asuncionautics.

despite the two-hour delay into the illustrious capital, my cavalcade remained faithful to the apogee of our ship's arrival. it had been many a moon since we last convened, yet there was little confusion as to whom was whom. 'look at you - you dirty, bearded, bohemian bastard!' was the general reception amongst my female companions. 'you have changed, evancho,' another took great pains to remind me. 'you aren't the gangster to which you used to aspire,' she would later seem to lament. if paraguayans share one thing in common with their human counterparts in the 16e arrondissement, tis that socio-aesthetic experimentation is a big no-no. here, as in the chic-er quarters of parigi-town, one dresses within one's class from the cradle to the grave & with no margin of error. perhaps the ability to do so is the defining characteristic of the postmodern, middle-class, petitbourgeois american condition: we can rock jordans in 3rd grade, sambas in 5th, vans in 7th, '95 air max our freshman year and go on to graduate in birks (i.e. about as white as not-dancing to the postal service on a portland's summer eve.) somewhat akin to doing art history before going on to law school. enough cynicism, however, and on to more important matters.

it was a gorgeous, breezy day and we stopped off for a bite at classic downtown dive in the heart of the sunny, sleepy capital. we had mantioca empanadas and pints of pilsen, one of two household national brews - the other being 'bavaria' - if that gives you an idea of who runs this land. while we're at it, it shall be noted that the country's most recent dictator, alfredo stroessner, who ruled the dominion with an iron fist from 1954-1989, was also the son of a purported bavarian brewmaster. here, at left, he lies in all his imperial splendor in a portrait from the museum of memory commemorating the ten-thousand people detained and tortured in a downtown corner rowhouse up til the end of his reign. odd, you may wonder, they should display him in what looks to be his prime. memories do have a way of running away from us, i suppose. in any case, he's unlikely to enter their paraguayan pantheon anytime soon (these things usually take several generations to heal, do they not?) - which was just across the street, so we paid the bill and ambled on over.

two soldiers, poised and positioned to stare into each other's souls for entire minutes on end, stood erect at the top of the steps as we saluted our way into the holiest of military shrines. there within a matter of meters lied the remains of doctor gaspar de francia and francisco solano lopez - two of modernity's most destructively creative, if not ill-forgotten, minds. the former is celebrated as the country's first successful doctoral candidate (theology at cordoba) and with his intellectual prowess monopolized the country's post-independence political platform from 1814-1840, during which time he managed to successfully seal the country off from the world - which isn't to say he didn't have his more illuminated aspects. though an avid admirer of robespierre and many of the Revolution's 'modernizing' tendencies, he applied drastic measures against the movement of peoples and goods in an effort to prevent the accumulation of national debt and foreign peddling in domestic affairs. at one point, the only things that got through customs scathe-free were books and munitions - an inquiring despot, if nothing else. when the pope excommunicated him for expropriating church lands, he responded in kind: "If the Holy Father himself should come to Paraguay I would make him my private chaplain."

francisco solano lopez, for his part, was no stranger to adversity, either. after making an irish prostitute he picked off the street in paris the empress of paraguay, he returned to the 'island surrounded by land' to embark upon the most disastrous war in the continent's history. though it is still highly disputed as to whom is ultimately to blame for the ensuing genocide - solano's madness, british capital, bourgeois argentine expansionism, etc - the former remains a national hero in what then became the 'land of women.' indeed, in a country where upwards of 75% of the male population is said to have perished, whereas the bulk of maimed survivors remained impotent, it comes as no surprise that paraguayan settlement would become a tempting option for your mid-late 19th century morman castaway (don't worry, my sources tell me they've yet to leave). at one point, so the all-too-frighteningly-probable legend goes, things became so drastic that there was only one paraguayan boy to fend off every five brazilians, argentines and uruguayans. in attempts to simultaneously allude the enemy as to their real age and inspire a sense of fear, they would paint themselves and plaster yerba mate to their faces to resemble beards. i met an art historian, leftist militant and campesino activist in a national reserve last week who told me of a certain town outside of asuncion where nearly everyone has the same surname to this day, ozuna (check the phone book once you're down here). though certain conquistadors were said to have more than had their way with the 16th century female population - especially in and around the future sight of asuncion, where the native women had established the only self-sufficient sedentary civilization of sorts within hundreds of miles - the abundance of ozunas owes itself entirely to the grande guerra, as the paraguayans simply refer to what we in the north call the war of the triple alliance. in this particular town, the war had wiped out the entire male population - bar one survivor with no arms or legs that lived in a basket. desperate to repopulate their devastated population (without considering a number of other factors), the women would pick him up and pass him around the village, each having a go before returning him to his basket.

once having imbibed the lion-hearted airs that house the patria's national heroes, we went for a pedestrian jaunt around the city's center, starting with the abandoned railway (above) and skimming the edge of the city's most notorious slum towards the presidential palace a 1/2 mile down the road. our eco-tour in modern urbanism began in the plaza uruguaya, a peaceful though dirt-trodden park just across from the train station that now serves as make-shift temporary housing for what seem to be new arrivals to capital from the campo (right). at times tolerated - others arbitrarily expelled with arielsharonesque compassion - i am told they perennially come and go: tents pitched and fires stoked one day, tattered public grounds abandoned to the lonesome dirt the next. from here we descend westward along the avenida presidente franco toward the plaza housing parliament, an uber-modern glass and steel structure of sharp angles and sleek metal that's managed to retain several small, interspersed portions of original red brick that housed the previous structure - somewhat akin to what DC zoning regulations required of new construction in foggy bottom 20 years ago (ex: the uruguayan embassy). despite the lovely day, the neatly-kept plaza is mostly abandoned, save the odd taiwanese tourist. a small, half empty parking lot is scattered with shiny S-class benzinos of various colors, while a smattering of soldiers patrol the grounds. in the middle of the plaza stands the statue of 30-foot copper tree whose limbs have all been hacked away (or, rather, never granted by the artist). assuming it to be an allegory of sorts for human rights abuses of previous regimes, i didn't expect the following heading: "Asuncion - Capital of American Culture, 2009."

parliament's sleek new headquarters have the advantage of being perched at the edge of a minor precipice overlooking a bay that gives way to the rio paraguay, beyond whose natural frontier lies the interminable chaco desert, a vast expanse of arid weeds, chalked soil and stunted palm trees that consumes nearly 2/3 of the national territory. the only disadvantage of such a locale is that it is also gives way to the largest slum the city lays claim to. the sprawling shanty-principality begins literally 100 feet from where the steps of parliament leave off and quietly descends into the bay, embracing the verdant chaos of an environmentally precarious existence squeezed between a peacefully sclerotic and quasi-crumbling semi-civilization to one side and an encroaching body of water on the other. tisn't even that their presence is an aesthetic blight upon the city's good name; characteristic of so many contradictions, they blend rather nicely into the sleepy, semi-urban landscape that fades into the earth as it approaches the river. nor does the material contrast it provokes stun the observer as might first be imagined. not only is the observer not offended - what's most striking about the whole affair is precisely how natural the whole thing feels. as though our sensitivities had been shat through a mustard-colored kaleidoscope and we forget to take our 1-D glasses off. this is the world as it is, could, should and shall be, the natural order of the ontological puzzle as each piece carelessly falls into place. there is an eerie peace that reigns over everything - an accord unattained from plato to nozick alike. keep in mind that neither the moral ambiguity of great wealth nor abject poverty is in question here - merely the ease with which they're peacefully accepted, internalized and forgotten - and then subsequently reproduced.