The Colonial Period

In the territory that became Spanish Paraguay at the time of the Conquest lived 300,000 Native Americans, called Guaranis by the Spaniards, in fourteen Guarás, or regional and ethnic groups. Guaranis were part of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic family and were culturally similar to the Brazilian Tupinamba. Horticulturists who grew manioc, sweet potatoes, maize, and other crops on garden plots, they lived in villages of 1,000 to 3,000 people. They traced descent patrilineally but practiced matrilocalism, that is, couples settled near the wife's family. Their political organization was a chieftainship based on extended families. In the 1530s and 1540s, Guarani traditions of matrilocalism and of formalizing alliances by exchanging women provided the basis for an alliance between Guaranis and Spanish settlers, who brought few women to the upper Río de la Plata. Guarani caciques gave their daughters and nieces to Spaniards in order to formalize Guarani acceptance of Spanish tools, weapons, and military protection, which the Guaranis desired. Spaniards accepted most women as concubines, not wives, but offspring of these unions were the first products of the biological and cultural mixing that gave birth to the modern Paraguayan population.

Early European explorers in the Río de la Plata included Juan Díaz De Solís and Sebastian Cabot. The European founders of Paraguay, however, were the survivors of the expedition led by Pedro de Mendoza in 1535 to Buenos Aires. After indigenous resistance drove Mendoza's subordinates north to Paraguay in 1537, Carios, Guaranis of central Paraguay, befriended Juan de Salazar y Espinosa, who founded the fort of Nuestra Señora de la Asunción. Domingo Martínez de Irala dominated public life in Paraguay's early years. He oversaw the Spanish retreat from Buenos Aires and the founding of the Asunción cabildo (city council) in 1541; participated in the overthrow and exile in 1545 of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza De Vaca; and by fathering and recognizing numerous mestizo children, symbolized the ethnic fusion that begat Paraguayans. In 1556 he set a pattern for labor and hierarchy by awarding in encomienda 27,000 tributary Guarani men to 300 Spaniards. The Indians' service ensured Spanish domination.

The Asunción cabildo dominated local affairs. It was controlled by the landowners and encomenderos, who often ran the province, at times overruling the royally appointed governor, until the late colonial years. The cabildo was the arena for the turbulent politics of the province of Paraguay. After the mid-1500s, when trans-Chaco Spanish explorers and Guarani auxiliaries gave up their unsuccessful quest for wealth in Upper Peru, members of the Paraguayan elite lived part of the year on rural estates that exploited Guarani labor and part of the year in Asunción. Guaranis mostly lived in segregated towns and commuted to work on Spanish properties. Spaniards and Guaranis together fought common enemies along the Río Paraguay and in the Gran Chaco. That children of conquerors spoke not Spanish but Guarani at home contributed to the widespread use of the Guarani language, still an integral part of the Paraguayan identity in the 1990s.

Although Paraguay is often identified with the Jesuits, the earliest religious establishments in the province were those of Mercedarians, Jeronymites, and Dominicans. Franciscans founded the first Paraguayan missions. Mission towns, such as Yaguarón, Altos, Tobatí, and Atyrá in the 1500s and Caazapá and Yuty in the 1600s, were founded by Franciscans and Guaranis, and they endured in the 1990s. The Guaranis slowly converted to Catholicism. Outwardly they accepted Catholic ritual quickly, but privately they worshipped in Guarani ways for many decades, as they did in Jesuit missions later.

In Asunción, education for male children of the European elite was entirely by religious masters. Boys from privileged families often obtained their early education from tutors and then attended Franciscan, Mercedarian, and later Jesuit secondary schools. Because Paraguay never had its own institution of higher education, fortunate Paraguayan youths attended the University of Córdoba in what is now Argentina. Education for the Guaranis included instruction in basic literacy for a few and in Catholic religion for the many.

