Asunción Central Paraguay
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The recorded history of Paraguay begins indirectly in 1516 with the failed expedition of Juan Diaz de Solís to the Rio de la Plata Estuary, which divides Argentina and Uruguay.
After Solís's death at the hands of natives, the expedition renames the estuary Rio de Solís and sails back to Spain.
On the home voyage, one of the vessels is wrecked off Santa Catarina Island near the Brazilian coast.
Among the survivors is Aleixo Garcia, a Portuguese adventurer who has acquired a working knowledge of Guarani.
Garcia is intrigued by reports of "the White King" who, it is said, lives far to the west and governs cities of incomparable wealth and splendor.
For nearly eight years, Garcia patiently musters men and supplies for a trip to the interior and finally leaves Santa Catarina with several European companions to raid the dominions of "El Rey Blanco."
Marching westward, Garcia's group discover Iguazu Falls, crosses the Rio Parana, and arrives at the site of Asunción thirteen years before it is founded.
Here the group gathers a small army of two thousand Guarani warriors to assist the invasion and sets out boldly across the Chaco, a harsh semidesert.
In the Chaco, they face drought, floods, and cannibals.
Garcia becomes the first European to cross the Chaco and penetrates the outer defenses of the Inca Empire to the foothills of the Andes Mountains in present-day Bolivia, eight years in advance of Francisco Pizarro.
The Garcia entourage engages in plundering and amasses a considerable horde of silver.
Only fierce attacks by the reigning Inca, Huayna Capac, convince Garcia to withdraw.
Native allies later murder Garcia and the other Europeans, but news of the raid on the Incas reaches the Spanish explorers on the coast and attract Sebastian Cabot to the Rio Paraguay two years later.
Cabot thinks the Rio de Soils might provide easier passage to the Pacific and the Orient than the stormy Straits of Magellan where he is bound, and, eager to win the riches of Peru, he becomes the first European to explore that estuary.
Leaving a small force on the northern shore of the broad estuary, Cabot proceeds up the Rio Parana uneventfully for about one hundred and sixty kilometers and founds a settlement he names Sancti Spiritu.
He continues upstream for another eight hundred kilometers, past the junction with the Rio Paraguay.
When navigation becomes difficult, Cabot turns back, but only after obtaining some silver objects that the natives say came from a land far to the west.
Cabot retraces his route on the Rio Parana and enters the Rio Paraguay.
Sailing upriver, Cabot and his men trade freely with the Guarani tribes until a strong force of Agaces natives attacks them.
About forty kilometers below the site of Asunción, Cabot encounters a tribe of Guarani in possession of silver objects, perhaps some of the spoils of Garcia's treasure.
Hoping he has found the route to the riches of Peru, Cabot renames the river Rio de la Plata, although today the name applies only to the estuary as far inland as the city of Buenos Aires.
Cabot returns to Spain in 1530 and informs Emperor Charles V (1519-56) about his discoveries.
Mendoza promptly dispatches Ayolas to explore a possible route to Peru.
Accompanied by Domingo Martinez de Irala, Ayolas again sails upstream until he reaches a small bay on the Rio Paraguay, which he names Candelaria, the present-day Fuerte Olimpo.
Appointing Irala his lieutenant, Ayolas ventures into the Chaco and is never seen again.
After Mendoza returns unexpectedly to Spain, two other members of the expedition—Juan de Salazar de Espinosa and Gonzalo de Mendoza—explore the Rio Paraguay and meet up with Irala.
Leaving him after a short time, Salazar and Gonzalo de Mendoza descend the river, stopping at a fine anchorage.
They commence building a fort on August 15, 1537, the date of the Feast of the Assumption, and call it Asunción (Nuestra Senora Santa Maria de la Asunción).
The site of the present city of Asunción may have been first visited by Spanish conqueror Juan de Ayolas, on his way north, up the Paraguay River, looking for a passage to the mines of Alto Perú (present-day Bolivia).
Later, Juan de Salazar y Espinosa and Gonzalo de Mendoza, relative of Pedro de Mendoza, are sent in search of Ayolas, but are unable to find him.
He manages to find another member of Ayolas' party, Domingo Martínez de Irala, holed up in the Puerto de la Candelaria, which had been founded by Ayolas earlier in February 1537.
Martínez had been commanding the rear guard when Ayolas's advance party was wiped out by the Payaguá.
On his way up, then down the river, de Salazar stops briefly to resupply his ships at a bay in the left bank near its junction with the Pilcomayo River.
He finds the natives friendly, and decides to found a trading post here, on August 15, 1537, the Christian celebration of the Assumption of Mary.
Accordingly, he names it Nuestra Señora Santa María de la Asunción.
He then travels as far as …
…Asunción.
The settlement of Asunción has a population of about fifteen hundred within twenty years of its founding.
Transcontinental shipments of silver pass through Asunción on their way from Peru to Europe.
Asunción subsequently becomes the nucleus of a Spanish province that encompasses a large portion of southern South America—so large, in fact, that it is dubbed "La Provincia Gigante de Indias."
Asunción also is the base from which this part of South America is colonized.
Spaniards move northwestward across the Chaco to found Santa Cruz in Bolivia; eastward to occupy the rest of present-day Paraguay; and southward along the river to refound Buenos Aires, which its defenders had abandoned in 1541 to move to Asunción.
