Paraguay, landlockedcountry in south-centralSouth America. Paraguay’s recent history has been characterized by turbulence andauthoritarian rule. It was involved in two of the three major wars on the continent—theWar of the Triple Alliance (1864/65–70), againstArgentina,Brazil, andUruguay, and theChaco War (1932–35), againstBolivia. Moreover, a civil war in 1947 and the long dictatorship ofAlfredo Stroessner (1954–89) left a deeplegacy of fear and self-censorship among Paraguayans, who began to overcome those impediments only in the early 21st century. Since 1989 the democratization process has been rocky, and Paraguay has experienced bouts of instability in its military, the assassination of a vice president in 1999, and the indictment of former presidentsJuan Carlos Wasmosy (1993–98) and Luis González Macchi (1999–2003) on corruption charges. In 2008 Paraguay’s Colorado Party, the longest continuously rulingpolitical party in the world, lost power for the first time since 1947, though it returned to power in 2013. The national capital isAsunción.

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Paraguay has a more-homogeneous population than most other countries inSouth America; most Paraguayans are of European andGuaraní ancestry. The Guaranículture is strongly represented throughfolk art and festivals, andGuaraní was designated an official language of Paraguay in the country’s 1992 constitution. Paraguayans are intensely nationalistic and are proud to converse in Guaraní, which acts as a strong marker of their identity. Thatindigenous language is much more widely spoken in Paraguay than is Spanish, which is unique inLatin America.

Rivers play an extremely important role in the economic life of Paraguay. Indeed, the name of the country is said to derive from the Guaraní word meaning “river that gives birth to the sea.” Rivers provide access to theAtlantic Ocean and serve as sites for thehydroelectric power plants that have made Paraguay one of the world’s largest exporters of hydropower. The country is also a major world producer of soybeans, and Paraguayans in parts of the fertile eastern border region have achieved relatively high standards of living based on modern diversified agricultural production. The growth of cooperative farms throughout Paraguay has increased thequality of life for many farmers who previously had depended on small-scale farms dedicated to the cultivation of a single crop. Nevertheless, the issue ofland reform has remained unresolved since the 1880s and has given rise to extreme levels of inequality since the 1990s.