Longstanding plague of child abuse and extreme abortion laws fuel crisis, report says
An average of two girls between 10 and 14 give birth every day in Paraguay, thanks to a toxic combination of widespread child abuse and draconian abortion laws, according to a new Amnesty International report.
Paraguay has one of the highest rates of child and teen pregnancy in Latin America, a region that, as a whole, has the second-highest rates in the world.
Continue reading...Police in riot gear tore down a community’s homes and ripped up crops, highlighting the country’s highly unequal land ownership
Armed police with water cannons and a low-flying helicopter have faced off against indigenous villagers brandishing sticks and bows in the latest clash over land rights in Paraguay, a country with one of the highest inequalities of land ownership in the world.
Videos of Thursday’s confrontation showed officers in riot armour jostling members of the Hugua Po’i community – including children and elderly people – out of their homes and into torrential rain.
Continue reading...Severe drought that began in late 2019 continues to punish the region while experts say climate change and deforestation may be intensifying the phenomenon
In the shadow of towering grain silos that line the bank of the River Paraná, South America’s second-longest waterway, Lucas Krivenchuk stands watching workers rush to load a barge with soybeans.
“Twelve barges had to leave today, but only six will make it out: there’s no time, the water’s dropping too fast,” said Krivenchuk, general manager of the Trociuk private port in southern Paraguay. “It’s the first time that any have left in two months.”
Continue reading...A resurgence in the traditional drink is offering rural communities independence and a sustainable alternative to industrial soy and cattle farming
Four men emerge from the intense heat and steam of the barbacuá into the cold winter’s night in the rural district of Edelira, southern Paraguay. They rest, leaning on pitchforks they have used to turn over the prized load of fragrant yerba mate leaves inside this traditional drying oven. The centuries-old design drives hot air from a fire on to the large wooden frame where the leaves sit.
“I control the leaf’s humidity through intuition,” says Lisandro Benítez, the group’s lead, or uru. “Too humid and it won’t have the right flavour, too hot and dry and it could catch fire.”
Continue reading...Strained and underfunded health systems, economics and misinformation have all led to a surge in deaths
The cold, tired and desperate relatives camped outside the Barrio Obrero general hospital in Asunción don’t need charts or datasets to confirm what they can see with their own eyes.
As Paraguay records the world’s highest daily proportion of Covid deaths, the huddled families wait for news of their loved ones – and for the sudden requests for medicine and supplies that the country’s chronically underfunded health system cannot provide.
Continue reading...Four months after seven men entered a container in Serbia, their remains were discovered in Paraguay, underscoring the risks taken by migrants trying to reach the EU
When seven North African men climbed into a shipping container in a railway yard in the Serbian town of Šid this July, they hoped that they would emerge a few days later in Milan.
Related: Paraguay authorities find at least seven bodies in fertilizer shipment
Continue reading...Bodies, which public prosecutor said appeared to be stowaways, discovered when container opened on Friday
Authorities in Paraguay have found at least seven badly decomposed bodies inside a shipment of fertilizer that left Serbia three months ago.
The container, which came via Argentina, was unloaded earlier this week at a port on the outskirts of the Paraguayan capital, Asunción, and was collected by an agricultural company.
Continue reading...Wildfires, mostly caused by land clearing for cattle grazing and soya production, have set four nations ablaze
Primatologist Martin Kowalewski is measuring the scale of the fires raging across Latin America not in satellite images, but in the number of caraya monkeys (black-and-gold howlers) that have succumbed to the flames.
“Of the 20 family groups that we used to trace in the wild, each group consisting of seven or eight monkeys, at least five groups were burned alive,” he tells the Guardian. Other animals have also perished at San Cayetano, a nature reserve in Argentina’s northeastern province of Corrientes. “Carpinchos (giant South American rodents), otters, two species of fox, guazú deer, yacaré caimans, turtles, snakes. Birds are better at escaping the fire, but that was before all the deforestation. Now they have nowhere to go because there is nowhere else. The forest is so fragmented that they have nowhere to nest.”
Continue reading...Country faces more than 5,000 fires, with yellow smoke reaching the capital as neighbouring Brazil and Argentina face blazes
Devastating wildfires have broken out across across Paraguay, as drought and record high temperatures continue to exacerbate blazes across South America.
A total of 5,231 individual wildfires broke out across the country on 1 October – up 3,000 on the previous day. Most of were concentrated in the arid Chaco region in the west of the country, but thick yellow smoke had reached as far as the capital, Asunción.
