays up the country’s eccentricities, unfairly pins the blame for the War of the Triple Alliance entirely on the “tinpot dictator” Marshal López — and fantasises about his ancestor amassing a harem of Indigenous wives.

He previously wrote that, after witnessing the destruction caused by the U.S. bombing campaign in Cambodia, “you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands.”

So it’s striking that he dedicates a minute or so to Alfredo Stroessner without adding that presidents Eisenhower through to Ford propped up his 35-year regime with guns, cash, and torture tips.

But the documentary is a stylishly shot and heartfelt artefact of how outsiders have, over the centuries, tended to view Paraguay through the lens of our own hang-ups.

Tomorrow — from 7pm at CheckPoint Downtown Bar, Palma, casi Caballero — we’ll be using the show as a springboard for a discussion (mainly in Spanish, probably) about how foreign perceptions of Paraguay are fuelling the country’s contemporary migration boom.

We’ll hear first-hand from some of the tens of thousands of foreigners to relocate to the country in recent years — as well as why nearly a million Paraguayans have meanwhile headed for the exit.

To close things off, we’ll be showing Los Paraguayos (2006): a lesser-known documentary by leading local director Marcelo Martinessi. Made for audiences in Brazil and Europe, the short film explores the origins and contradictions of Paraguayan identity, from the Guaraní to the present day.

If you’re a paid subscriber to the Post, make yourself known, and your first chopp of Munich is on us — just one of the many perks received by our valued community of supporters. Nos vemos!

You’re reading The Weekly Post, your essential briefing on Paraguay.

In this issue:
Paraguay tightens residency rules ⋅ Fake degree scandal widens⋅ Liberal Party fades from picture ⋅ China hacks Paraguay’s government, again ⋅ Soy leads trade rebound ⋅ Forgotten stories of colonial resistance ⋅ Restoring Stroessner’s symbols

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TOP STORY

Does Paraguay Have a Racism Problem?

A prominent Paraguayan senator has triggered international uproar for directing racist abuse towards Kylian Mbappé after he scored the penalty that eliminated Paraguay from the World Cup on Saturday.

In a welter of angry remarks posted on X, Celeste Amarilla branded the top French forward an illiterate “brute” and a “colonised Cameroonian, desperately trying to pass himself as French.”

“He suckled on coconuts instead of mother’s milk,” added the 61-year-old lawmaker for the opposition Liberal Party (PLRA). “The most educated thing he listened to were chimpanzees.”

Mbappé quickly hit back on the same platform, calling Amarilla a “despicable woman and unworthy of your position.”

The Paris-born player of Algerian-Cameroonian parentage said the senator’s “brazen racism” had overshadowed Paraguay’s “historic effort” during the World Cup and “given the worst possible image” of their country.

The French Football Federation called the senator’s remarks “utterly unacceptable” and filed a complaint. The Paris prosecutor’s office said it was investigating whether to charge Amarilla with inciting racial hatred: an offence punishable by up to a year in jail and a €45,000 ($51,000) fine.

French president Emmanuel Macron also weighed in, saying Mbappé had “scored another goal” against racism. “All my support,” he added. “When words smear, our values respond: dignity, respect, fraternity.”

As the scandal went viral worldwide and was even criticised by the UN, Amarilla deleted the original posts. She then published an open letter to Mbappé in which she expressed regret for using “the same insults” she had received as a mixed-race person.

But she blamed her outburst on the 27-year-old Real Madrid star for comparing Paraguay’s physical tactics to playing in excrement — and failing to shake Paraguayan goalkeeper Orlando Gill’s hand after the final whistle.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Amarilla admitted to racism, which she said she “hated” and was trying to unlearn.

“I grew up in that global society,” she said by way of explanation, “where saying negro de mierda was common.”

The senator, who claims to have received “millions” of messages of support, also threatened to sue Mbappé for gender-based violence.

“Read my letter, if he knows how to,” she added. “Don’t mess with us Paraguayans, Mbappé, because we already put Ronaldinho in jail for being corrupt.”

The affair is the latest scandal involving allegedly racist and sexist comments by Paraguayan public figures to erupt in recent weeks.

Prior to Saturday’s match, the former goalkeeper, TV commentator and sometime political candidate Jose Luis Chilavert said “in the ‘98 World Cup we played the French, and now Paraguay is facing an African team.”

Last month, Paraguayan tennis star Adolfo Vallejo was fined $65,000 by the French Open after he said a match he narrowly lost to French teenager Moise Kouame should have been umpired by a man.

And in March, Paraguayan influencer Carmiña Masi was kicked out of the Argentine version of Big Brother after she said fellow contestant Jenny Mavinga looked like she had “just been bought, fresh off the boat.”

Masi — who also explicitly likened the DRC-born Mavinga to a “little monkey” and a “slave” — subsequently apologised. But like Amarilla, she also tried to play the victim and ride out the scandal.

“I’m leaving with my head held high,” she said.

THE POST TAKE

Mbappé-gate has triggered a fierce debate about sportsmanship, sovereignty, the limits of free expression — and Paraguay’s peculiar relationship with race.

Many Paraguayans swear their country is colour-blind.

Widespread racial mixing under Spanish rule — later made a state policy by post-independence dictator Dr. Francia (1814-40) — means most locals have some Indigenous ancestry.

While declining in use, the native-origin language Guaraní is spoken by 66.6% of the population: a rarity in Latin America.

Especially during international tournaments, Paraguayan politicians and coaches like to talk of the garra guaraní: the tenacity and cunning supposedly inherited from the country’s pre-Columbian inhabitants.

Visitors from the US and Brazil are sometimes struck by Paraguay’s apparent lack of segregation by neighbourhood, race-based identity politics — or everyday prejudice towards Black people.

Amid the Amarilla-Mbappé fallout, one Cameroonian resident of 26 years interviewed by TV news said he had “never felt discriminated against” in Paraguay.

”I don’t know any other country where the people are as warm as this,” Kwetta Kenneth Nju told Unicanal.

Mexico and Brazil have their beloved caramelos. Here, the perro delmer — the tan-coloured, market-variety mongrel — has come to signify Paraguay’s sense of its own pedigree: a bit of everything, and proud of it.

But scratch the surface and you find a clear connection between race, class, wealth and power in Paraguay.

Paraguay’s political elite is overwhelmingly lighter-skinned and Spanish-speaking. No Indigenous person has ever held national office, despite multiple qualified candidates running for congress. Some 66% of the country’s native population lives in poverty: nearly three times the average.

Paraguayan countryfolk often have little in common — and even struggle to communicate — with their Mbyá, Avá Guaraní, or Paĩ Tavyterã neighbours. Paraguayan Guaraní, say scholars, has long ceased to be an Indigenous language.

That’s to say nothing of the diverse linguistic and ethnic groups in the Chaco — the vast outback that makes up Paraguay’s western half — where reports of discrimination, forced labour, and even a slow-motion genocide of uncontacted Ayoreo nomads by white settlers regularly surface.

Two hundred years ago, almost half the population of Asunción was Black or mixed-race — the product of the trans-Atlantic trafficking of enslaved Africans to work in Paraguay’s farms, mines and households.

The incomplete 2012 census registered nearly 4,000 people who identified as Afro-Paraguayan, mainly in working-class barrios like Kamba Kuá in Fernando de la Mora and the nearby town of Emboscada.

A 2024 study suggested the real figure could be 85,000 or more: roughly 1.5% of the population. Yet Afro-Paraguayan organisations say they are often made to feel invisible — or exoticised and discriminated against.

The Grupo Tradicional San Baltazar — a cultural collective from Kamba Kuá — criticised Amarilla’s outburst, saying it was likely to “increase hatred and persecution towards afrodescendants.”

And while officials from Paraguay’s ruling Colorado Party were quick to condemn Amarilla’s attack on Mbappé — and to hint that she could be suspended from her seat — critics argue the government has done little to combat racism.

Article 46 of Paraguay’s constitution prohibits discrimination of all kinds. But legislation that would give that provision teeth has stalled in the Colorado-controlled congress for decades.

Interviewed by Latitud 25, left-wing senator Esperanza Martínez criticised her colleague, while warning against any attempt to remove Amarilla — one of Paraguay’s few remaining opposition figures.

