What then, did he think the future held for Paraguay? He thought for a moment and lit another cheroot. Outside, I observed that across the road, by the front of the mock-Les Invalides, the honour guard were taking down the Paraguayan flag. They had, I noticed, changed into summer uniforms, neat white ducks with gold braid: this must mean that spring had officially arrived. Paraguay, although subtropical in the south and tropical in the north, still subscribed to the illusion, like Argentina, that it was a European country with four official seasons which had official start and end dates. One 19th-century Argentinian politico, Sarmiento, who ended his days in Paraguay as an exile, had decreed when he was dictator that all the palm trees of Buenos Aires be uprooted and replaced with plane trees imported from France. These shed their leaves in autumn, making the city look more like Paris, thus furthering the illusion for porteños that on some level they were living in the Northern Hemisphere in a temperate country, rather than in the Southern Hemisphere in an almost subtropical city. Mac toyed with a fragment of toasted sandwich and furrowed his brow:
‘The chaos will grow, capital will continue to leave the country, disorder will mount until there comes a point when the army and police step in and a strong man will take over. It may be Lino Oviedo, or it may be a general or colonel this side of the border. You may be sure they have already made their plans. Some opportunistic politicos, probably both Colorado and Liberal, will join a junta, possibly starting a new political party – how about National Renewal or the National Salvation Front or the Paraguayan Patriotic Party? Then a new stronato will start – the press will be muzzled, the democrats will flee or be imprisoned and tortured, the demonstrators shot down, and death squads will scythe through the urban criminals in Asunción. Or if things get really bad there might be another civil war, elements of the Colorados with a faction of the army fighting it out with the Liberals and another faction of the army, just as there was before Alfie seized power. If there was real chaos the Bolivians might move in and grab back the Chaco – they have never reconciled themselves to its loss. In any case, I want out.’
Mac had spoken this long and not very diplomatic speech in an undertone, and in fast English. His pessimism about the country’s future was the main reason he bothered to see me. Although he spoke good English he had never been out of South America, and hardly out of Paraguay, just across the border into Brazil and Argentina. He was attracted to the idea of leaving, but lacked the self-confidence and knowledge. He plied me with questions about England, Europe, the USA and Australia, all places I had been to and he hadn’t.
‘I might be able to get Australian papers,’ he mused, ‘or at least a study visa or something similar. There’s an Australian-Paraguayan Society and they’ve got good contacts down in the Embassy in BA. Some descendants of the Australian settlements here have gone back – and they’ve all stayed and not come back, so it can’t be that bad. Mind you, I’ve seen some Australian films and the place seems very crude, with the people primitive and unsophisticated – no finesse at all. The trouble is, Paraguay is very easy to live in, really, in spite of all the chaos – perhaps, actually, because of it. No one really does what you would call work, as you’ll have noticed. Ever seen a Paraguayan running, off a football pitch? I haven’t. You can’t really be forced to do anything much except at gunpoint, and there just aren’t enough cops or military to enforce anything. Especially as ten bucks will get 99% of those in uniform to look the other way. Outside Asunción you never see a uniform except at the checkpoints and on the borders, where they can tax you for bribes. What would I do in Australia? I don’t know anyone and where you don’t know anyone you end up doing the crap jobs no one else wants to do – that’s a universal law. Paraguay is actually very hard to leave. Many try, most fail – they come back. Europe is too cold and too crowded, the USA is a bum-job-only destination, the Argies despise us as Indios, and you can’t get anywhere in Brazil without perfect Portuguese. A few rich Paraguayans lie on the beaches in Brazil and smoke dope and screw little black girls and think they’re being heavily radical; but they get homesick and come back, usually. We think we are worse than anyone else – except for in sport and the army, and there we think we are tops. Without confidence you are lost before you even start.’
