Photo by Ukrinform
Strange topic for South America, isn't it? Not Indians, not cities lost in the jungle, not undiscovered insect species in the Amazon, but our own people whom fate carried to those parts. And the places, frankly, are far from paradise, as we later saw for ourselves. But then (and this should be a matter of special pride for us, as per Lenin in "The National Pride of the Great Russians") they defended and raised an entire country in South America. Let it be small, let it be the most backward on the continent, but without them even that would not have existed. In Paraguay, streets, towns, and cities are named in honor of Russian officers who gave their lives for this country. Russian White émigrés formed the backbone of the high command of the Paraguayan army, leading it to victory in the Chaco War of 1932-1935; Russian professors laid the foundations of higher education; Russian engineers created the network of Paraguayan roads.
If all of us together knew only three languages - Nanai, Mordvin, and Romanian - they too could be used in Paraguay. I understood Spanish, English, and German. And the most interesting thing is that all these languages were used! Even the Ukrainian language! Here's how it happened: in Encarnación, we arrived at the bank of the Paraná. Suddenly a German runs up and says, "I met a guy here; he's Ukrainian, still remembers General Belyaev." The guy - a Ukrainian fellow about sixty years old, speaks only Ukrainian, but it's clear what he's talking about anyway. He moved to Paraguay in 1949, that is, at a time when many thousands of our compatriots, who had been taken to Germany for work during the war, were dispersing around the world. What inevitably awaited them at home did not attract them. But this way - there was a chance to become naturalized in some third country. And there was no need to account for whether one had been in occupied territory or not. The most resourceful took advantage of this opportunity. Now every emigrant buys souvenirs before leaving abroad and feels nostalgic when Kiev, Leningrad, or corners of Moscow look at him from a painting. But back then everything was different.
The Ukrainian immediately offered to show us the Chaco, or as it is also called, the Gran Chaco. Despite the fact that we did not expect to see anything out of the ordinary there, not seeing the Chaco would mean ignoring a good half of Paraguay. So, after a short night at a hotel with the heartwarming name "Bavaria" upon arrival, we set off at dawn. We always had to start everything at dawn, because in winter it gets dark early there. Crossing the bridge over the Paraguay River and leaving the few skyscrapers of Asunción on our right, we literally flew into the Chaco at full speed, as fast as the Chevrolet jeep would allow (and it allowed an average of 120-130 km/h; at that, I was once again convinced that flying by airplane is safer), and for the next four hours we plowed through a green, thorny, dusty, inhuman (due to the minuscule population density) space. There are deserts in the world that are sandy, rocky, but this desert is green, made of trees and shrubs, with rows of palms to the horizon or a dense wall of bush in which a path can only be cut with a machete. Occasionally you come across palo borracho bottle trees ("drunken log"), but they are of little use. The Chaco is in a transition zone between the dry plains of Argentina, the arid highlands of Bolivia, and the Amazon jungle. It is extremely dry, hot, and yet there is no water. The soil is excessively saline, so rainwater upon contact with it immediately becomes like seawater and is practically unusable for further use, whether for drinking or irrigation. And clouds of vicious mosquitoes that attack their victim everywhere and at any time of day. It is well known that mosquitoes in the tropics become aggressive in the morning and evening hours and are afraid of direct sunlight. But the Chaco mosquitoes have not read works on entomology, and therefore they create real lawlessness. In short, the Chaco is a green hell. It is believed that the green hell is the jungle. Amazonian or Central African, for example. But it turns out that hell can be bright, sunny, and dry.