Jesuits first arrived in Asunción in 1588 and began missionary work among the Guaranis in 1609. Governed from Córdoba del Tucumán, the Jesuit province of Paraguay contained only ten of the thirty-two Guarani missions within the boundaries of the present Republic of Paraguay, and most of them avoided colonists and royally appointed bishops and governors as much as they could. Other Jesuit enterprises in colonial Paraguay included a church in Asunción and a colegio, or Jesuit chapter house, where many of the boys of the elite were educated. Jesuits also maintained the profitable Paraguarí estate, where in the early 1730s they grazed 30,000 cattle. Produce from this ranch was exchanged in the beef-scarce and largely moneyless province for tobacco and sugar. Jesuit enterprises competed with those of the merchants of Asunción, over whom Jesuits enjoyed several advantages. Spanish landowners, and later Spanish-Portuguese forces, attempted to overthrow and partition the Jesuits' claim to indigenous labor. Only in 1767, when the Jesuits were expelled, did such competition cease.

Colonial Paraguayans faced hostile powers from all sides. From Guaranis, Spanish settlers inherited conflict with Payaguás on the Río Paraguay and from Abipones, Mocobís, and Tobas from the southwestern Chaco. From the north, attacks of the Mbayás pushed back the frontiers of the province in the later 1600s. Hostilities also came from Brazil. In the 1600s, paulistas (slave hunters of São Paulo), who coveted Guarani labor, and in the 1700s crown-sponsored Portuguese efforts threatened Paraguay. Brazilian raids in the 1620s and 1630s that desolated Jesuit missions also forced Hispanicized settlers to abandon Guairá, including Ciudad Real and old Villa Rica. Violent conflicts between Paraguayans and Brazilians continued up to the War of the Triple Alliance in the 1860s.

Paraguayan political culture was turbulent, but its rebelliousness resembled that of other Spanish frontier areas. Great turmoil occurred in the 1540s and 1550s among rival conquerors, during the anti-Jesuit uprising led by Bishop Bernardino de Cárdenas in the 1640s and in similarly motivated upheavals led by José de Antequera y Castro in the 1720s and by Paraguayan comuneros in the 1730s. This unrest did not express disloyalty to the crown, only violent politics. Until the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata in 1776, Paraguay was far away from superior authorities, specifically, the viceroy in Lima and the Audiencia of Charcas. This distance and neglect encouraged disputes, which normally originated with the men who dominated the municipal council of the capital. They sought special favors and freedom from royal controls, especially wishing to avoid royal laws such as the 1612 Ordinances of Francisco de Alfaro, regulating native labor. The Paraguayan elite also sought lower taxes and the abolition of the privileges that the crown had awarded to competitors. Paraguayans opposed the Jesuit mission province's light tax burden and monopoly of Guarani labor. They also objected to the privileges enjoyed by the city of Santa Fe, which collected taxes on Paraguayan exports to support the war of the santafecinos against the indigenous peoples.

The economy of Paraguay for two centuries was largely one of subsistence. Crops included such essential commodities as manioc, sweet potatoes, maize, wheat, citrus fruits, tobacco, and sugar. Paraguayans always raised livestock, although until the last colonial decades, cattle and horses were often in short supply, because the climate, plants, and insects were more hostile to quadrupeds in Paraguay than farther south. In the capital, numerous artisans plied their trades, and in the interior, the Guarani villages of both Jesuit and civil provinces specialized in various crafts.

Until the last decades of the colony, very little money found its way to Paraguay, and barter was the normal means of exchange. Most Paraguayans even paid taxes in kind.

What money there was, chiefly to purchase imported European merchandise, at first came from the exports of yerba maté (Ilex paraguayensis), a tea that became popular as far away as Peru. This trade was modest until the last colonial decades, when it expanded rapidly. Specie also came to Paraguay from contraband trade in silver in the 1600s and in tobacco in the 1700s, which Paraguay's border location and crown monopolies encouraged. Jesuits cultivated yerba maté on their own plantations, and these leaves fetched the highest prices. Paraguayan merchants, however, continued to obtain the product from the wild, usually with paid mestizo labor.

