This Is A Humane Country
I went to Asunción because I had the feeling I would like it. On the way to the hotel, the bus driver hit the brakes several times. During one of those halts, I landed straight on my backside.
“You have to hold on tight,” she said. “Traffic’s awful here.”
Once I got to the hotel, a man visiting from the inland said to me, “Your Spanish is a little too good. We don’t trust anybody who doesn’t speak a bit of our local lingo because they might pull one over on us. Know what I mean?”
And yes, historically, they’ve dealt with many snakes in the grass — Porteño traders, and crooked Argentine and Brazilian lawyers. I began looking through some Asunción newspapers. In the Crime section, I found elaborate case descriptions. One was a sexual assault case led by female lawyers that lasted several days. On day one, a lawyer accuses her boss, a councilman, of sexual assault. (The woman appears in a giant photo.)
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He asked her why she was so quiet and sad looking.
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And said to her in Guaraní that he wanted to make love to her.
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She asked that he show her respect (and in her testimony adds that he assaulted others who did not dare report him.)
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He made them sign a letter that said he was an honorable, respectful man.
The following day, the other lawyers step forward to report him. (Large photos of them accompany the text.) One declared that the councilman said he wanted to “eat her up” in Guaraní. She adds, “First he disappointed me professionally and then as a woman.”
The third lawyer declared that her boss, now spiteful, called all of them “trash.”
The councilman retaliates — he is allowed to reply in the newspaper — so there are accusations and counter accusations.
He says, “Ramírez is suspended because she crashed a car into her father-in-law’s house.”
A great number of people here crash into fences, columns, and private or enclosed stairways. In the same newspaper, it’s said that a man has a restraining order against him, ordered not by his wife or ex-wife, but by the community hall. The accused is a mayor who they fear will go inside the offices to steal documents, gain influence, and take over the place by whatever means possible. In other words, it’s to prevent him from destroying the community center. But the people who crash into those columns and buildings are “allegedly under the influence of alcohol.” And why is “allegedly” added so often? Because being under the influence reduces your sentence by a lot.
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I go for a walk around Asunción. The sun shines on the river and on the Casa de Gobierno, which is completely white. The police guards are playing music that aspires to be martial but sounds more like polka and chamamé. Despite the heat, I want to keep walking, so I go to the monument dedicated to the heroes of the War of the Triple Alliance. The Guazú War, as they say in Guaraní, the Great War. Looking over a railing, I spot an underground room. Inside is a monument for the child heroes, the ones who fought towards the end of the war disguised as elderly people. A guard sees me looking down there and says, “You’ve cast down your eyes to signal submission.”
Huh? Me, signaling submission? I didn’t ask him what he meant. Walking, farther, farther, I got to a bookstore where I spotted a book called In Search of the Lost Bone, a reference to Proust. The allusion to bones has to do with what General Francia said about Paraguayans: they are missing the bone that keeps their heads upright when they speak to someone.
The book has nine editions, published between 1990 and 2000. Helio Vera, the author of this treatise on Paraguayology, is eager to identify the defects of Paraguayans and denigrates them for their corruption, cronyism, and short-sightedness. His self-deprecation saddens me. Could being so unforgiving lead to change, or will the reader become paralyzed in the face of a sad, predetermined destiny? I don’t know.
And yes, they do believe in liquid courage. St. Onuphrius is the patron of drunks; he protects them from getting beat up on their way home. How do they square this submission with such exacerbated individualism? At the very least, it’s certain that their wills are strengthened by their wild imaginations. It’s also related to deficient institutions. According to Vera’s Paraguayology treatise, one president went to bed elected and woke up removed from office. Everything must happen right away, right now, before one’s plans are thwarted.
I read in the newspaper: “Kiara and Andrómeda, twin psychics of the highest caliber. We unlock forbidden and impossible loves in seven hours. Other facilitations: divorces and joint inheritances — all without having to leave your house!”
And who wouldn’t like everything to be quick, easy as magic? Other names are just as capricious and strange as the twins’ — one fortune teller is called Mesalina.
An ad for eggs called “Nutrihuevos.” They are simply eggs, but the compound word gives them more power.
Paraguayans also attribute power to light, to the shimmer of gold. One jewelry shop is called Radiance. Often, flower wreaths for the dead are also lit up. Since radiance bewitches, women want to be radiant, which is why they wear gold T-shirts, carry gold purses, and keep gold in their imagination. Gold evokes dreams, just like the fur capes they sometimes wear with their wedding dresses. In this case, it’s a dream of snow.
One dance club is decorated with giant panthers and lions in a vivid green forest — the mural covers the entire wall. It’s a dream of the nearby rainforest. The countryside is also nearby, and this can be heard in the way people speak. Personally, I like it.
The controlling part of me says, “They don’t distinguish between public and private.”
But, in practice, all I need to know when I’m getting dressed for the day is that it’s going to be as hot as “la gran flauta.” I read in the newspaper that a soccer match was “postponed due to a wasp invasion.” Yes, a slice of the country inside the city. And between ads for sound equipment, ice cream makers, glass cutting machines: “Male Ostrich For Sale,” “Fertile Buffalo For Sale,” and the perfect ad: “I Buy Anything.”
The memory of Asunción always returns when I come across the poet and anthropologist Amaral. He invited me to his tidy apartment, which was comfortable, nothing flashy. He was an old man and sat on his sofa looking dignified in his pajamas. He told me that his ancestors, dating back to 1700, came from both Buenos Aires and Paraguay. But he had decided to live in Asunción. It wasn’t exactly balmy outside, and a young cleaning woman was opening all the windows.
He asked her, very gently, to shut them and told me, “She always likes to have a breeze, even when it’s chilly. Do you know why? Because she comes from a nomadic people.”
I never heard a more respectful and thoughtful explanation. Inwardly, I compared his reply to what we would have said in Río de la Plata.
“May I ask why you don’t live in Buenos Aires?”
He said, “Because this is a humane country. The 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries co-exist here.”
And he explained what I had seen in the city center, the cybercafe and the “cibercocido” (where you can use a computer while drinking maté cocido made with herbs that were sold by the women sitting in the plaza). And he told me about the young people downtown, with their cell phones and trendy city clothes. He had fallen in love with Paraguay. I had too.
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“This Is A Humane Country” is one of 27 crónicas included in A Question of Belonging by Hebe Uhart, published by Archipelago Books on May 7, 2024. To acquire a copy from Bookshop.org, click here.