The first point in the Chaco we headed to was Fort Boquerón from the time of the Chaco War with Bolivia. The car turned off the highway, and we drove along a dusty dirt road. We stopped at one place to look at the trenches - shallow, narrow ditches in the middle of thorny thickets. Then we drove into an open field; on the left rose an earthen mound with a strange structure in the middle, and on the right was a museum building which, as it turned out later, contains a collection of weapons and photographs. Of course, this is not a fort in our understanding, but rather the core of an extensive fortified area, including a series of trenches we had seen. As far as I suppose, behind the mound there was a battery. Now at its crest there is a monument to those who fell in battle. To be honest, we had never seen anything like it. The pedestal is made of wooden logs, and on it is a semblance of the Tin Woodman with a puny rifle made of thin sheet iron, almost aluminum. The soldier's chest is pierced, and the gaping through-wound resembles the shape of Paraguay. Of course, the monument looks shabby, even though the tragic pathos is quite understandable. The Chaco War was the bloodiest in the history of South America. And mainly because of what? Because of illusions...
After Fort Boquerón, we went to spend the night in Neuland - a small town in the center of the Mennonite country, a kind of state within a state, created by German-Dutch Protestant Mennonites who moved here from Russia and Canada in 1927. They arrived in Russia under Catherine II, who invited German dissidents of various kinds, for she quite rightly believed that Germans are the salt of the earth. Looking at what they turned the lifeless, saline Gran Chaco into, it is hard to argue with that.
The Mennonites themselves are Protestants among Protestants, even more radical than Lutherans. They declared the entire surrounding world to be the kingdom of Satan, and therefore all contact with it had to be reduced to the necessary minimum. In addition, the Mennonites proclaimed a complete refusal to perform military service. In 1543, their spiritual leader, Menno Simons, was outlawed in the Netherlands, and a reward of 100 guilders was offered for his turbulent head. His followers moved to Poland, where they were effectively legalized (they built their first prayer house in Elbląg in 1593), and to Schleswig-Holstein. What most displeased Frederick II of Prussia and Napoleon was the Mennonites' pacifism. As V. I. Lenin said, "One cannot live in society and be free from society." The Mennonites had not read Lenin, and so their stubbornness was worthy of admiration. On the very first evening we met several young men, ethnic Germans, who had recently arrived in Paraguay from Germany. Before that, by right of their birth, they had come to Germany from Russia. And what prompted them to move to this inhospitable place to feed hordes of mosquitoes? It turns out that in Germany, when they attended a regular school, they were forced to go on excursions with girls. And Mennonite boys do not want to be friends with girls, even Mennonite girls. Moreover, their charter does not allow it. Before marriage - no, no! Recalling the drives along the dusty streets of Chaco settlements, the daytime (winter!) heat and the endless attacks of mosquitoes, and at the same time the toy towns of the upper Rhine or the Bavarian Romantic Road drowning in flowers, one simply marvels at the courage and principledness of these guys, who unanimously decided to say "no" to friendship with girls and went to develop Paraguay. So what, Germany! To hell with Germany! Give us record milk yields in the Chaco!!!
To tell the truth, the Mennonites transformed this region beyond recognition through their labor. Of course, the main credit here belongs not to religion but to the industriousness living in the blood of Germans, whether they are Germans, Dutch, or Danes. Not only did they secure a quite tolerable existence for themselves in the Chaco, they also gave the local Indians the opportunity to live in clover. They built model villages for them - rows of cottages for two families each, taught them literacy and their religion. Although, by and large, the Indians are interested in religion because for their faith they receive help from the Mennonites, including material help. The Mennonites themselves do not hide this, but they do not particularly worry, because by patronizing the Indians they get a carte blanche from the state for any economic activity. Asunción already looks askance at them: they say, they have created a state within a state. But it does not touch them, because it does not want to bother with cows and Indians.
In all the towns we visited - Neuland, Filadelfia, Loma Plata - there are small museums dedicated to the first settlers. Touching collections of seemingly simple and quite mundane household items (many of which were brought from Russia) are gathered and systematized with German pedantry. For these people, the settlement of the Chaco is like the conquest of the Wild West for Americans. True, it all went without gunfights... They learned to desalinate water and began to raise cattle. Now the Germans supply dairy products to the whole of Paraguay; we were even shown around the Trebol dairy factory, which the Germans are very proud of. This is, of course, not a distillery, but it is still interesting to visit a real factory at least once in your life and see how people work. Whereas I, for example, in life only know how to chat beautifully and make a good first impression, although my wife says that this is also quite a lot for earning money.