Asunción mayor Marrio Ferreiro, senator Kattya González, and Ciudad del Este mayor Miguel Prieto have all been unseated amid dubious judicial manoeuvres in recent years.

“Hatred isn’t freedom of expression,” Martínez wrote on social media. “Let’s debate the law, the violence in our society, and the responsibility shared by the media and politics.”

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Also in this issue:

Paraguay’s economy: the best it’s ever been? · IMF tells Paraguay to pay its debts · Community radio station shut down · Government critic silenced · Post-match post-mortem · Leo DiCaprio in Paraguay · Paraguayan soldiers in Ukraine

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In this issue:

Mercosur courts Japan · Peña complains over EU quotas · BBC spotlights Paraguayan economy · Foreign investment tops $1bn · Dictatorship crimes return to court · Facial recognition challenged · Business blasts Peña’s football holiday

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Paraguay defeated Germany last night in a nail-biting match of attrition that saw La Albirroja become the first team ever to beat Die Mannschaft on penalties at the FIFA World Cup.

The shock victory against one of the world’s best sides means Paraguay is headed to the Round of 16 in Philadelphia on Saturday against either Sweden or 2018 World Cup winner France.

As the final whistle blew, crowds gathered in the historic centre of Asunción went ballistic with joy. Fireworks and thumping music rang out in the chilly night air.

Caravans of honking, flag-waving vehicles surged down the capital’s avenues towards the National Pantheon of Heroes.

The party reached fever pitch when news spread that Paraguay’s president, Santiago Peña, had declared a national holiday for the following day.

“Paraguay never gives up!” Peña posted on X. “Public holiday, dammit!”

A flurry of memes highlighted the unexpected upset: the purebred German Shepherd outclassed by a Mercado 4 mutt.

Paraguay had been lacking in verve so far in this tournament: a 4-1 drubbing at the hands of co-hosts the US, a gritty 1-0 win against Turkey, and a 0-0 stalemate versus Australia.

But last night’s do-or-die encounter in Massachusetts had drama in spades: not least because virtually nobody had predicted La Albirroja would come out on top.

Betting platform Polymarket had Germany’s chances of victory at 74%, against 19% for a draw and just 9% for a Paraguayan win.

There was an early chance for Paraguay, when Manuel Neuer leaped to save a close-quarters attempt from defender Júnior Alonso just 63 seconds in — the earliest shot on target faced by Germany in any World Cup on record.

Possession soon settled in the four-time World Champions’ favour, with Germany controlling roughly three-quarters of play over the full 120 minutes and racking up 21 shots to a mere handful by Paraguay.

Yet a cross from midfielder Matías Galarza in the 42nd minute was smartly headed by Brighton-trained winger Julio Enciso into the net, putting Paraguay on top for a few exhilarating minutes.

But not long after the second half resumed, Germany’s Kai Havertz got a header past Paraguay’s long-limbed keeper, Orlando Gill, pushing the game into extra time.

In the 105th minute, disaster nearly struck: a corner from Nathaniel Brown was nodded by Jonathan Tah into the net, sending the German end into raptures. Paraguay looked despondent.

But upon consulting VAR, Moroccan referee Jalal Jayed wound back the scoreboard to 1-1, ruling that defender Waldemar Anton had blocked Gill’s path to the ball in the build-up, seemingly barging him to the ground.

The call enraged the German dugout — and divided commentators.

Some said Anton’s positioning in the box was the kind of rough-and-tumble long tolerated in European leagues, or that there was no foul at all. Others argued it was about time such antics were penalised.

The stay of execution energised the jubilant Guaraní underdogs, who held the tie through the rest of extra time and into a shootout.

It was here that Paraguay’s grit — and the god-like reflexes of goalie Gill, who had already made six saves — truly came into play.

Gill parried Havertz’s opener. Maurício, Gustavo Gómez, and Galarza all kept their nerve to convert. Gill saved again from Nick Woltemade, only for Sanabria to smash Paraguay’s next attempt wide and Neuer to save Fabián Balbuena’s shot.

Now into sudden death, Tah also skied his effort over the bar.

Finally, 29-year-old centre back José Canale — drafted in last-minute to replace Omar Alderete, injured in the Australia game — stepped up. The pressure might have crushed a lesser player.

Instead, Canale rocketed the ball high past Neuer. Paraguay had toppled Germany, and made history.

THE POST TAKE

Leave aside whether Paraguay fully earned the victory. There’s no question they deserved it.

MagentaTV pundit Jonas Friedrich had sparked serious controversy by suggesting Germany would waltz to victory, calling Gustavo Alfaro’s side a “third-class” team. Hubris, meet nemesis.

And those who subsequently sniffed at Paraguay’s so-called haramball were missing the fact that this kind of cussed, dug-in defence is a recurring feature across centuries of Paraguayan history.

Squint, and you can discern in Gustavo Alfaro’s tight, compact formation a distant reflection of the trenches and barricades of Mbororé, Curupaytí and Fortín Toledo.

There was a tale of personal redemption, too, for Gill. Only a few years ago, he was forced to sell his trainers and U20 national team jersey to pay for his family’s expenses after his son was born prematurely.

He then moved to Argentina in search of greater professional opportunities — as over 500,000 Paraguayans have done in recent years — joining top Buenos Aires side San Lorenzo.

Last night, the 6ft6in giant was named the Man of the Match and is now being hailed as a hero.

“Our opponents — with all respect — were trained in the best academies of Europe,” Alfaro told reporters after the match.

“We come from the tierra colorada, the red earth represented by the stripes of our shirt. Playing barefoot in that dirt, with parents making sacrifices and scraping by to reach the end of the month so their kids can still train and fulfill their dreams.”

“I don’t deny my origins,” the Argentine DT continued, “because it’s what defines us as a team … That mix of blood and utopia enabled us to make what seemed impossible a reality. It’s the greatest victory of my career as a coach.”

The Paraguay Post sometimes catches flak for being negative. We’d counter that Paraguay is better served by honesty than propaganda: plenty of which can be found elsewhere.

But while Paraguay’s path to the trophy looks torturous — other contenders include France, Sweden, Morocco, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Argentina, and Brazil — the country is more than entitled to celebrate the win against Germany.

It’s the kind of rare, feel-good moment that means so much to a nation of strivers and survivors that — after all — invented something like football centuries before the rules of the English game were written down. Could it finally be coming home?

TOP STORY

Paraguay’s political pyromania

By Laurence Blair

As the autumn nights grow longer, Paraguayans look forward to San Juan Ára or St. John’s Day. Though officially celebrated on June 24, this carnivalesque festival typically reaches its peak the night before — and extends throughout the whole month.

Community celebrations often involve polka music, sack races, demonstrations of skill on horseback, mock weddings known as casamiento koygua — and deliciously greasy soul food like payagua mascada (ground-beef and spring onion fritters) and chicharõ trenzado (braided, barbecued strips of beef and pork).

But perhaps the main ingredient of San Juan Ára is fire — and lots of it.

Partygoers boot around a flaming football in a hair-raising (and hair-singing) pastime known as pelota tata. Some are known to walk over glowing coals: a test of composure and machismo as much of as of faith. Meanwhile, a two-person team inhabit the role of the toro candil — a bull’s hide and skull, complete with flaming horns — and charge the shrieking public.

The grand finale is often the judas kái (burning Judas): a mannequin dressed to represent an unpopular figure, before being doused in petrol — and sometimes stuffed with fireworks — dangled from a tree or lamp-post, and set aflame.

The tradition has provided a welcome side-hustle for Alberto, a 58-year-old seller of medicinal herbs in Asunción’s sprawling mercado cuatro.

One recent lunchtime, the portly vendor parked a series of home-made dummies in deck chairs across from his market stall, fixing printed masks of politicians — mainly from the ruling Colorado Party — to their faces.

“This is trato apu’a”, he says with a grin, meaning Dirty Dealer — the nickname given to Silvio “Beto” Ovelar, an influential Colorado senator famously caught on camera buying votes at election time in 2013.