I remarked that I had noticed exactly the same characteristics in Australians in Australia. Behind the macho swagger, the nationalist brag, was both uncertainty and lack of confidence – except in sport and fighting – two activities which were unambiguous, about which no doubt existed as to winners and losers, and which required no complex, difficult or cultural achievements to excel in – the same sorts of activities prized in primitive African communities, in fact. I didn’t think that either Mac or Alejandro Caradoc Evans would ever leave South America. Mac might move across the border into Argentina or Brazil if the situation in Paraguay became too fraught, but he would continue as a smuggler, and move back when things quietened down again. Smuggling would go on whatever regime was in control – it was like oil exports for Saudi Arabia, or tea for Sri Lanka. Mac was too old and too set in his ways. He reminded me of all the middle-aged men in the BBC I had known who talked of nothing but going off to start a new life in Provence or Andalucia: they never got further than the Tabard Arms in Chiswick. Nevertheless, I encouraged Mac and said I would help him if I could. He had contacts in Concepción and the north of the country, which could be useful if the river ferries started running again. They had broken down, had been taken out of service, and were awaiting spares which had to come from abroad. You could get up to Concepción by road, but bandit activity had increased making this an unsafe option. There were, of course, pirates on the river, too, but so far the Asunción-Concepción route had not been subject to any attacks – probably because it was so little used with no ferries operating.
The kidnapping of a tobacco import-export businessman’s 17-year-old daughter, named Katina, in broad daylight from a main street in Asunción, had shocked everyone. She had been on her way home from school when two men forced her into a white car and drove her away. At first the demand for ransom had been US$400,000. After the intervention of negotiators, including a representative of the Catholic Church who, somewhat curiously, often get involved as middlemen in such negotiations in South America, the ransom had been reduced to 320 million guaranis. Once this had been handed over, Katina had been returned unharmed the next day in Lambare, a town just outside Asunción, now virtually a suburb of the capital. One of the kidnappers had been heard to speak with an Argentine accent, it was claimed. Some theorized that it had to be a foreign operation, as it had been so slick and efficient – a Paraguayan-organized kidnap like this would have gone awry – the car keys would have been lost, the wrong girl snatched, the car run out of petrol, something of that sort. The national inferiority complex even extended to crime, it seemed. There was a celebration to welcome Katina back, given by her classmates and teachers, beaming priests hovering in the background, doubtless invaluable negotiators. When I asked people if they thought the priests would have taken a cut of the ransom for themselves, or for the Church, I got scandalized denials. Paraguayan assumptions of universal corruption excluded Mother Church. There were photographs of the celebrations in the papers. The police had not seemed to be involved at any stage at all – unless, as some cynics suggested, the police themselves had actually organized the kidnapping as a means of getting an advance on their as yet unpaid salaries. This had been known to happen before. The kidnapping of Katina and her release had been so fast that Ultima Hora had printed a special edition, the front page headlining the kidnap, and page two announcing its resolution, complete with dramatic eyewitness sketches of the snatch.
‘The flag of Paraguay really ought to be the skull and crossbones,’ commented Mac, when we had finished discussing the case. His tone of voice indicated sorrow rather than either anger or moral outrage. ‘We are a nation of pirates, run by pirates, for pirates. There was in fact a Pirate Club, a sort of disco-nightc
lub, with skull-and-crossbone flags hanging outside, but it went bust.’ I had seen this place on my walks around town: it had indeed suffered a pirate’s fate, boarded by the revenue cutter or a rival pirate ship, and put out of business. It was very definitely closed for good, with broken windows, a dirty, empty interior clearly visible, its front doors chained and padlocked. I had yet to see a bankrupt and closed-down gunshop, by contrast, or a tobacco store. ‘In the mornings,’ I had written in my journal, ‘Paraguay appears amusing; at midday, depressing, and in the evenings, tragic.’ Mac, too, was now looking at the white-uniformed soldiers folding up the flag across the road. ‘If Oviedo could stand for President in the elections he would win by a landslide,’ he observed in a low voice, so as not to be overheard. ‘You know what Perón’s supporters used to shout when he was in exile in Spain, when they wanted him to be allowed to return? “Ladrón o no, queremos Perón” – thief or not, we want Perón. If you are so poor as to have nothing worth stealing, what does a thief as President mean if he at least controls all the other thieves and achieves order?’ It was Stroessner’s claim – ‘peace, order, progress’. And he had delivered at least the first two of those qualities, all rare in South America at any period.