Uncertainties over the departure of Pedro de Mendoza had led Charles V to promulgate a cedula (decree) that is unique in colonial Latin America.
The cedula had granted colonists the right to elect the governor of Rio de la Plata Province either if Mendoza had failed to designate a successor or if a successor had died.
Two years later, the colonists had elected Irala as governor.
His domain includes all of present-day Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, most of Chile, and large parts of Brazil and Bolivia.
In 1542 the province becomes part of the newly established Viceroyalty of Peru, with its seat in Lima.
In addition to the Spaniards, Asunción includes people—mostly men—from present-day France, Italy, Germany, England, and Portugal.
This community of about three hundred and fifty chooses wives and concubines from among the Guaraní women.
Irala has several Guarani concubines, and he encourages his men to marry native women and give up thoughts of returning to Spain.
Paraguay soon becomes a colony of mestizos, and the Europeans, prompted by Irala's example, raise their offspring as Spaniards.
Nevertheless, continued arrivals of Europeans allow for the development of a criollo elite.
The Guaraní, the Cario, Tape, Itatine, Guarajo, Tupí, and related subgroups are generous people who inhabit an immense area stretching from the Guyana Highlands in Brazil to the Rio Uruguay.
Because the Guaraní are surrounded by other hostile tribes, however, they are frequently at war.
They believe that permanent wives are inappropriate for warriors, so their marital relations are loose.
Some tribes practice polygamy with the aim of increasing the number of offspring.
Chiefs often have twenty or thirty concubines whom they share freely with visitors, yet they treat their wives well.
They often punish adulterers with death.
Like the area's other tribes, the Guaraní are cannibals, but they usually eat only their most valiant foes captured in battle in the hope that they will gain the bravery and power of their victims.
In contrast with the hospitable Guaraní, the Chaco tribes, such as the Payagua (whence the name Paraguay), Guaycuru, M'baya, Abipon, Mocobí, and Chiri guano, are implacable enemies of the whites.
Travelers in the Chaco report that the natives there are capable of running with incredible bursts of speed, lassoing and mounting wild horses in full gallop, and catching deer bare-handed.
Accordingly, the Guaraní accept the arrival of the Spaniards and look to them for protection against fiercer neighboring tribes.
The Guaraní also hope the Spaniards will lead them once more against the Incas.
Cabeza de Vaca had arrived in Asunción after having lived for ten years among the natives of Florida.
Almost immediately, however, the Río de la Plata Province—now consisting of eight hundred Europeans—had split into two warring factions.
Cabeza de Vaca's enemies had accused him of cronyism and opposed his efforts to protect the interests of the natives.
Cabeza de Vaca had tried to placate his enemies by launching an expedition into the Chaco in search of a route to Peru.
This move disrupted the Chaco tribes so much that they had unleashed a two-year war against the colony, thus threatening its existence.
In the colony's first of many revolts against the crown, the settlers had seized Cabeza de Vaca, sent him back to Spain in irons, and returned the governorship to Irala.
Irala rules without further interruption until his death in 1556.
In many ways, his governorship is one of the most humane in the Spanish New World at this time, and it marks the transition among the settlers from conquerors to landowners.
Irala keeps up good relations with the Guaraní, pacifies hostile natives, makes further explorations of the Chaco, and begins trade relations with Peru.
This Basque soldier of fortune sees the beginnings of a textile industry and the introduction of cattle, which flourish in the country's fertile hills and meadows.
The arrival of Father Pedro Fernandez de la Torre on April 2, 1556, as the first bishop of Asunción marks the establishment of the Roman Catholic Church in Paraguay.
Irala presides over the construction of a cathedral, two churches, three convents, and two schools.
Irala eventually antagonizes the natives, however.
In the last years of his life, he yields to pressure from settlers and establishes the encomienda.
Under this system, settlers receive estates of land along with the right to the labor and produce of the natives living on those estates.
Although encomenderos are expected to care for the spiritual and material needs of the natives, the system quickly degenerates into virtual slavery.
In Paraguay twenty thousand natives are divided among three hundred and twenty encomenderos.
This action will help spark a full- scale native revolt in 1560 and 1561.
Political instability begins troubling the colony and revolts become commonplace.
Also, given his limited resources and manpower, Irala can do little to check the raids of Portuguese marauders along his eastern borders.
Still, Irala leaves Paraguay prosperous and relatively at peace.
Although he has found no El Dorado to equal those of Hernán Cortés in Mexico and Pizarro in Peru, he is loved by his people, who lament his passing.
...Asunción, in present Paraguay, founded a few years earlier.
Political intrigue against Cabeza de Vaca had caused his arrest and return to Spain in chains around 1545.
The Spanish link the Río de la Plata settlements to their New World empire more formally in 1549, when the Governate of the Río de la Plata replaces that of New Andalusia.
Domingo Martínez de Irala, who has ruled forcefully as governor from 1544 after ousting Cabeza de Vaca, encourages his men to marry and keep concubines from local women.
Cabeza de Vaca, eventually exonerated, will write an extensive report on South America, which is bound with his earlier La Relación and published under the title Comentarios (Commentary).