To Ovelar’s left is Interior Minister Enrique Riera: the mayor of Asunción in 2004 when a tragic blaze at a supermarket with no working fire exits killed 400 people. Riera has more recently been accused by a dissident Colorado senator of “filling his pockets” as head of the notoriously corrupt National Police.

To the right is Horacio Cartes, the powerful tobacco magnate, former president (2013-18) and current boss of the Colorado Party — a position the Biden administration claimed Cartes secured through a mass bribery scheme, imposing financial sanctions which the Trump White House later dropped.

A cable leaked from the US embassy in 2010 indicated Cartes was under DEA investigation for alleged involvement in a money-laundering and drug-smuggling scheme. “He’s a narcotrafficker,” Alberto alleges.

“We’re also going to make the referee,” he adds, meaning Salvadorean FIFA official Iván Barton, widely panned for perceived bias against Paraguay in their 1-0 nailbiter victory over Turkey last week.

At the end of the line-up is Dionisio Amarilla. A senator formerly with the Liberal Party who has consistently voted with Cartes’s Colorado faction, he has been investigated for malfeasance during his time as an administrator at the Universidad Nacional de Asunción. In 2019, he forfeited his seat over a corruption scandal involving a $23m dollar contract with the IPS public health system and an alleged attempt to bribe a journalist.

But the effigy that sells the most, Alberto says, is Basilio “Bachi” Núñez.

Núñez was accused of illicit enrichment once his wealth skyrocketed after becoming mayor of Villa Hayes, a working-class town across the river from Asunción, in 2006. As president of the senate since 2024, he has presided over the hiring of some 800 poorly qualified staffers — most of them Colorados — dubbed the bachibabies.

“He’s the most corrupt,” argues Alberto, who also hails from Villa Hayes. “He’s a thief. He’s got everything stitched up there in congress. He’s basically the president.”

Alberto’s mannequins go for 80,000 guaranies ($13) each, with a few firecrackers thrown in. He started this unusually lucrative sideline eight years ago with a simple motivation: “I don’t like thieving politicians.”

He makes one exception, however.

Asked what he thinks about Miguel Prieto — the youthful former mayor of Ciudad del Este, who threw an allegedly corrupt Colorado clan out of office, was himself unseated last year in a dubious corruption probe, and now polls as Paraguay’s leading opposition figure — Alberto sounds positively enthusiastic.

Ese co anda, he replies: “That one’s OK.”

THE POST TAKE

On the surface, that Paraguayans feel free to set fire to representations of their political overlords could serve as a feel-good fable.

“That’s democracy,” Alberto told me with a shrug, when I asked whether felt afraid about selling his flammable dummies or speaking to the press.

His wife is Cuban, he added, and has warned him that such activities on the Communist-ruled island are likely to land you in jail. Under Paraguay’s right-wing dictator Alfredo Stroessner (1954-89) — whose regional record in power was only outstripped by Fidel Castro — the retribution would have been worse.

But look a little deeper, and something stands out. Few of the judas kái on display in the Mercado 4 have faced any lasting consequences for scandals that would have been career-ending in most democracies worth the name. The few formal cases that resulted have mouldered in prosecutors’ in-trays for years. None have been formally charged, still less convicted. All deny serious wrongdoing.

Ovelar has admitted to buying votes but denied using public funds. Riera has said he holds “institutional, not penal” liability for failing to inspect and enforce safety regulations at the Ycuá Bolaños supermarket: a cop-out slammed by victims’ groups to this day. Amarilla was voted back into office in 2023 and has since headed a commission targeting the press and NGOs.

Cartes alone did two months in jail in 1989 in connection with a currency-fraud case that was later thrown out. He still controls the Colorado Party. Paraguay’s president, Santiago Peña, is often dismissed as Cartes’s puppet — and was notably absent from the selection of mannequins on offer in the market this week.

In this light, the annual burning of politically-inspired judas kái seems less like the anarchic expression of a free, egalitarian society.

Rather, it looks like an escape valve: an explosion of pent-up rage at a system where the court of public opinion is the only one that seems to function.

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Also in this issue:

Paraguay’s constitution, reviewed · Kattya at the OAS · Peña hikes minimum wage · Businesses warn of inflation risk · FIFA bans Paraguayan commentator · Science festival returns · Foreign firms pile in · Prisoners rebuild Tacumbú

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Leé en español

Despite being a small country in terms of population, Paraguay packs a serious musical punch. Its huge range of bands and solo artists have carried Paraguayan culture far beyond South America. In fact, many of Paraguay’s musical greats have built international followings precisely because a lack of opportunities — and in several cases, political persecution — back home.

Think Paraguayan music, and a few motifs come to mind: nostalgia, romance, the passing of a gourd of tereré (chilled yerba mate) or a bottle of rum in the shade of a mango tree. Running through the chords and bars is guaraní (one of Paraguay’s two official languages), as well as jopara: the mixture of the Indigenous-origin dialect with Spanish that is widely spoken across the country.

Following our recent round-ups of the best in Paraguayan cinema and literature, The Paraguay Post went in search of the country’s defining melodic expressions. How does Paraguay communicate its essence via the harp or guitar strings? Is there an essential, age-old Paraguayan sound? Or is the country’s truest musical tradition one of reinvention and rebellion?

10. Vecindad Autopsia

Taking an irreverent approach to life is a Paraguayan national pastime. So who better than Vecindad Autopsia to kick off our setlist?

Born in 2002 in the southeastern border city of Presidente Franco, the band’s original line-up saw Alfredo Duarte on vocals and guitar, Augusto Invernizzi on bass, and Jorge Argüello on drums. They took punk, mixed it with the local rhythms of polka — itself an energetic Paraguayan twist on the stately European version — and sprinkled jopará lyrics on top.

The resulting subgenre — polka-punk — proved wildly catchy. Emblematic originals and covers include Sífilis en do mayor, Ka´u remember, Paraguarí, María Kandé and Rohejata che morena. A quarter of a century-later, the group continue to keep young and not-so-young people alike pogoing with their infectious mix of rock, ska, and head-banging fusion folklore.

9. Tekovete

The guaraní-language rapper Tekovete represents roots, pride, and a cultural movement that goes from strength to strength — in Paraguay and the world.

Miguel “Tekovete” Ávalos was born in Lambaré to a well-known musician father, before moving to Ypané, where the capital’s sprawl thins into countryside: a context that shines through in his lyrics. At 18, he dropped his first EP Arandú, a co-production with long-standing collaborator Johnny Cutz. Today, Ávalos and his partner Noemí Ortega compose quick flows, rapid-fire rhymes, and stories of the suburbs in jopara: all blended with samples of Paraguayan folkloric classics.

In an interview with the Post, Ávalos explains how he uses rap as a tool to promote Paraguayan culture. “I know that a gringo can listen to my music and nod their head, because they’ll feel that it’s real,” he adds. Ávalos recalls how the last time he played the Curitiba jazz festival — together with the band Guerrilla Soul — many of the Brazilian and international crowd connected more with his Guaraní lyrics than those in Spanish.

Ávalos typically writes sat under a tree, feeling that meditation in nature unlocks his creativity. From such moments emerge nostalgic tracks like Evy´akena (Be Happy) y Aguyje (Thank You); social critiques like Haupéicha (And That’s How) and Pyra Rap (Pure rap). While he’s written diss tracks like Trapo ky´a (Dirty Cloth), he’s also turned his fire on modern materialism with songs like Arriero machetero (Working Man): a tribute to the hard-toiling Paraguayan labourer.

8. Revolber FX

Revolber emerged in 1999, just months after a power struggle between Paraguay’s post-dictatorship elites lead to the assassination of the vice-president and the fatal shooting of seven protesters: an episode known as the marzo paraguayo. Also from Presidente Franco, this backdrop seemed to give the band an implacable thirst for freedom of expression: something personified in their multilingual lyrics, social critique, and blend of musical styles.

They recorded three albums, two EPs, two documentaries about urban and prison life — Vivo en Tacumbú and Un revólver en la Chaca. Their music videos also made a mark too, including the trailer to hit Paraguayan film 7 Cajas, which used their song Huye Hermano. Tracks like El solo, Astronauta Casero, 7 hermanos y un misil, Real peso guaraní and Casa nueva, among others, continue to be mainstays of the urban songbook across Paraguay.