‘What you don’t realize about Paraguay,’ Alejandro Caradoc Evans had said to me one evening in the bar of the Gran Hotel, when the beer had been coursing through his veins, ‘is that the people of this country are so lazy, stupid and corrupt. It’s only the Germans, who are all basically Nazis, who keep things going at all here. The Nazis are the good guys in Paraguay! When you get back to Europe you can tell that to all your liberal chums. Oviedo is too stupid to be a Nazi himself, but he would at least put them back in power again.’ Across the capital Oviedo’s name was splattered in graffiti on the walls: ‘Lino-Presidente’, ‘Lino-hijo’ (hijo de puta – son of a whore), ‘Lino a carcel’ – Lino to prison. He was seen as either a saviour-in-waiting who would restore the order and peace missing since Alfie had been expelled, or else as a neo-fascist who would institute a reign of terror. He was rumoured to be homosexual, and his nickname was ‘the bonsai horseman’, because he was a cavalry officer, and because he was vertically challenged. Japanese metaphors and Japanese style were widespread in Paraguay. There had been substantial Japanese immigration into the country, and it was by no means unusual to see formal Japanese gardens complete with pebble beds, miniature trees and waterfalls, outside suburban houses. Eclecticism of style was a characteristic of Asunción. At the British Shopping Centre – completely deserted when I went there – the old red telephone boxes had been installed; these did not function, of course, but were merely for decoration. The derelict, homeless element of the population found them convenient places to crap in, this not entirely unknown in their place of origin, either. More dramatically, the Californian-style bungalows exploded into life in the capital; sudden electric, hot Cuban splashes of colour – lime green, bright pink, sharp tangerine. There were reported to be mock-mock-Tudor villas and repro-French chateaux, though I hadn’t seen any myself. In lakeside San Bernadino, a few dozen kilometres outside Asunción, German settlers had erected Alpine chalets and timber Bavarian lodges, and I did once see, on the road back from the Brazilian border, a faithful copy of a Rhine castle standing beside a river, complete with turrets, though the clump of banana trees around the base rather spoilt the illusion. If you were into fantasy, Paraguay always had something to offer, even if it wasn’t quite what you expected, much less wanted.
Paula had died suddenly, aged 40, of a heart attack, leaving a desolate husband and two small children. ‘You must come to the funeral,’ Gabriella d’Estigarribia said to me, after she had told me the news. Paula had been a good friend of hers. ‘It will be interesting for you. You will see how we treat death in Paraguay.’ I had not known either Paula or her family, but Gabriella said this did not matter. I was round at her house, trying to get her to explain to me some of the more complicated aspects of everyday life in the country: I was having a hard time getting any money. I had brought American Express US dollar travellers cheques, but no one was willing to change them for me. There was an AMEX bureau, but it only sold traveller’s cheques, not redeemed them. There was a bureau called ‘Paraguay Express’ but they neither bought nor sold any traveller’s cheques. I asked the clerk what they did do. He shrugged and smiled. Maybe he was waiting to be told. The Gran Hotel had told me they would accept travellers cheques, but at a rate 20% lower than cash – an unattractive proposition. No one wanted anything to do with credit cards either, at any price. As the rest of the world was moving in the direction of the cashless society, Paraguay trusted only cash, it seemed. What was the reason? I asked Gabriella. She didn’t know, but rang round all the banks for me – those that were still open for business that is. All but one declined to cash traveller’s cheques. ‘Very curious,’ commented Gabriella. ‘I had no idea there was this problem – I only use my UK cash card. I put the plastic in the hole in the wall and draw out US dollars, and my London account is debited. So I never come into contact with the local banking system.’ What was the problem, I asked. ‘They say that the cheques have to be flown back to the USA before they get the cash. This can take weeks. In the interim the rate against the guarani can go up radically, and they can lose a lot of money. But there is one bank that will change them in the centre of town. We can go there en route to the funeral.’
