HISTORY OF PARAGUAY, PART III: No, Oligarchy is not a Butterfly

  

After about a hundred years of galavanting across the continent, the Spaniards finally managed to firmly entrench their system of governance throughout most of South America.  Now, I know the title was slightly more specific, but this portion of the History of Paraguay could really be expanded to include the history of the whole continent, even Portuguese Brazil.  You see, to overly generalize as this thread has been good at doing, the Spanish really came to the "New World" for three reasons.  In no particular order, they were:

-God

-Gold

-Glory

  Taken in reverse order, many a young explorer was led to step on a ship outbound from Europe in order to make himself famous back home.  Be the next Cortez, Pizarro, or Coronado.  (If you don't know those three, don't worry, they aparently didn't do their job of becoming well known well enough.  Just know they were famous at the time.)  They were driven on by the stories of riches and particulary, cities made out of gold.  And, in order to legitimize their ventures further, a lot of ships drug along Catholic missionaries.

  When the Spaniards set up their colonies in South America, they imposed the then current medieval feudal system on their newly declared native citizens.  Known as encomiendas, this system "employed" (let's be honest: enslaved) native South Americans on farms, in mines, and in other domestic labors in exchange for the protection and the "Christian Civilization" that the Spaniards provided.  It also VERY IMPORTANTLY, set the precendent for the Latin American geo-political reality of oligarchy.  This word just means that 10% of the people own 90% of everything, and everyone else has to deal with it.  Trust me, this will come back to haunt our discussion more than once before I manage to catch us up to 2009.  

  The colonists were required to instruct the idigenous population in Catholicism.  However, aside from this religous favor, life on the encomienda was generally the opposite of heaven.  Stories of oppression from the sugar plantations of the Caribbean or the gold and silver mines of Peru are not really for your child right before bed.  But Paraguay's idigenous population managed to escape the harsh treatment that was found elsewhere in South America.  Why?

  In short, there was nothing in Paraguay.  Really.  No sugar plantations, no gold or silver mines.  But like I've said before, there were women, and the fact that the Spanish married more than one of them often enough meant that if they oppressed anyone, it would most-likely be their mother or father-in-law.  Now, the book I'm using calls the encomiendas that existed in Paraguay "benign" because of this.  I suppose the term is relative.  Being enslaved and forced to work so that your colonial master can be rich, own the land, and eat all he wants while you live on scraps is probably "benign" when compared to having your hands chopped of for not harvesting sugar fast enough.  But I'm still not sure if the worker in the first setting would refer to his lot as "benign".        

  So once again, Paraguay was different from the rest of the Spanish New World.  Racial integration, "benign" feudal system.  Two more things to note on this theme before I close up shop.  In the rest of Central and South America, the discriminatory policies of the Spanish Crown applied also to the racially mixed offspring of the colonists and their new found friends.  However, in Paraguay, everyone ignored these laws and treated Paraguayans of mixed origin as though they had the same rights as purely European Spaniards.  Secondly, reliant on this racially progressive outlook, Paraguay appointed its first "mestizo" govenor in 1602.  Things were looking good for interracial cooperation.  Could it be derailed?  Find it out in, HISTORY OF PARAGUAY, PART IV: Blame the Jesuits.