Today, many of its old members continue to make music across different projects — among them Guerrilla Soul, and singer Patrick Altamirano in his solo career.

7. Kchiporros

Several times winner of a Golden Record — a prize given to those tracks that get more than 1.25 million listens in the previous year — Kchiporros are the stadium-fillers that have headlined concerts, kicked off football matches, and dominated the Paraguayan mainstream for going on twenty years.

Born out of jam sessions between university friends in Asunción in 2006, their bold, idiosyncratic lyrics and proud championing of cumbia — a working-class, electronic musical movement popular across Latin America — have propelled them to the top of the Paraguayan pops. They’re living proof that an unapologetic, upbeat and versatile sound will often triumph over refined taste.

With 10 albums, long and short, to their name, the group has come to encompass pop-rock, ska, reggae and cachaca: Paraguay’s homegrown, synthesiser-heavy take on cumbia. In their latest offering, Todo el mundo está kaliente, Kchiporros plant their flag in North American genres, with the album featuring fragments of rap and Mexican norteña music.

6. Los tres sudamericanos

The sound of Christmas in Paraguay — and for me, the most moving interpreters of the classic song Pájaro campana — this folkloric trio was formed by vocalist Alma María Vaesken, her husband Juan “Johnny” Torales, and Casto Darío Martínez.

Few in Paraguay know los tres sudamericanos by name: after failing to make it big back home, they spend most of their careers in Europe, becoming wandering troubadours for a sunny, tropical variety of Latin folkloric pop. “I know Spain better than my own country,” Vaesken told Revista Visión Media in 2017. “I barely know half of Paraguay.”

But their 1969 album “Navidad de Flor de coco” — a nod to the fragrant, furry-sheathed flower cluster that often accompanies household nativity scenes — contains Christmas hits like Navidad del Paraguay, Repican las Campanas and Noche de paz that are a staple of the festive period. And since 2012, they have officially been recognised as Beloved Children of the City of Asunción.

5. Lizza Bogado

María Lizzarela Bogado is a singer and composer of Paraguayan polka, both in its traditional and modern forms. Born in Asunción, and with a career spanning more than forty years, the Centro Cultural del Cabildo officially declared her the voice of Paraguay’s bicentenary celebrations in 2011.

Paraguayan polka — the syncopated beat that makes every Paraguayan’s heart pound faster — is Bogado’s means of connecting with the identity of a people deeply rooted in toil and struggle who have never lost the hope of a better tomorrow. Her voice is that of millions of Paraguayan women, who in the shadow of war, dictatorship and exile have long been the guardians and shapers of our culture.

In the song Un solo canto, Lizza challenges the infamous phrase of writer Augusto Roa Bastos that Paraguay “is the beloved of misfortune.” The same idea — refusing to give in to pessimism, and daring to dream of change — runs through Paraguay mi pasión, Taheñoi Jevy Ñanemba´e (What’s Ours Germinates Once More) — and Crecer y vencer, a track that can be found on her latest EP, Laboratorio del alma, released in 2024.

4. Emiliano R. Fernández

Narrowly missing out on the podium is Fernández (1894-1949), a musician and poet born in rural poverty who served in the Chaco War (1932-1935) and painted that tragic conflict in song. The homesickness, courage, and burning patriotism felt by veterans and their families are his primary colours.

His most stirring and beloved compositions include Ahama che china (Now I depart, my darling); 13 Tuyutí, in honour of his own regiment; Adiós che parahe kue (Farewell, my old home) — and Rojas Silva Rekavo (In Search of Rojas Silva), which describes how Bolivian invaders captured and killed the lieutenant of the same name: triggering the conflict that would leave some 100,000 dead.

In Fernández‘s retelling, Rojas Silva becomes a martyr and Paraguay’s conscript campesino armies his righteous avengers. Every September 17, the country celebrates the Day of Paraguayan Polka: a homage to Fernández and folkloric minstrel Luis Alberto del Paraná, who both died on the same date.

3. Berta Rojas

Perhaps Paraguay’s highest-profile living musician, Berta Rojas (born in Asunción in 1966) is a professor, researcher, and performer of classical guitar music, acclaimed for her interpretations that breathe new life into regional standards as well as her original compositions.

Olivia Balbuena, a guitarist with Paraguayan group Estuario Dúo, praises her deep musical knowledge, human feeling, and commitment to studying and reconstructing half-forgotten sounds. “She seems to widen Latin America’s musical past,” adds Balbuena, a former student of Rojas. “Musically, nobody in Paraguay today has gone further than her.”

This painstaking research into the continent’s musical heritage is evident in Rojas’s latest album, Las huellas de la cuerda (2025), where she accompanies players of various historic stringed instruments from across the region, including the Paraguayan harp. Her 2022 album Legado won a Latin Grammy (for best musical album): making her the first Paraguayan to win said prize.

2. José Asunción Flores

José “Asunción” Flores, was a musician, poet and political activist, born in 1904 in the Chacarita neighbourhood of Asunción — the city whose name he adopted as his own. A member of the Paraguayan Communist Party, he lived in exile from 1944 to his death in Buenos Aires in 1972: the result of persecution by the conservative Colorado Party, which still rules Paraguay to this day.

Flores is best known as the creator of the guarania. Recently recognised as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, this uniquely Paraguayan strain of orchestral music is unashamedly romantic and working-class. As ethnomusicologist Romy Martínez explained in a recent interview with Pausa, the guarania is a lyrical genre whose slow and wistful melodies seem to contradict the invitation to dance offered by its syncopated rhythm.

Flores’s most famous guaranias, set to words by poet Manuel Ortiz Guerrero, are India and Ne Rendape Aju (I’m On My Way to You). But others followed where he led, composing classic guaranias in their own right. These include Demetrio Ortiz with Recuerdos de Ypacaraí and Mis noches sin ti, Luis Alberto Del Paraná with Mi guitarra y mi voz, Félix “Maneco” Galeano’s Soy de la Chacarita and Mauricio Cardozo Ocampos with Galopera and Regalo de Amor.

1. Agustín Pío Barrios “Mangoré”

The lord of the tremolo, Paraguay’s most virtuoso musician, and bedrock of the country’s national musical identity: this list could only be closed out by classical guitarist and composer Agustín Pío Barrios (1885-1944). Though his works carry no lyrics, they paint vivid scenes from Paraguayan rural and urban life: for example, Danza Paraguaya, the three movements of La Catedral, and Julia Florida.

Born to an aristocratic family in San Juan Bautista, a former Jesuit mission settlement in southern Paraguay, he was among the first musicians to record classical guitar music on vinyl. He near single-handedly transformed the shabby six-strings played at rural fiestas into a prestigious instrument suitable for broadcast and concert halls. Some of the finest examples of his work include Madrigal, Contemplación y Mazurka apassionata.

Barrios too had to seek a living abroad, travelling to 20 countries and even reinventing himself as a mysterious Indigenous elder called Nitsuga Mangoré (Agustín backwards, plus the name of a historical native chief). He died poor and was buried in El Salvador, from where Paraguayan politicians periodically promise to bring him home. The last of his 300 works was a tremulous, plaintive piece titled Una limosna por el amor de Dios.

Yet since 2007 Barrios’s name, guitar, likeness, and a few bars of La Catedral have been immortalised on the 50,000-guaraní note. It’s a small gesture of historical reparation to a figure who — like so many others — has defied precarious conditions to proudly bring Paraguay’s rich musical identity to appreciative audiences both at home and around the world.

Who’s missing from the list? What makes Paraguayan music so special? And where are the best places to listen live? Let us know below:

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La cultura paraguaya ha destacado a nivel internacional especialmente por su música. La inmensidad de artistas musicales paraguayos, muchos de ellos referentes, ha abierto caminos para el reconocimiento de lo propio de este suelo y de su cultura. Es más, muchos de los más grandes artistas tuvieron que deleitar a las audiencias extranjeras a falta de reconocimiento local, de oportunidades o por la persecución política.

A nivel local, muchos grandes músicos han puesto los cimientos de los escenarios en el país. Todos, atravesados por el guaraní, segundo idioma oficial y principal lengua indígena de Paraguay, y jopará, la mezcla del guaraní con el castellano.