Incidentally, yerba, which is consumed everywhere and in wild quantities in Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay as a tonic drink better known as mate, is processed and packaged in factories also owned by Germans. The yerba tree itself grows naturally in Paraguay and Brazil. In Argentina and Uruguay, mate is drunk hot, while in Paraguay it is drunk only cold and is even called by a different name - tereré. But the drinking technique is the same: crushed herb is poured into a pot-bellied or elongated mate gourd, filled with water, and sucked through a bombilla straw with a filter at the end. Many people subsist on almost nothing but this.
We drove back to Asunción with a breeze. Half a day was allotted for getting to know the city, but I would not advise spending too much time on the capital of Paraguay. In principle, one day will be quite enough to enjoy Asunción to one's heart's content. Not that the city is completely rundown, but it is indeed small, with a small historic center facing the Paraguay River. Between this facade and the river itself lies a strip of slums, where it is better not to go even in the daytime. I have heard the opinion that in Asunción it is hard to find buildings taller than two stories. Of course, there is some exaggeration in this - in the very center there are indeed high-rise buildings, but they look pitiful because of their shabby appearance. The most beautiful buildings are the Pantheon of National Heroes, near which two Guarani Indian women sitting on a mat sell souvenirs, and another old woman in feathers walks around the building, grabbing customers; the ultra-modern Parliament building, which for some reason is being built by South Koreans, and the palace of the 19th-century López presidential dynasty, one side facing the Paraguay River and the other a street lined with restored colonial-era houses that now house souvenir shops and a restaurant. If you walk back toward the Pantheon, you can pass by a row of shops selling souvenirs, including ñandutí lace embroidery and all sorts of leather goods, with prices that are simply ridiculous.
In Asuncion we were also interested in something else. Namely, the Russian presence in Paraguay. We met Lucy (Lusya) Gramatchikoff (Gramatchikova), who, although she has completely forgotten the Russian language, studies the history of Russians in Paraguay. She led us through the Russian cemetery, enclosed by a wall with battlements resembling the Kremlin's. The Russian diaspora numbers about one and a half thousand people, although the Russian language has already been forgotten by most. It began to form when Belyaev called for moving to Paraguay. Also in Asuncion there is a small monument to Russians who contributed to the history of this country. It stands at a small intersection on Russian Federation Square (Federacion Rusa). Alfred Stroessner himself, whose ideal was Adolf Hitler, greatly respected Russian Paraguayans, although he forbade them from leaving to the USSR, and did not let anyone in from there either. He was a stern dictator... And whose school? Our school! Not only did we teach parrots in the Chaco to swear obscenities during the war with Bolivia, but also to hate communism intensely.
From Asuncion we headed east of Paraguay and immediately felt that this was literally a different country. Green hills, neat houses with tiled roofs, whitewashed, like somewhere in southern Spain. This part of the country, unlike the Chaco, is densely populated: you barely leave one city, and you almost immediately enter another town or village. The climate also differs: the dryness of the Chaco disappears when crossing the Paraguay River, as does the heat.
During our trip through Eastern Paraguay, we looked at some historical and architectural sights, which the country is not rich in: the 18th-century Franciscan church in Yaguarón, built by Indians and famous for its remarkable carving and ceiling painting, the basilica in Itauguá, the monument to the Jesuits in San Ignacio, but the main thing - the grandiose ruins of the Jesuit reduction in Trinidad. In fact, this is the most important historical monument in Paraguay. It is located a few kilometers from Encarnación, the capital of Paraguayan smugglers. A bridge is thrown across the Paraná to Argentina, along which a freight train shuttles back and forth, led by an antediluvian steam locomotive. We really ran after that locomotive! And why not: various crazy Englishmen pay big money to come here and look at working Paraguayan steam locomotives, and even then they don't always manage to catch them, but here it was shuttling back and forth in front of us and not asking for money. By the way, the station in Asuncion is closed. Previously, a historic wood-burning train carried tourists, but several years ago it crashed, seven people died, and it was decided to stop steam train excursions, put the Asuncion locomotive on eternal display, and dismantle the rails. The trams also got it. There are no more trams in Asuncion...
