History - Paraguay Video Transcripts
Video 1 Transcript
Paraguay actually didn't start the wars, but there have been two major wars in their country in the last couple hundred years. The first was in the 1860s, and that is the war called the Guerra de la Triple Alianza. So it was between Brazil, Paraguay, I think Uruguay, and Argentina. And those three countries tried to overtake Paraguay and completely take it off the map and take parts of the land for themselves. And the Paraguayos had to band together, and the country became smaller, but it's still here today.
Video 2 Transcript
Paraguay has a really interesting history of kind of being just an underdog in everything. It's landlocked, it's surrounded by three different countries, and it has started war with each of those countries. Paraguay has tried to start war with Bolivia, Argentina, and Brazil. Because of that, if you ever go to Luque, there's this giant statue of a woman kind of holding, protecting the family and the husbands dead on the floor. It's because of all their wars, the women actually had to kind of take over for the men because so many of the men in Paraguay died. So it's kind of like a lasting legacy over there in Paraguay.
Video 3 Transcript
So regarding La Guerra de la Triple Alianza, with that war, a large portion of the country was destroyed. Like, they had to rebuild it. Many men died during that war. Half the men of the country probably died. They even had a battle where children had to fight because they didn't have enough men anymore. And because of that, they have a holiday, a national holiday, called Dia del Niño, where they celebrate the children of Paraguay for what they did. They also have a holiday called Dia de la Mujer Paraguaya that celebrates the women and what they did to help during the war and their memory. Also with the presidents of Paraguay, the president at that time, Mariscal Francisco Silvano López, he died and so did his son. And his wife was from England and she carried their memory with her.
Video 4 Transcript
The second war that I know of is called the Chaco War, which was between Paraguay and Bolivia because Bolivia wanted to overtake the Chaco part of the country, which is the jungle part where the natives live, and I don't know much about that war, but I would definitely ask the Paraguayos because they will tell you anything. There's just a lot of wonderful history. That country is way older than the United States. A lot of people there are natives. A lot of their ancestry is native Guarani Indians, and the other part of their ancestry is from Spaniards and people who moved in. There's also a lot of German Mennonites who lived there. It's really cool.