En este artículo buscamos aproximarnos a una respuesta a las preguntas: ¿Cómo suena nuestro folklore? ¿Existe una “paraguayosidad” o identidad paraguaya en la música? ¿Cómo suena?

10. Vecindad Autopsia

La irreverencia en Paraguay es una causa justa, por eso nadie más podía abrir este top.

Vecindad Autopsia es una banda de punk nacida en el 2002, en Presidente Franco, al sureste del país, ciudad conocida por estar ubicada en la triple frontera con Argentina y Brasil. Originalmente integrada por Alfredo Duarte en voz y guitarra, Augusto Invernizzi en bajo y Jorge Argüello en batería.

Al día de hoy, con más de 20 años de trayectoria, siguen tocando rock y ska y son amados por jóvenes de diferentes décadas por lograr popularizar el punk, especialmente por la mezcla de la misma con la polka y la incorporación del jopará en sus letras. Crearon un subgénero, al cual los músicos y aficionados llamaron polka-punk. Construyendo así, su propia escena musical.

Ejemplares de esta fusión son las canciones Sífilis en do mayor, Ka´u remember (recuerdo de borracho), Paraguarí —homenaje a Juan Cancio Barreto—, María Kandé y Rohejata che morena (te dejo mi morena), versión de una canción del músico de polka paraguaya más popular de este siglo, Quemil Yambay (1938-2026).

9. Tekovete

Miguel “Tekovete” Ávalos es un rapero oriundo de Lambaré, ciudad del Área Metropolitana de Asunción, y actualmente vive en Ypané. Hijo de un padre músico popular, a los 12 años escribió sus primeros temas de rap y, a los 18, publicó Arandú, su primer EP, junto al productor y beatmaker Johnny Cutz. Con su compañera de vida, Noemí Ortega, compone letras que se inspiran en la sonoridad poética de Zenón Bogado Rolon —rima rápida y verso corto—, para narrar historias populares en jopara.

En entrevista para The Paraguay Post, Miguel dijo que utiliza el rap como herramienta de difusión cultural. “Sobre si usar el idioma guaraní es un limitante… Yo sé que un gringo puede escuchar mi música y mover el cuello, porque va a sentir que es rap real”, dijo Miguel, recordando su último viaje a Brasil —junto a la banda Guerrilla Soul, para el Curitiba jazz festival— y que una parte de la audiencia y de la comunidad musical presente comprendía mejor su guaraní que su castellano.

“Para mí el mejor lugar para escribir es sentado bajo la sombra de un árbol, luego de ejercitar la contemplación”, dijo Miguel. De ese momento surgen letras que esconden nostalgia como Evy´akena (alegrate) y Aguyje (gracias); canciones de crítica social que apelan a la conciencia, como Haupeicha (Y así) y Pyra rap (Puro rap); canciones de enojo contra la misma cultura hip hop, como Arriero machetero (trabajador con machete) y canciones de rap de competencia, como Trapo ky´a (trapo sucio).

8. Revolber FX

Integrada originalmente por Patrick Altamirano, Juan Pablo Ramírez, Francisco Vázquez y Juan José Ozuna. La banda nació en 1999 —tras un reciente marzo paraguayo—, en Presidente Franco. Este contexto los dotó de un empuje creativo implacable y de una sed feroz de libertad de expresión, que se expresaron en letras en cuatro idiomas (inglés, español, portugués y guaraní), en la crítica social y en la mezcla de géneros musicales como esencia.

La banda grabó tres álbumes, dos EP, dos documentales —Vivo en Tacumbú y Un revólver en la Chaca— y solo dos videoclips: el tráiler oficial de 7 Cajas —hito del cine nacional— y el de Chica tutuka, canción que habla sobre el consumo de la marihuana. Canciones como El solo, Astronauta Casero, 7 hermanos y un misil, Real peso guaraní y Casa nueva, y otras, siguen siendo piezas clave del cancionero urbano del Paraguay, de este a oeste del país.

Al día de hoy, muchos de sus antiguos integrantes siguen haciendo música en diferentes proyectos, en los cuales se destacan Guerrilla Soul y Altamirano, en su etapa solista.

7. Kchiporros

Kchiporros nace como el juego de un grupo de amigos de la universidad, en Asunción, en el año 2006. Con los años, pasó a liderar la escena mainstream de la industria musical en Paraguay, con letras osadas e inteligentes, cargadas de idiosincrasia y que defienden la cumbia como bandera. La banda musicaliza todo tipo de fiestas y lidera el mainstream paraguayo desde hace un par de décadas.

Está integrada por Roberto “Chirola” Ruiz Díaz, Julio Troche, Fernando Peyrat, Édgar Aquino, Rodrigo “Yuka” Ojeda y Diego “el Perro” Mieres. Kchiporros es muestra de que la calidad no es cuestión de gustos y que el éxito comercial deriva de muchos factores, uno de ellos, la versatilidad.

Con 7 álbumes de larga duración y 3 de corta, la banda también abarcó al pop rock, el ska, el reggae y la cachaca como géneros ocasionales. En su último lanzamiento, Todo el mundo está kaliente, producido por Antonio Hernández “Toy selectah” —de Control Machete y otros grupos—, la banda incorporó guiños de rap y música norteña mexicana.

6. Los tres sudamericanos

Grupo de intérpretes formado en 1959 por Alma María Vaesken (1936-2026), su esposo, Juan “Johnny” Torales (1928) y Casto Darío Martínez (1939-2024). Desde el 2012, son reconocidos como Hijos Dilectos de la Ciudad de Asunción.

En 1969 publicaron un álbum especial titulado “Navidad de Flor de coco”, en homenaje al racimo indispensable que perfuma el Paraguay cada 25 de diciembre. Incluye canciones como Navidad del Paraguay —Navidad de flor de coco—, Repican las Campanas y Noche de paz, que son piezas escuchadas hasta el día de hoy, aunque muchas personas en Paraguay no saben quiénes las cantan.

No es raro que no los conozcan por su nombre. A falta de oportunidades en el país, hicieron casi toda su carrera en el extranjero, principalmente en España y Grecia. “Conozco más España que mi propio país. Paraguay no conozco ni la mitad”, dijo en una entrevista, para la Revista Visión Media, Alma María, vocalista principal del trío.

5. Lizza Bogado

María Lizzarela Bogado (1961), nació en Asunción, capital del país. Es una cantante y compositora de polka paraguaya, tanto de estilo tradicional como moderno. Con una trayectoria musical de más de 40 años. El Centro Cultural del Cabildo define a Lizza como la Voz del Bicentenario Nacional (1811-2011).

La polka paraguaya —el ritmo que hace palpitar el corazón de cualquiera en Paraguay— es el canal por el cual la artista acaricia el sentido de identidad de un pueblo arraigado que no pierde la esperanza en un mejor porvenir. Su voz es también la de millones de mujeres paraguayas, portadoras y artífices de nuestra cultura.

En la canción Un solo canto, Lizza desafía la famosa frase del escritor paraguayo Augusto Roa Bastos, quien dijo “el infortunio se enamoró de Paraguay” y se quedó a vivir aquí. Misma idea que atraviesa las canciones Paraguay mi pasión, Taheñoi Jevy Ñanemba´e (germina de nuevo lo nuestro) y Crecer y vencer. Esta última, ubicada en su último EP, Laboratorio del alma, publicado en 2024.

4. Emiliano R. Fernández

En las orillas del podio no podía faltar Emiliano (1894-1949), el músico y poeta que fue enviado a la Guerra del Chaco, 1932-1935. El 17 de septiembre se conmemora el día de la polka paraguaya, en homenaje a Emiliano R. Fernández y Luis Alberto del Paraná, quienes fallecieron en la misma fecha, aunque en años distintos.

Sus letras retratan el sentimiento del pueblo paraguayo en aquel trágico momento de nuestra historia, en especial, de los soldados y los familiares de los mismos. La nostalgia, esperanza y patriotismo fueron los colores con los que pintó aquellos retratos que conservamos en nuestra historia.

