Paraguay SOCIAL RELATIONS
Shoppers on a busy Asunción street
Courtesy Inter-American Development Bank
Colonial Paraguay (basically, what is now Eastern Paraguay)
lacked productive mines, strategic seaports, or lucrative
plantation agriculture. Through most of the colonial era, it
languished as a backwater of the Spanish Empire in the Americas, a
region of small estates with a minimal number of Spanish settlers.
The Guaraní-speaking Indians of the region were drawn into colonial
society principally through high rates of intermarriage and
concubinage with Spanish settlers, a process that created a mestizo
society within a few generations
(see The Young Colony
, ch. 1). In
the resulting cultural synthesis, the dominant language remained
Guaraní, whereas the rest of the dominant social institutions and
culture remained Hispanic.
The few remaining Hispanic overlords were largely eliminated in
the upheaval of the War of the Triple Alliance, leaving a
homogeneous population of mestizo farmers. Despite far-reaching
changes from the 1960s to the 1980s, Paraguay remained a country of
peasants engaged in subsistence farming. The basic social dichotomy
was between small farmers and a narrow stratum of elite families
whose diverse resources included links to industry, commerce,
government, the military, and commercial agriculture. The upper
class was centered in the capital and was interlinked by ties of
kinship and marriage. Many, if not most, members of the elite knew
each other from childhood, having grown up in the same
neighborhoods and attended the same schools.
Guaraní--which, unlike many indigenous New World languages,
included a written form after the Jesuits developed an orthography
in the mid-sixteenth century--remained a vital element of
Paraguayan national identity. Guaraní had always been one of the
principal ways Paraguayans distinguished themselves from the rest
of Latin America, and the 1967 Constitution recognizes Guaraní as
a national language. Guaraní theater, in which both Paraguayan
works and translations of European classics were performed, was
popular with all levels of society. Paraguayan songs were
internationally popular; lyrics in Spanish and Guaraní were a
hallmark of Paraguayan culture.
Sociolinguist Joan Rubin characterized Paraguay as ". . . a
Guaraní-speaking nation with a heavy incidence of Spanish-Guaraní
bilingualism in which each language tends to fulfill distinct
functions." Spanish had been the official language since the
sixteenth century, and in the late twentieth century it remained
the language of government, education, and religion. Nevertheless,
Paraguayans of all classes spoke Guaraní much of the time. Language
use varied by social context, however. Guaraní was appropriate in
more intimate contexts. Spanish was used in more formal situations;
it implied respect toward one of higher status. In families, for
example, parents might use Guaraní in speaking to one another and
require that their children speak to them in Spanish. The upper
echelons were distinguished by their relative fluency and ease in
using Spanish. By contrast, most rural Paraguayans were monolingual
Guaraní speakers until as late as the 1960s.
Data as of December 1988
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