Our Top 10 Stories in 2025
And a holiday message for our valued subscriber community.
As 2025 comes to a close, here at The Paraguay Post we’ve been reflecting on the welter of award-winning reporting filed by our collaborators across the capital and countryside during our first full calendar year.
We journeyed through the undergrowth following the route of Paraguay’s disused (and future?) railway. We sat down with Paraguay’s possible president-in-waiting Miguel Prieto. We broke the news in English about the clash between a Canadian-owned bitcoin mine and sleep-deprived locals.
We talked our way past military checkpoints, and witnessed Indigenous children working in clandestine weed plantations. We rode shotgun with a vigilante collective of female Uber drivers dealing rough justice to perpetrators of sexual violence. We covered the struggle for land in rural Paraguay.
And we delivered no-nonsense, in-depth analysis – on how Paraguay could seek an advantage from Trump’s trade war, the rise and rise of Ueno Bank, emerging industries, Paraguay’s imminent energy crisis, and how Paraguayans rate their democracy – through our Insider Insight and The Weekly Post verticals, making our paid subscribers the smartest people in the room on Paraguay.
Meanwhile, a select few took their subscription to the next level with Paraguay Post Professional, receiving quarterly one-on-one consultations – over the phone and in-person – to talk relocation to Paraguay, life in Asunción and beyond, political and social risk, infrastructure projects and more.
In between all that, we convened panels of experts on criminal justice, top musicians, former prisoners, Indigenous and community leaders, and all-star journalists to talk about the pressing issues facing Paraguay, and took questions and comments from our switched-on audience of Post readers.
But doing all this costs money: from paying our reporters, editors, and photographers a decent wage, to hiring spaces and paying for printing, to covering fuel when we’re in the field. And only a fraction of our readers have become paid subscribers.
Unlike other outlets, we’re truly independent because we don’t rely on advertisers, donations from foundations, or alliances with governments. But the Post will only have a shot at becoming sustainable if more people like you chip in.
So consider this your festive invitation to support real research and writing on Paraguay. In return, you’ll get exclusive discounts at top spots across Asunción, access to everything we publish, and invitations to events: all for the price of a coffee per month. You can also buy a gift subscription for your friend, colleague or loved one.
On a personal note, this year also marked a decade since I first arrived in Paraguay. After years covering the place for the foreign press, it’s been a privilege to serve a local audience, in Spanish as well as English, in the country I call home.
Here are some of our favourite stories from 2025 for you to read at leisure over your mince pies or pan dulce. See you on the other side, and thanks for being part of the Paraguay Post community.
We loved this dispatch from Rut and Romina from one of the country’s holiest festivals, a solemnly moving spectacle of candlelight, orange peel, and vegetable gourds in the heart of former Jesuit mission country that’s quintessentially Paraguay.
I teamed up with photographers Sandino and Elisa to journey on foot along the old train line. We dodged fallen bridges and dozing drunks, interviewed the boss of Paraguay’s railway company (with zero functioning trains), and met with nostalgics for the golden age of the locomotive.
We’re not adverse to a listicle at the Post – especially when it’s written with as much verve as this primer on Paraguayan cinema by Regi. I’ll confess to only having seen a few. Stay tuned for more top 10s of Paraguayan music and literature soon.
Another transport story: this one from top reporter Pilar, who rode for hours with Asuncion’s app-based drivers to produce this investigation into precarity, the gig economy, and vigilante justice, which ended up being one of our most-read pieces of the year.
I took a trip over to Ciudad del Este to interview mayor Miguel Prieto just after he was suspended by a corruption probe – something he described as a “political persecution.” The story doubles as a profile of Paraguay’s second city, fast shaking off its seedy reputation to become an economic powerhouse.
Speaking of corruption, some of the details in Micaela’s write-up of the slow-burning scandal rocking Paraguay’s judiciary will leave you speechless. Thousands of people, many of them teachers, have been cheated of their salaries by shady loan sharks: and far from investigating, judges are complicit.
From white-collar crime to grey-hat hackers: I wrote about how upstart fintech firm Ueno has moved past a serious data breach to rapidly become Paraguay’s dominant banking institution – and the conflict-of-interest scandals embroiling the Peña administration that have followed.
Our reporter Juli and photographer Cesia went inside the notorious Buen Pastor women’s prison, meeting some of the dozens of mothers and their children behind bars in Paraguay. They also blew the whistle on militarised, El Salvador-style conditions in the new COMPLE facility in Emboscada.
Isa embedded in a craft brewery for an all-night rave in order to bring us this stylish pen portrait of a new collective of women DJs, and the capital’s emerging nightlife scene. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.
We travelled to the Mbaracayú forest to investigate the intersection of narcotrafficking, corruption, poverty and conservation. The resulting feature won a National Environmental Journalism Prize. I was proud of our video and photography packages put together by Mateo, Giuli and Isa, and how we could bring Aché leader Margarita to share first-hand testimony at our panel debate in Asunción.
What was your favourite Paraguay Post story this year? What should we report on in 2026? Let us know in the comments, or by hitting reply. Happy holidays!