Las más emblemáticas y de escucha obligatoria para conocer a este artista son: Ahama che china (ya me voy, mi reina); 13 Tuyutí (tierra blanca), en honor al regimiento con el que combatió; Adiós che parahe kue (Adios mi antiguo lugar), sobre la añoranza del hogar durante las campañas de combate y Rojas Silva Rekavo (en búsqueda de Rojas Silva), una de las canciones de arengas patrióticas más importantes del momento, en donde se hace mención a la supuesto casus belli.

3. Berta Rojas

Nacida en Asunción, Berta Rojas (1966) es una docente, investigadora y guitarrista de música clásica. Aclamada por la audiencia mundial por su forma de interpretar la guitarra.

“Berta tiene todo el cuerpo musical necesario para la interpretación, especialmente, el conocimiento y la humanidad. En lo musical, (actualmente) nadie en Paraguay llegó más lejos que Berta Rojas”, dijo Olivia Balbuena, guitarrista de Estuario Dúo y exalumna de Berta, en entrevista a The Paraguay Post.

Para Olivia, Berta Rojas “parece ampliar el pasado musical de Latinoamérica”, ya que su obra no es solo de interpretación, sino también de investigación y estudio. Muestra de esto es su último lanzamiento, Las huellas de la cuerda, donde la guitarra de Berta acompaña a diversos instrumentos autóctonos del continente americano, incluido el arpa paraguaya.

De su trayectoria profesional, cabe resaltar que el álbum Legado (2022) fue galardonado con un Latin Grammy como el mejor álbum de música clásica del año. Coronándose así como la primera persona de Paraguay en recibir este galardón.

2. José Asunción Flores

La guarania es el sonido del alma paraguaya, un Patrimonio Cultural Inmaterial de la Humanidad, la herencia sonora del idioma guaraní. Es música de orquesta con ritmo sincopado creada en Paraguay. Y también es música romántica y popular.

Parafraseando a la etnomusicóloga Romy Martínez, en entrevistas realizadas por la revista Pausa, la guarania es un género lírico que contradice a la danza e invita a una contemplación profunda pero serena.

Su creador, José “Asunción” Flores (1904-1972), fue un músico, poeta y figura pública de la política, nacido en el barrio Chacarita de Asunción, ciudad a la cual adoptó el nombre. Su vida fue marcada por la persecución política y el exilio, desde 1944 hasta su fallecimiento en Buenos Aires, por su militancia en el Partido Comunista Paraguayo.

Sin lugar a dudas, las canciones más representativas de este género musical y lírico son India y Ne Rendape Aju (voy hacia ti) de Asunción Flores y del poeta Manuel Ortiz Guerrero.

Diversos artistas compusieron canciones de guarania que dejaron huellas en la cultura paraguaya: Demetrio Ortiz con Recuerdos de Ypacaraí y Mis noches sin ti, Luis Alberto “Del Paraná” –el que llevó la guarania por el mundo– con Mi guitarra y mi voz, Félix “Maneco” Galeano con Soy de la Chacarita y Mauricio Cardozo Ocampos con Galopera y Regalo de Amor.

1. Agustín Pío Barrios “Mangoré”

Agustín Pío Barrios “Nitsuga Mangoré” (1885-1944) fue el compositor que mejor retrató los paisajes de Paraguay entre los acordes de una guitarra. Basta con escuchar canciones como Danza Paraguaya, La Catedral —tres movimientos— y Julia Florida, para darse cuenta de que existe en su obra una paraguayidad única.

Gracias al historiador Carlos Saucedo Centurión, sabemos que Mangoré nació en el seno de una familia aristocrática, asentada en San Juan Bautista, Misiones —una ciudad muy religiosa al Sur del País—, en un contexto de posguerra contra la Triple Alianza de Argentina, Uruguay y Brasil. Fue pionero en grabar guitarra clásica en vinilos. Hablar de él es hablar de la historia de la música universal y de la evolución de la guitarra como instrumento de prestigio, tal como lo conocemos hoy día.

Nuestro músico viajó por 20 países, compuso más de 300 canciones y dejó un legado musical imborrable, antes de su fallecimiento en San Salvador, El Salvador, donde yace su tumba, catalogada como patrimonio de esa nación. Su última obra fue el trémulo titulado Una limosna por el amor de Dios.

Algunas obras de escucha obligatoria son: Madrigal, Contemplación y Mazurka apassionata.

A modo de reparación histórica —puesto que su talento tuvo mayor reconocimiento fuera del Paraguay—, desde el 2007, su rostro, su nombre y las melodías de La Catedral, junto a la guitarra, instrumento al que dedicó su vida, son una imagen inmortalizada en la moneda local, en el billete de PYG. 50.000.

A la música de Paraguay tan solo le basta el viento —a falta de salida al mar— para llegar hasta los tímpanos más exigentes en cualquier lugar del mundo, tal como lo demostraron los maestros Mangoré, Flores y muchos otros. El sonido de nuestra música, fruto de nuestra diversidad cultural, es el que mejor ha reflejado nuestra identidad.

¿A quién le falta en la lista? ¿Qué hace tan especial a la música paraguaya? ¿Y cuáles son los mejores lugares para escucharla en vivo? Cuéntenos en los comentarios:

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TOP STORY

Union opposition puts massive fertiliser plant on the skids

By Laurence Blair

It’s slated to be one of the largest private investment projects in Paraguay’s history.

In late 2021, British company Atome announced plans to build a fertiliser plant worth half a billion dollars near Villeta, some 60km south of the capital, Asunción.

The riverside factory will use Paraguay’s cheap, plentiful hydroelectricity – most of it produced by the massive Itaipú dam – to split hydrogen from water via electrolysis.

Early talk of this clean-burning gas being deployed to decarbonise Paraguay’s diesel-dependent trucks and buses has since fallen by the wayside.

But the facility will still combine said hydrogen with nitrogen to produce 260,000 tonnes of low-carbon fertiliser per year.

This product will reportedly be 20% cheaper than the usual fossil-fuel based ammonium nitrate produced by places rich in natural gas like Russia – and the Persian Gulf, where the war with Iran has bottled up a third of global fertiliser supplies.

“It’s not a green story,” Atome CEO Olivier Mussat recently told the Financial Times. “It’s actually a food security story.”

Meanwhile, the company has promised to create over 5,000 direct and indirect jobs: music to the ears of president Santiago Peña, who has made a top priority of boosting formal employment and diversifying the economy beyond crops and cows.

Since 2022, Atome has held a contract with Paraguay’s state electricity firm ANDE for a variable tariff of roughly $33/MWh. But the company has reportedly lobbied for a sweeter deal – a rate of $30/MWh, frozen for 15 years – citing the need for predictability.

Peña played ball. In January, he issued Decrees 5306 and 5307, which create a cheaper tariff category for “convergent industries” like green hydrogen, AI and crypto-mining.

After years of struggling to scrape together enough capital, in April Atome finalised a $665m package anchored by equity from investment management firm Hy24 ($115m) and $420m in debt financing from the likes of IDB Invest and the Green Climate Fund.

Mussat hailed the deal as a breakthrough, saying Atome’s “bankable industrial platform” would “revolutionise the global agricultural sector.”

But this arrangement blew up last week, after Peña abruptly annulled his energy-related executive orders. The 2022 deal with Atome was still intact, his ministers indicated, but the price freeze was off the table.

In a briefing to investors seen by the Post, Atome chairman Peter Levine said the company was “perplexed by this unforeseen development” and that only “urgent” talks with the Peña administration could prevent the project falling through and Paraguay’s investment and growth climate being seriously damaged.

The pin that punctured Paraguay’s hydrogen bubble? ANDE, or rather its union Sitrande.

Union members had threatened walkouts and a constitutional challenge to the decrees, arguing the real cost of powering a project like Atome is $44/MWh – and that selling below that means a $1bn shortfall for the cash-strapped public utility, a loss that will eventually be passed on to consumers.

Sitrande general secretary Adolfo Villalba accused government officials of being traitorous “sellouts” for offering the British energy company a “privileged contract.”

ANDE’s diminutive president, Félix Sosa, was caught in the middle. In a press conference, he denied being pressured by the Peña administration to wave through an overly generous deal for Atome, and suggested that “creative ideas” could be found to keep the project alive.

