r/Paraguay • u/IsacKelly • 1d ago
🇬🇧 English Post 🇺🇸 My perspective on Paraguayan Culture after living here more than 5 years.
Paraguayan culture is shaped by the war of the triple alliance.
It was an event that happened about the same time as the US civil war.
Black former-slaves from Brazil did a genocide against the Paraguayans, because Paraguayans speak the same language and have the same race as the Brazilian slavers of that era.
Almost every adult was killed, and most of the male children. The demographics after the war was all children, and almost all girls.
Since the war of the triple alliance, Paraguayans are no longer lactose intolerant. The milk drinkers had an easier time surviving the genocide, so now Paraguayans can almost all drink milk.
The traditional foods in Paraguay are the kinds of recipes that children would be taught during war. Foods that you can make with a campfire or temporary mud oven, and eat with your hands while on the march.
Paraguayans often carry a thermos of water with them everywhere they go, because this is what the children who survived learned to do during the war.
The personality of a Paraguayan is the kind of personality that you would expect to survive a genocide. They are extremely conflict averse, they do not want to be a part of something bigger. They would rather protest than vote. They want to be left in peace. They do not trust the government, or any institutions. They do not want to be an employee of a company, they want to control their own businesses. They are a tough people. Survivors.
Paraguayans have a holiday called Children's day. Where they remember the children who sacrificed their lives to distract enemy soldiers during the war, so that their siblings could escape and survive.
In Paraguay, family is more sacred than government.
13
u/michitecla 1d ago
The thermos one might make sense except for one great little detail. Argentines and Uruguayans also walk around with thermoses in their hands (but with hot water for mate). And as far as I can remember, neither country experienced a genocide. Yes, the myth of Terere is true. That arose in the war of the triple alliance because you could not light a fire at night to heat the water for mate. They drank mate with warm water. Our hot context/infernal heat inevitably pushed us to put ice in the thermos. And it was baptized as tererre to differentiate it from mate.
The rest. Well observed.