In the late colonial years, the Paraguayan economy grew spectacularly, and the supply of money increased. Exports of yerba maté multiplied. Paraguayans also grew tobacco for the royal monopoly, and they exported cattle products, especially second-quality hides, and timber products. As river commerce increased, Asunción became an important regional center of shipbuilding.

Few European immigrants came to Paraguay until the late 1700s, when merchants of Spanish birth began to direct local affairs. Independence in Paraguay came about after citizens in Buenos Aires deposed the viceroy in 1810 and tried to extend their control to Paraguay, where the spirit of localism was strong. Most Paraguayans resented the pretensions of the port city and prepared to resist Argentine demands by force. At Paraguarí on 15 January 1811, Paraguayans routed the porteño army of Manuel Belgrano. On 14 and 15 May 1811, led by Dr. José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, Captain Pedro Juan Caballero, and others, Paraguayans overthrew Bernardo de Velasco, the last Spanish governor. They declared independence on 12 October 1813.

See alsoAsunción; Comunero Revolt (Paraguay, 1730–1735); Guarani Indians; Mendoza, Pedro de.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Martin Dobrizhoffer, An Account of the Abipones: An Equestrian People of Paraguay, 3 vols., translated by Sara Coleridge (1822; repr. in 1 vol. 1970).

Alfred Métraux, "The Guarani," in Handbook of South American Indians, vol. 3, edited by Julian H. Steward (1948).

Harris Gaylord Warren, Paraguay: An Informal History (1949).

Elman R. Service, "The Encomienda in Paraguay," in Hispanic American Historical Review 31, no. 2 (1951): 230-252.

Elman R. Service, Spanish-Guarani Relations in Early Colonial Paraguay (1954; repr. 1971).

Philip Raine, Paraguay (1956).

Carlos Zubizarreta, Historia de mi ciudad (1964).

José L. Mora Mérida, Historia social del Paraguay, 1600–1650 (1973).

Philip Caraman, The Lost Paradise: The Jesuit Republic in South America (1976).

Adalberto López, The Revolt of the Comuneros, 1721–1735: A Study in the Colonial History of Paraguay (1976).

Branislava Susnik, Los aborigenes del Paraguay, 7 vols. (1978–1987).

James Schofield Saeger, "Survival and Abolition: The Eighteenth-Century Paraguayan Encomienda," in The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History 38, no. 1 (1981): 59-85.

Jerry W. Cooney, Economía y sociedad en la intendencia del Paraguay (1990).

Thomas Whigham, The Politics of River Trade: Tradition and Development in the Upper Plata, 1780–1877 (1991).

Additional Bibliography

Acevedo, Edberto Oscar. La Intendencia del Paraguay en el Virreinato del Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires: Ediciones Ciudad Argentina, 1996.

Boccia Romañach, Alfredo. Esclavitud en el Paraguay: Vida cotidiana del esclavo en las Indias Meridionales. Asunción, Paraguay: Centro UNESCO Asunción: Servilibro, 2004.

Ganson, Barbara Anne. The Guaraní under Spanish Rule in the Río de la Plata. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003.

Quevedo, Roberto, Margarita Durán Estragó, and Alberto Duarte, eds. Actas capitulares y documentos del Cabildo de Asunción del Paraguay, Siglo XVI. Asunción, Paraguay: Municipalidad de la Ciudad de Asunción, 2001.

Rivarola Paoli, Juan Bautista. La Real Hacienda: La fisca-lidad colonial, siglos XVI al XIX. Asunción, Paraguay: Ediciones y Arte, 2005.

Techo, Nicolás del. Historia de la provincia del Paraguay de la compañía de Jesús. Translated from Latin into Spanish by Manuel Serrano y Sanz. Asunción, Paraguay: Centro de Estudos Paraguayas Antonio Guasch: FONDEC, 2005.

                                   James Schofield Saeger