THE POST TAKE

Whether or not you’re wowed by Atome’s promises of cheap, green fertiliser for the world, all the flip-flopping is not a good look for Paraguay.

Large-scale, long-term investments like this are seriously complex to pull off. They have to factor in unstable global markets, commodity prices, geopolitics, fluctuating exchange rates and climatic conditions, and the quirks of Paraguay’s business environment (until the start of this year, for example, the country had three separate land registries).

Those calculations aren’t made any simpler if energy prices can be slashed or hiked overnight by a president’s pen or pressure from disgruntled union bosses.

Part of the problem is Peña’s penchant to micro-manage, court investors in person, and govern by decree, bypassing institutional channels. He is also known to conduct government business and coordinate press engagements via his personal WhatsApp.

But it’s also true that making further carveouts for a firm which already enjoys market-beating terms – Paraguay’s cheap land, affordable labour, and open-ended tax breaks under an FTZ concession granted in 2023 – has the whiff of subservience, even desperation.

Atome proudly says its model proves “the green transition doesn’t need subsidies to be profitable.” But as one friend of the Post put it: if your business model depends on securing publicly-owned energy at bargain-basement rates, maybe it’s not that much of a business.

The scandal has seen the press and pro-government commentators heap outrage on Sitrande: an unusually muscular union in a country where organised labour is far weaker than in neighbours Brazil and Argentina.

Some, including those who would love to see ANDE privatised, have accused the union of holding Paraguay’s development hostage to defend its own privileges.

Atome executive director James Spalding, the former director of the Paraguayan half of Itaipú under president Horacio Cartes (2013-18), has scorned the union’s public defence of “our energy”.

“It turns out they were talking about their energy,” Spalding retorted. “It belongs to them, and they’ll decide who to sell it to, for how long, and for how much.”

Seen in a more sympathetic light, Sitrande is sticking up for transparency, due process, and one of Paraguay’s few strategic assets – its huge hydroelectric surplus.

The question of how to turn all that energy into lasting development is one that has vexed Paraguay for decades.

And it’s becoming more urgent as Brazilian factory owners flock to Paraguay, massive data centre projects backed by Taiwan and the US wait in the wings, and the country’s spare electricity is forecast to run out by 2030.

The old adage doesn’t just apply to money. In Paraguay, power – who has the right to it, under what terms, and for what purposes – is also power.

You’re reading The Weekly Post, your essential briefing on Paraguay.

Also in this issue:

Consumer confidence plunges · A second pulp giant? · Taiwan plans data centre in Paraguay · Public funds allegedly used for attack ads · Commando heist in Santa Rita · Manzoni threatened for environmental reporting · World Bank backs growth outlook

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Al terminar sus estudios secundarios, viajó a São Paulo, centro financiero e industrial de Brasil que alberga cerca de 22 millones de personas, para trabajar en un taller de costura con el sueño de volver a Paraguay y estudiar ingeniería agronómica. Pero no imaginó que tendría que trabajar 14 horas diarias y se quedaría 17 años allá.

Evaristo Romero Troche es un hombre alto y de sonrisa fácil. Tiene el cabello corto y enrulado, con vastas entradas que delatan sus 42 años. Está sentado tomando tereré en una “silla cable” azul y viste una remera del Club Flamengo de Brasil. Entre las dos cejas, tiene una cicatriz en forma de X. Dice que, intentando bajar un machete que estaba en la viga del techo de paja de la casa original de su familia, se le cayó en la frente; tenía 5 años y solo quería tomar “takuare´e” —caña dulce—.

Evaristo lo cuenta en una amalgama de jopará —mezcla de guaraní y castellano hablada en Paraguay— sumado al portugués paulista, que pone en evidencia sus años en Brasil. En el barrio Costa Rosada, en las afueras de Caaguazú, una ciudad con 98 mil habitantes en el interior de Paraguay, Evaristo vive con su esposa, su hija y su mamá.

Recuerda que, los primeros cuatro años en Brasil, trabajó en los talleres de costura de peruanos, bolivianos y paraguayos. Nunca para los brasileños. Con el tiempo, compró algunas máquinas y abrió para su local. Había progresado y detrás de él se mudaron su pareja e hija, dos hermanos y una tía.

De esos inicios trabajando para otros, Evaristo conoció del negocio y vivió en carne propia las condiciones de trabajo en las oficinas de costura —como se dice en portugués—. Los empresarios alquilan casas donde los extranjeros viven y trabajan. Las habitaciones se dividen con terciadas o telas para que funcionen como piecitas colectivas. “En un lugar donde trabajaba, había un casal —una pareja— que tenía un beliche —litera—. Usaban la parte de arriba para colgar un cobertor o una sábana para cubrirse y encerrarse en la cama de abajo”, dice Evaristo.

Las jornadas laborales son extensas, de 7 de la mañana a 9 de la noche. Incluyen desayuno, almuerzo y merienda. “Solo mediodía del sábado y domingo lo que gastás”, explicó. Era “todo libre”.

Sin embargo, estas supuestas facilidades ocultan el nulo cumplimiento de derechos laborales. Los talleres textiles operan de forma ilegal, no exigen documentación y pagan en efectivo. Dependiendo del acuerdo de palabra, un trabajador puede cobrar por día, mes o producción. Evaristo, que es muy hábil, trabajaba por producción porque así ganaba más dinero. Junto a tres compañeros, llegó a sacar 1.000 reales en un día. De lo que ganaba, cada semana enviaba una parte a su mamá en Paraguay para que construyera su casa de material.

A pesar de las ventajas económicas alcanzadas por las altas cargas horarias de trabajo, las oficinas también ocultan otras irregularidades. De acuerdo con una investigación de Reporter Brasil de 2024, 192 paraguayos fueron rescatados de trabajos análogos a la esclavitud en Brasil entre 2010 y 2023. El 12 % de ellos trabajan en oficinas de costura, 33 % en fábricas ilegales de cigarrillos y 51 % en el sector agroganadero.

El reporte también reveló que fiscalizaciones estatales encontraron a madres amamantando a sus hijos mientras trabajaban en las máquinas de coser; sin ninguna posibilidad de tener permiso por maternidad. Además, por cumplir con tareas de cocina y limpieza, las mujeres sufrían descuentos en sus salarios por no alcanzar la productividad requerida por los patrones.

Evaristo vio todo esto y más: Niños paraguayos de 10 y 12 años que dejan sus estudios y viajan con sus familias para trabajar cosiendo ropa en las oficinas.

Viajar a Brasil para trabajar en un taller de costura es muy sencillo. En Facebook, si se busca “costurero paraguay são paulo”, saltan cientos de publicaciones que prometen trabajos en la industria textil en el eje financiero de Brasil. Durante la recolección de datos para este artículo, escribimos a uno de los números de WhatsApp que figura en un anuncio y logramos contactar con la dueña de una oficina. Nos prometió trabajo seguro; sin embargo, aconsejó que viajemos entre varios para alquilar una casa. En este caso, el esquema es diferente, la empresa no pone residencia ni alimentación. Tampoco seguridad social ni contratos formales.

Pero no todo es explotación y sufrimiento. En medio de la ciudad más grande de Sudamérica, los paraguayos se reúnen en comunidad los fines de semana para hacer asado y jugar al fútbol. Esa unidad se vio reflejada en 2014, año en el que Paraguay no clasificó a la Copa del Mundo de Fútbol que se jugaría en Brasil. Evaristo y sus compañeros de oficina vistieron la casaca albirroja y conformaron la selección paraguaya que compitió en la Copa de los Refugiados, un torneo paralelo que congregó a selecciones de varios países, como Siria, Haití y Congo.

A diciembre de 2025, datos oficiales registran 56.648 paraguayos residentes en Brasil, de acuerdo con datos del Ministerio de Justicia y Seguridad Pública reportados por el periodista Pedro Prata de Estadão Verifica. De alguna manera, en la Copa de los Refugiados, los costureros representaron a todos esos paraguayos que viven en la tierra de Pelé.