In Encarnación we stayed overnight at the hotel "Tirol". A huge complex, five pools, rooms with furniture styled as Alpine antiquity. Guests - three people, not counting us. As far as I understand, people come here in summer. The microclimate is much more humid and cool, somehow gracious. We were shown the Itaipu Dam, which supplies electricity to all of Paraguay and a good third of Brazil, and they even took us into the holy of holies, showing the control rooms and the construction of new turbines. A good place. Just right for shooting sci-fi action films like "Terminator". True, they didn't bother to let the water flow by the time we arrived, so you could skateboard along the spillway channel. The funniest thing is that as soon as we came, the electricity suddenly went out. I have long noticed that as soon as I appear somewhere, a misfortune immediately befalls that place. I remember, I came to the editorial office of a magazine, sat down at the computer, and then the editor runs in: "Guys! Hide the office equipment!" It turned out a bailiff had come to inventory the property. The magazine was just about to print my article when it was closed. Another newly created magazine decided to publish this article - it was closed before it even opened. And at Itaipu the same nonsense happened. Itaipu is a subject of the greatest national pride for Paraguayans, and then - there you go: during the showing of a demonstration video, the electricity goes out! They, of course, apologized wildly, said that this doesn't happen to them every day, but I know perfectly well what the true reason is...
From Itaipu to Iguazu is a stone's throw away. But the Iguazu Falls are already Brazil, or Argentina in the worst case. Why worst? Because the Argentines have stricter border control. Here we were warned that theoretically a visa to Brazil is needed, and it was necessary to ask for a double Paraguayan visa, but in practice at border crossings everyone couldn't care less. From the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este to the Brazilian Foz do Iguaçu you need to get across a border bridge over the Paraná. A couple of kilometers before the car, brisk money changers already start running up, offering to exchange Paraguayan guaranis ($1 equals 6,200 guaranis, and I don't advise taking banknotes of more than $50 with you to Paraguay, otherwise even banks won't be able to find cash, and change in "greenbacks" for a $100 - let alone) for Brazilian reais ($1 equals 2.90 reais).
Ciudad del Este is a nothing city, and when approaching the border it's better not to get out of the car at all. Around are shady characters scurrying about, dirt, sooty shapeless houses - in a word, uncomfortable. Motorcyclists walk between cars - moto-taxis specifically for crossing the border. Pay $1 and go to Brazil. You travel around the country for a month or a month and a half, then return the same way. It should, however, be borne in mind that on the Brazilian side the flow of cars is greater, so you can sit in a traffic jam longer. For inspection and checking all "tourists", border guards on both sides physically lack both time and strength, so they stop only pedestrians, who have to crowd at visa control booths. Those in cars are checked one in a million.
In Foz do Iguaçu, we stayed at the Carima hotel and spent the evening at the Rafain show. It was a hodgepodge of all countries: tango, samba, Indians from the Andes, even Mexicans. The concept of the show was 'Long live Latin America!' Only the national anthems were missing. Overall, though not the Help disco, it was not bad. However, all these shows for tourists are nothing compared to the extravaganza that nature stages. The Iguazu Falls are incomparable. Waterfalls like this exist one per continent. It seems that God allotted the most beautiful waterfalls from the very beginning: He gave Africa Victoria, North America Niagara, and South America Iguazu. And it is right that we came here not at the beginning but at the very end of our trip through South America. And so it will remain in memory as a flock of birds circling above a cloud of spray and soaring in front of the roaring, plunging stream, and an even rainbow halo hanging over the falls from edge to edge...