Gabriella drove with abandon, like everyone else. Pedestrians had to be good sprinters in Asunción. The sun was hot and bright, and the crowds passed in a blur as we drove fast towards the centre: it all looked much less threatening from the front passenger seat. In the Americas there are two classes – those with cars and those without. I had realized this first when I had been in Los Angeles. Anyone there without a car was a third-class citizen. I had lived for years in London without a car, and when I did have one frequently I didn’t use it for months. Though in Europe we complain about our public transport, it is, in fact, very good – so good that if you live in a large city it is easy to do without a car. My local MP, Sir George Young, a minister in the Thatcher government, cycled all over his constituency. When we had had problems with some Irish travellers squatting on waste land at the end of our road, he had cycled round and walked his bike down to the end of the road, to talk to the caravan folk, his bicycle clips still round his ankles. I found this civilized and humane. I often told this to friends in Los Angeles. ‘Guy must’ve been fuckin’ crazy,’ they had replied. ‘Coulda been blown away by one a’ them low-life mothers.’ But they weren’t low lifes, I replied, just poor people who had no homes, and so had to live in caravans. ‘Trailer trash,’ they riposted, ‘bogtrotting white trash.’ They were exactly the sort of people who had been forced by poverty to emigrate to the USA a hundred years ago, I replied. How did they know their own ancestors were not just such poor people? At this they shifted restlessly and changed the subject.
The response would not be different in Asunción. The American view of poverty was harsh and uncompromising. Middle-class Americans simply didn’t see the poor. It was no different in South America than the States. You could get no discussion going about poverty or the poor. It was a subject no one with money found the slightest bit interesting. The poor could simply live or die – no one cared about them. To be a pedestrian was to be poor, and so risk being run over every time they tried to cross the roads. No one in a car gave a damn about them. When I commented on the legions of poor people living in the streets – the cripples, beggars, street kids, lunatics in evening dress – I was assumed to be some sort of bleeding-heart socialist. Fifty years of redistributive taxation in Europe and high state employment and the welfare system had ironed out the gross visible disparities between very rich and very poor. Of course, Mayfair and the Gorbals were still very different, but they represented extremes. David Cameron, the Tory leader, and Boris Johnson, shadow Tory minister, both cycled through London every day to get to Parliament. Such an idea would be complete
ly impossible in either Washington or Asunción.
After a week in LA I had known I could never live in the USA: you could walk, because I did walk, but it was difficult. There was nowhere to sit down, no parks, no teashops, no cafés, often no pavements. One good definition of a Western European is someone who expects to be able to walk around cities, with the aforementioned amenities in ample profusion. Asunción was better than LA, but it still failed the test as a civilized city: Madame Lynch had insisted on parks laid out in the Parisian style, complete with benches, but the sense of danger and dereliction that hung over these places made them unappealing. Asunción could never have grown into a Parisian city for the same reason that the Jesuit Reducciones could never have replaced the serf-labour encomienda. Both were alien ideas imposed by force of will on an unreceptive environment. Once the will was removed, the idea failed and faded away. Madama’s parks were still there, but instead of elegant ladies and gentlemen strolling to take the air, they were al fresco doss-houses and shitting-places. Nevertheless, though derelict, the parks did at least offer some respite from the urban ugliness in Asunción. ‘What will happen when the gasoline runs out and cars can run no more?’ I asked people in LA. ‘We’ll drink the water from our swimming pools and eat each other,’ they replied, not entirely unseriously.
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