Paraguay (Enchantment of the World. Second Series)

Describes the geography history culture industry and people of Paraguay

The News from Paraguay

The year is l854. In Paris, Francisco Solano -- the future dictator of Paraguay -- begins his courtship of the young, beautiful Irish courtesan Ella Lynch with a poncho, a Paraguayan band, and ahorse named Mathilde. Ella follows Franco to Asunción and reigns there as his mistress. Isolated and estranged in this new world, she embraces her lover's ill-fated imperial dream -- one fueled by a heedless arrogance that will devastate all of Paraguay.With the urgency of the narrative, rich and intimate detail, and a wealth of skillfully layered characters, The News from Paraguay recalls the epic novels of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa.

Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians

Pierre Clastres (1934-1979) was one of the most respected political anthropologists of our time. Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians is an account of his first fieldwork in the early 1960s--an encounter with a small, unique, and now vanished Paraguayan tribe. From "Birth" to "The End," Clastres follows the Guayakis in their everyday lives, determined to record every detail of their history, ritual, myths, and culture in order to answer the many questions prompted by his personal experiences. Now available for the first time in English in a beautiful translation by the novelist Paul Auster, Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians will alter radically not only the Western academic conventions in which other cultures are thought but also the discipline of political anthropology itself.

Rural Poverty in Paraguay

Rural poverty rates and land inequality in Paraguay are among the highest in Latin America. This book consists of three essays focusing on aspects of the economic development of the Paraguayan agricultural sector. The book seeks to answer the following questions in the rural Paraguayan context: What is the relationship between farm size and productivity? Would land redistribution have a positive impact on rural poverty? Why do rural Paraguayan households with female landowners have lower net farm income than those without female landowners, controlling for farm size? Are land markets an effective means of redistributing access to if not ownership of, land to the rural poor? The book is addressed towards those studying rural economies, land markets and gender, specifically economists, but will also be of interest to socio­logists, political scientists, anthropologists and Paraguayanists of all stripes.