Paraguay

Paraguay, Paraguay… For some people “Timbuktu” is the place-name that inspires romantic visions. For me, it is not one but two places that have been in my mind for years and years, as the farflung corners I want to visit: Paraguay is one of them. (Botswana is the other, if you’re curious; and, more recently, add Patagonia and Svalbard.) To tell the full story: when I was ten, and very serious about music, I went to a music camp where the Australian harp-maker Andy Rigby visited us. While there, he told us about the harps he had picked up on his travels: harps from Paraguay and Botswana.

Paraguay’s Flag Day falls on 14 May—I’ve noticed that most of the Latin American independence days are clustered around September, so I’m interested in this different date. Paraguay actually celebrates for two days: 14 May is Flag Day, then 15 May is Independence Day. I’ve decided to post on the former, because independence was actually declared (from Spain) on 14 May in 1811—I want to mark that anniversary, and I don’t think it’s cheating when they still celebrate on that day.

Europeans arrived in Paraguay in the 16th century, and the city of Asunción was founded in 1537 as a settlement that eventually became the center of a Spanish colonial province, as well as a important site for Jesuit missions. I’m sad that immediately accessible sources don’t give much information about pre-Columbian history of the region—only that it was inhabited by the seminomadic Guarani
-speaking tribes prior to European contact.

Following the emergence of Paraguay as an independent nation, the government of the country has apparently been marked by authoritarian government and wars with neighbouring regions. 1989 marked the start of a transition to democracy.

Geographically? It’s a landlocked country (bordering countries: Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil) and it straddles the Tropic of Capricorn.


Today’s poem was written by Rodrigo Díaz-Pérez, and comes from the Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Literature 1960-1984.


Memories

I left Paraguay
one clear January day.
The sun bit the watersheds
of turbulent rivers.
The land of the dreams
of all the silences
so quietly
went on adding new dimensions
to the frame of my forge.

And today appear
solemn colors
disappeared,
vaguely touching some corner,
some burned corner
lost forever
on the long journey of no return.

My heart, my pulse,
my eternal ardor,
Oh chronological tortures
of blinding afternoons.
And when I arrived he said:
“Don’t say, brother,
that you departed.
You will not depart, brother,
though you may leave.”

—Rodrigo Díaz-Pérez
Translated from the Spanish by Wayne H Finke
from Anthology of Contemporary Latin American Literature 1960-1984