Continue reading...Óscar Denis was taken by Paraguayan People’s Army days after military killed two 11-year-old girls in unclear circumstances
Violence has intensified in Paraguay in the conflict between security forces and the Paraguayan People’s Army (EPP) – a communist guerrilla movement active in the country’s north-east.
A former vice-president was kidnapped by rebels days after the military killed two 11-year-old girls in unclear circumstances during an operation against the EPP, which human rights organisations described as a possible “state crime”.
Continue reading...The Paraguayan Guaraní language is a rare regional success story. But its own popularity is a problem for smaller languages
On a hillside monument in Asunción, a statue of the mythologized indigenous chief Lambaré stands alongside other great leaders from Paraguayan history.
The other historical heroes on display are of mixed ancestry, but the idea of a noble indigenous heritage is strong in Paraguay, and – uniquely in the Americas – can be expressed by most of the country’s people in an indigenous language: Paraguayan Guaraní.
Continue reading...The conservative South American country has high levels of sexual violence against minors and a shocking child pregnancy rate
Human rights activists in Paraguay have led a wave of fierce public indignation after a series of alarming cases in which sexual violence towards young girls has culminated in murder and child pregnancy.
The highly conservative South American country has long struggled with high levels of sexual violence towards children.
Continue reading...Despite sharing borders with Brazil, small countries can claim victory against virus
Latin America has become the new centre of the worldwide coronavirus pandemic but two small countries, Uruguay and Paraguay, have bucked the regional trend and can claim a near total victory against the virus.
Though they are strangely dissimilar – Uruguay is a progressive enclave with the lowest poverty index in Latin America, while Paraguay has poverty estimates of 30-50% and is rife with corruption – both nations have kept their coronavirus death rates surprisingly low.
Continue reading...Early, aggressive measures seem to be controlling the disease but the pandemic has laid bare the country’s social inequalities
When Covid-19 arrived in South America, Paraguay was one of the first countries to take measures to contain the virus, closing schools and banning public gatherings after just the second confirmed case on 11 March.
The nationwide lockdown seems to be controlling the spread of the disease, but it has created another problem: large numbers of Paraguayans are going hungry in their own homes.
Continue reading...As coronavirus lockdowns have been expanded globally, billions of people have found that they are now faced with unprecedented restrictions. We look at some of the extreme strategies governments are using to police their citizens – from teargas and death threats to beatings and chemicals
Violence and humiliation used to police coronavirus curfews around globe, often affecting the poorest and more vulnerable
As coronavirus lockdowns have been expanded globally, billions of people have found that they are now faced with unprecedented restrictions. Police across the world have been given licence to control behaviour in a way that would normally be extreme even for an authoritarian state.
Related: ‘We can’t go back to normal’: how will coronavirus change the world?
Continue reading...Football star detained in police station in Asunción shortly before planned flight back to home town of Rio
Football star Ronaldinho has been arrested in a hotel in Paraguay’s capital after authorities said he entered the country with falsified documents.
The 39-year-old Brazilian and his brother, Roberto Assis, were taken to a police station in Asunción shortly before 10pm local time on Friday, Paraguay’s prosecutors office said in a statement.
Continue reading...Bones of an estimated four people found under bathroom of house that once belonged to Alfredo Stroessner
Authorities in Paraguay have launched an investigation after human remains were found at a property once owned by the former rightwing dictator Alfredo Stroessner, during whose 35-year authoritarian rule at least 423 people were killed or forcibly disappeared.
Bones belonging to an estimated four people were found under a bathroom in the house near Ciudad del Este, Paraguay’s second-largest city. Local media reported that members of families who had been squatting in the building were digging in search of buried treasure – a widespread activity in Paraguay – when they made the discovery.
Continue reading...Dictatorships of six countries conspired to kidnap and kill political opponents in 1970s
An Italian court has sentenced 24 people to life in prison for their involvement in Operation Condor, in which the dictatorships of six South American countries conspired to kidnap and assassinate political opponents in each other’s territories.
Related: How an Argentinian man learned his 'father' may have killed his real parents
Continue reading...Failure leaves people in Argentina and Uruguay without electricity
Tens of millions of people across South America were left without electricity early on Sunday after a massive power failure left Argentina and Uruguay almost completely in the dark.
The Argentine newspaper Clarín said the “gigantic” power collapse – which it called the worst in Argentina’s recent history – had struck at just after 7am local time, affecting virtually the entire country as well as Uruguay, Paraguay and some cities in Chile.
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