BRAZIL: Brazilians in Paraguay

Tim Brown, who was stationed in Paraguay, comments:

"I assume that San Alberto de Mbaracayu is in east central Paraguay in the region around the Itaipu high dam. If so then the problem is several decades old, even as it has grown more serious as time goes by. Essentially, Paraguay is underpopulated in general, with its major settlements, both urban and peasant, in the West and South opposite Argentina, with large tracts of potentially cultivable but largely vacant farming land opposite Brazil, especially in the Itaipu region. When I was at the embassy in Asuncion, long time dictator Alfredo Stroessner faced much the same problem, Brazilian peasants and farmers moving into that region in large number and overwhelming the handful of local Paraguayan residents. His solution was to organize Latin America's most successful and most ignored agrarian reform program but enticing Paraguayan peasants from the overpopulated west to move to the underpopulated east. This required giving them land with titles, capital to move and start afresh, and putting in adequate infrastructure where they were going - roads, schools, government offices, market centers. It also required finding crops they could raise, helping them market them - soy beans became the most prevalent. This induced somewhere around 40% of the peasant population of Paraguay to move. Because he was a right-wing dictator and did this with his own funds and not those of AID or other international organizations, and without ideological intent, he never received credit. Apparently, while initially successful, the tide has again turned.

In broader terms, the Paraguay-Brazil settler problem appears to be just one manifestation of a much larger, even world-wide trend of population movements clashing with nationalism. In Latin America, Guatemalans enter Mexico, Nicaraguans Costa Rica, Bolivians Chile, and so on. Many of these movements are rural to urban - Paraguayan laborers have long been the braceros of Buenos Aires, Bolivian and Ecuadorian laborers in Peru, or for that matter Cambodians in Thailand, Chinese in Indonesia. Moluccans in the Netherlands, Africans in France. The list is probably endless.

The big difference in a few cases, one being Brazil-Paraguay, is the overwhelming size of the country of origin, what the Mexicans call the asymmetry. It is as if American farmers were invading Chihuahua or Manitoba. Historically there seem to be only a few possible solutions from the point of view of the destination country, all revolving around governmental controls, and all rarely permanent, as we are finding out in our own attempts to control illegal immigration. Mexico controlled the problem of rich Americans buying up land by making it illegal (meaning hard, but not impossible). But free trade makes such restrictive policies very questionable.

In my view this is just an example of the problems permanent population shifts cause, and has no permanent solution in our modern world."

My comment: in does not know San Alberto, a town of 23.000 people. It presumably did not exist when he was there. I will call the attention of National Geographic Atlas of this omission, even in its latest division. I will post next a comment by Aldo Da Rosa, giving the Brazilian viewpoint. The whole question will come within the scope of the migration session of the WAIS conference.

Ronald Hilton - 6/17/01