Paraguay (/ˈpærəɡwaɪ/; Spanish pronunciation:[paɾaˈɣwaj]ⓘ), officially the Republic of Paraguay (Spanish: República del Paraguay; Guarani: Paraguái Tavakuairetã), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. It has a population of around 6.1 million, nearly 2.3 million of whom live in the capital and largest city of Asunción, and its surrounding metro area.
Spanish conquistadores arrived in 1524, and in 1537 established the city of Asunción, the first capital of the Governorate of the Río de la Plata. During the 17th century, Paraguay was the center of Jesuit missions, where the native Guaraní people were converted to Christianity and introduced to European culture. After the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spanish territories in 1767, Paraguay increasingly became a peripheral colony. Following independence from Spain in the early 19th century, Paraguay was ruled by a series of authoritarian governments. This period ended with the disastrous Paraguayan War (1864–1870), during which the country lost half its prewar population and around 25–33% of its territory. In the 20th century, Paraguay faced another major international conflict—the Chaco War (1932–1935) against Bolivia—in which Paraguay prevailed. The country came under a succession of military dictators, culminating in the 35-year regime of Alfredo Stroessner, which lasted until his overthrow in 1989 by an internal military coup. This marked the beginning of Paraguay's current democratic era.
Although one of only two landlocked countries in South America (Bolivia is the other), Paraguay has ports on the Paraguay and Paraná rivers that give exit to the Atlantic Ocean, through the Paraná-Paraguay Waterway. The majority of Paraguay's 6 million people are mestizo, and Guarani culture remains widely influential; more than 90% of the population speak various dialects of the Guarani language alongside Spanish. Paraguay's GDP per capita PPP is the seventh-highest in South America. In a 2017 Positive Experience Index based on global polling data, Paraguay ranked as the "world's happiest place". (Full article...)
The history of Paraguay encompasses thousands of years of human habitation. Both agricultural and nomadic Guaycuruan lived in the region at the time of the Spanish Conquest. It became a relatively neglected part of the Spanish Empire due to its isolation and lack of mineral wealth, nonetheless a small group of Spanish settlers came to reside in the area, increasingly intermarrying with native women to produce a mestizo population. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Jesuit missionaries organized the natives into planned communities known as reducciones, and the experiment gained notable attention in Enlightenment Era Europe.
In the early nineteenth century, Paraguay participated in the uprisings across the Spanish Empire against Spanish rule, and newly independent Paraguay came under the domination of Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, who in his absolute rule almost entirely cut off the new nation from the world. After Dr. Francia's death in 1840, Paraguay eventually came under the rule of Francisco Solano Lopez in 1862, who proceeded to embroil the nation in wars against Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay which culminated in a Paraguayan defeat with massive population and territorial losses. (Full article...)
Image 35Paraguay after the war with main battle sites (in yellow). Gran Chaco not included as it was still a disputed territory. (from History of Paraguay)