Evaristo trabajó mucho. Quizás demasiado. Pero su objetivo era claro: progresar para dar un mejor futuro para su familia. “Che ndaipotái la che ahasa´akue ha´e ohasá” —no quiero que ella pase por lo que yo pasé—, dijo en guaraní refiriéndose a su hija que está estudiando enfermería en una universidad privada de Caaguazú. Lo dijo sin arrepentimiento; está agradecido por todo lo vivido en Brasil. Ahora anhela que en Paraguay existan más oportunidades de trabajo y salarios dignos para las familias.

Bajo la sombra de un árbol frente a la casa de su mamá, Evaristo recuerda que antes jugaba todas las tardes en la canchita de su barrio. “No hay más gente para jugar piki por acá ahora. Solo al final de año hay bastante, más ahora ya no. Todo el mundo se fue a trabajar a Brasil, Argentina, España, Chile y Uruguay”.

Al otro lado de la calle de tierra que pasa frente a la casa de su mamá, la casita de madera del vecino de enfrente está trancada con candado. Ellos también migraron para trabajar.

Este perfil forma parte de ¿Bienvenidos al paraíso?, una crónica de migración a y desde Paraguay realizada por The Paraguay Post:

“Ojalá que este presidente de aquí y ahorita esta presidenta (Delcy) Rodríguez puedan abrir la embajada en Paraguay. Porque hay muchísimas mujeres aquí que tienen sus hijos en Venezuela y querían traer este año y no pueden ahora por esta situación”, dice Yexis Guzmán, venezolana refugiada en Paraguay hace más de 5 años.

A principios de enero de 2026, luego del ataque de Estados Unidos a Venezuela y el secuestro de Nicolás Maduro, el gobierno paraguayo, alineado con la doctrina “Donroe”, aumentó los controles migratorios a venezolanos a través de un decreto. Venezolanos sin visa no pueden ingresar más al país por una cuestión de “seguridad” contra simpatizantes del régimen madurista.

Yexis, que llegó a Paraguay en búsqueda de una mejor vida para su familia, no está de acuerdo con la decisión del presidente Santiago Peña. Ella forma parte de los 3 mil venezolanos viven en Paraguay, según la Dirección Nacional de Migraciones.

Hace 10 años tuvo que dejar Venezuela y comenzó a migrar. Vivió en Colombia, Ecuador, Perú y, finalmente, Paraguay. En cada país trabajó en cocina. En Perú estuvo más de tres años, pero no aguantó la discriminación, la xenofobia, el machismo y la misoginia. Entonces decidió mudarse a Paraguay.

“El viaje para mí fue fatal”, dice Yexis. Salió de Perú en ómnibus el 18 de noviembre de 2020 con cuatro maletas en brazo, en la lancha de contrabandistas, cruzó el Lago Titicaca, frontera entre Perú y Bolivia, y llegó caminando al límite entre Bolivia y Paraguay el 10 de diciembre. En la frontera, oficiales de la Aduana boliviana le dijeron que no podía cruzar sin prueba de Covid. Llevaba días sin comer y le ardían la planta de sus pies. Pero la bondad se encuentra en todas partes, funcionarios de Migraciones la acogieron, le dieron una pieza y le prestaron una cocina. Yexis comenzó a cocinar para funcionarios y camioneros; así juntó el dinero para su test de COVID.

Con el aventón de una familia en vehículo, atravesó el Chaco paraguayo y llegó el 21 de diciembre de 2020 a la ciudad de San Lorenzo, Paraguay, donde un hermano suyo, que se había mudado antes, la esperaba. Al día siguiente, volvió a cocinar y salió a vender hallacas, una comida típica venezolana para las navidades. Juntó un poco de dinero y mandó a sus hijos en Venezuela para la cena de Navidad.

De 2018 a 2025, se estima que casi 7 millones de venezolanos han dejado el país, de acuerdo con la Plataforma de Coordinación Interagencial para Refugiados y Migrantes de Venezuela. Como la cifra se basa en datos oficiales, es probable que el número sea mucho mayor y ronde los 8 a 9 millones de exiliados.

Yexis tiene unos 40 años, las manos y boca pequeña, y los cabellos en largas trenzas africanas. Nunca titubea. Hoy, vive en la ciudad de Capiatá, en los alrededores de Asunción, capital de Paraguay. Las paredes de la casita son blancas, el piso es de ladrillo común y enfrente hay un antiguo pozo y un pesebre. En el patio, bajo la sombra fresca de los dos enormes árboles de mango, funciona Gastronomía Porteña, su restaurante de comidas típicas de los puertos venezolanos.

“Mira, agradecida con mi abuela que me enseñó a cocinar y con mis tías que me enseñaron muchos platillos”.

Aunque la cocina ha sido lo que le permitió sobrevivir en todos los países donde vivió, la verdadera profesión de Yexis es la herrería. En Venezuela trabajó 17 años en la estatal Diques y Astilleros Nacionales de Venezuela (Dianca). “Así se llama mi astillero y ese es mi astillero”.

En Venezuela, vivía con su familia en El Palito, un pueblito costero de Puerto Cabello donde las playas tienen arena blanca y el mar es azul, tranquilo, con aguas tibias. Allá en El Palito, la base de la comida era el pescado y los frutos de mar.

Hace unos cuatro años, juntó el dinero suficiente para enviarlo a su hijo Kevin para que viajara. Él tenía solo 16 años y cruzó solito Latinoamérica en ómnibus hasta Paraguay. Juntos abrieron el restaurante Gastronomía Porteña, Yexis se encarga de los platillos y Kevin hace atención al cliente y gestión de redes sociales.

Kevin es joven y tiene mucha energía. Es boxeador aficionado, crea contenido humorístico en Instagram y TikTok, y quiere tener un podcast en stream sobre liderazgo y superación. En su brazo derecho, tiene un tatuaje con las playas de Venezuela. Para él y su mamá, Gastronomía porteña es un lugar de encuentro, no solo para venezolanos, sino para migrantes de distintos países: Colombia, Argentina, Cuba y Ecuador.

Paraguay es un país sin litoral y su culinaria está basada en la carne vacuna y de pollo. Pero en los inicios del restaurante, Yexis se encontró con el poder que tiene la cocina para aquellos que extrañan volver a su tierra. Un fin de semana, preparó una torta de Jojoto, un postre de maíz típico de Venezuela, y le invitó a un cliente que había ido a pasar la tarde.

“Le di un pedazo al señor para que degustara. Y me dice llorando: “Mire, mi abuela murió hace más de 25 años y este sabor me hizo recordar toda mi niñez en Venezuela. Yo tenía más de 25 años que no he probado esta torta de Jojota””.

Aunque ahora la vida está más encaminada, cuando Yexis recién llegó a Paraguay, tuvo una experiencia difícil. En 2021, consiguió un trabajo como encargada de cocina en el Hotel Aspen de Asunción. Pero renunció al tercer mes de trabajo. “Fue lo peor, por el trato, el abuso, la explotación. Retuvieron mis documentos y me quedé sin ellos”.

Trabajaba de 6 de la mañana a 11 de la noche, dormía en una piecita detrás de la recepción y el dueño retenía los celulares de ella y sus compañeras para que no se comuniquen. Cuando renunció, le amenazaron con una demanda. Hasta ahora no le devolvieron sus documentos venezolanos originales. The Paraguay Post intentó contactar al Hotel Aspen vía correo electrónico, WhatsApp y llamadas, pero al cierre de esta publicación no obtuvo respuestas.

Todo esto llevó a que fundara la Feria de Venezolanos Qué Chevere, una asociación que asesora a venezolanos con sus documentaciones y organiza ferias gastronómicas y de artesanía en las plazas de Asunción.

Son como las 8 de la noche y han pasado unas 4 horas de entrevista. Antes de terminar, Yexis cuenta que su familia también sufrió las injusticias del régimen madurista tras las cuestionadas elecciones de 2024. Un familiar suyo fue encarcelado y torturado por publicar un meme sobre Maduro. En enero de este año, luego del bombardeo de Estados Unidos, su familiar fue liberado junto a otros presos políticos.

A pesar de tener una vida hecha en Paraguay, Yexis ve con esperanzas lo sucedido y quiere volver a Venezuela. “Me hace falta mi casa”.

Este perfil forma parte de ¿Bienvenidos al paraíso?, una crónica de migración a y desde Paraguay realizada por The Paraguay Post: