Reply #62: Paraguay - Paradise with Serpents

[Octafish]

I've only visited Paraguay in my imagination, but here's a bit on Paraguay from someone who's been there:

Paraguay Paradise with Serpents Robert Carver Travel Book The Word of Someone Whos Been There

Robert Carver's Paradise with Serpents is an eye-opening account of travels around the South American state, says Robert Carver.

Travel books: Paraguay's lost world
The Telegraph (UK)
Last updated: 6:15 PM BST 05/10/2007

In the 19th century, Robert Carver's great-great-grand-uncle Charlie set off into the jungles of Paraguay in search of a lost city of gold, and was killed by the natives, leaving only a watch with his name engraved on it.

As a boy, Robert Carver was shown Charlie's watch, and as a grown-up he followed his kinsman to "one of the most remote countries in the world, about which almost no one knew anything, which almost no one went to and almost no one came from - or indeed ever came back from".

In Asunción, the decrepit capital, in the badlands on the borders with Brazil, and in the wilds of the Chaco, he finds a country that is lawless, dangerous and perversely nostalgic for the regime of "Alfie" Stroessner, the dictator who made the place a haven for Nazis.

Historically, white people have gone to Paraguay in search of wealth, like Uncle Charlie, or freedom from the restraints of the Old World, to establish ideal communities. The latter group has included Jesuits, German nationalists, Australian communists, Mennonites and Moonies, and all have failed, because the serpents in their paradises have been human ones. Their descendants subsist, with the benighted "Indians", in a swamp of indolence and squalor, while the country's wealth is siphoned off to banks in Switzerland and the Caymans.

The national railway is emblematic of the general hopelessness. Built by the British, it used to run over a distance of 15 miles, but it packed up a couple of years ago. The Ministry of Railways, though, still employs 25,000 people, who cannot be sacked, and have nothing to do but draw their salaries - if they were paid, which they aren't. Nor are any of the huge number of people employed by what is evidently a failed state, all of whom are obliged to subsist on bribery.

CONTINUED...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/artsandculture/738474/Travel-books-Paraguay's-lost-world.html

PS: That's a great idea, yours, roamer65. Hope President Obama or President Clinton would, too.

The admitted torturer-in-chief also is guilty of illegally attacking and invading a country that was no threat to the United States. The guy's a traitor, too, for, among many other things, lying America into war.