History of Paraguay, Part II: "Polygamy vs. the Cow Head"

The saga continues...

Early Spanish Paraguay

  Around 1539, something crazy happened in Asunción.  King Carlos V of Spain wanted a govenor to oversee the new colony, and a man by the name of Domingo Martínez de Irala took up the offer.  Irala had already been adventuring around Paraguay for a couple of years and must have eaten some multi-colored frog.  I say this because, lo behold!, Irala had the crazy idea of working alongside the local Guaraní people instead of killing, enslaving, or robbing them.  This turned out to be a decent strategy because, with their powers combined, the Spanish and the Guaraní were able to ward off stronger war-like peoples from the North and learn to work together on agricultural projects and the like.

  A side effect of all of this peace and goodwill between new people-group friends was that a few started have too much goodwill.  The Spanish explorers, who had left behind the other gender of their race in Spain, began to notice that some of the Guaraní girls were pretty cute.  This of course led to babies.  Before you knew it, the two cultures had combined rather thoroughly physically as well as socially. (Even to this day, the ethnic make-up of Paraguay is very proudly, and significantly, as they call it mestizo, "mixed".  This is an important sociological concept for later on.) 

Cometh the Cow Head

  Things seemed to be going well with the racially and socially integrated society under Irala when, inexplicably, the Spanish crown decided it needed a new head in Paraguay.  So they sent Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca (no, that is not a joke, look it up.  And I am pretty sure that there is no other translation besides "Cow Head").  Gov. Cow Head came higly touted.  A war hero and general famous person from Spain, CH tried to tie the budding city more closely to Madrid and refine morals to fit more closely to European standards.  Unfortunately, he did not take note of the high rate of Spaniards who already had a couple of Guaraní wives, not to mention kids.  

  Polygamy had served the Spaniards well too- Guaraní culture pays high respect to blood ties, and marrying into a Guaraní family meant protection, but also that your girl's brothers would show up during harvest time to help you bring in the crops.  Now, no one wants to give up free family labor just because some cow head wearing a fluffy collared shirt from Madrid says you have to give up wives 2,3, and 4.  

  The Spaniards living in Asunción were no different, and poor old Álvar found himself on the 25th of April 1544 first in a Paraguayan prison, and then on a ship "headed" back to Spain.  For the time being, Paraguay was safe from cow heads.