Social life tends to revolve around the family. Godparents are particularly important; if parents become unable to provide for their children, godparents are expected to assume responsibility for them.

Paraguayan cuisine reflects traditional Guaraní cooking styles. Beef dishes and freshwater river fish are popular. Other typical foods are soups, often with meat, and various breads, especially chipa, which is flavoured with cheese and egg. Corn (maize) is a staple ingredient in many dishes, including sopa paraguaya, a pie made from corn, eggs, and milk; avatí mbaipy, a corn soup; and mbaipy he-é, a dessert made from corn, milk, and molasses. Beer and caña, a cane sugar spirit, are popular drinks. Yerba maté, the local herbal tea, is consumed year-round—chilled in summer, hot in winter. A common pastime is drinking tereré (a bitter tea made from the same type of leaves that are used to brew yerba maté) from a shared gourd or from a hollowed cow’s horn, or guampa, which often is beautifully carved.

Outside Asunción the pace of life is slow. Religious celebrations throughout the country are well attended; for example, thousands of Paraguayans visit Caacupé on December 8 to participate in the city’s annual celebration of the festival of the Virgin of Miracles. The Feast of St. John (San Juan Ara), on June 24, is celebrated with traditional games, one of which includes walking on hot coals. The country’s Afro-Paraguayan community at Kamba Kua celebrates an annual music and dance festival. Throughout the country on August 1 it is a tradition to imbibe carrulim, a Guaraní drink made of caña, ruda (a root plant that produces yellow flowers and is used mostly as a medicine), and lemon. Those three ingredients, according to Guaraní beliefs, bring happiness, drive away evil, and protect a person’s health. Many Paraguayans believe that the month of August brings misfortune and bad luck to those who do not drink the concoction. Herb vendors and kiosks sell carrulim in specially prepared bottles in towns and villages each August 1.

The arts

Paraguay has a distinctive musical tradition, especially of songs and ballads. Paraguayan songs, which tend to be languid and sentimental, were made popular by artists such as Los Paraguayos and Luis Alberto del Paraná in the 1950s. Typical music for dancing includes polkas, courtship dances of Bohemian folk origin, and the galopa, a variant of which is the bottle dance, so called because the dancers balance bottles on their heads. José Asunción Flores (1904–72) was the country’s most-outstanding composer and harpist. He invented the guaranía, a musical style that features haunting and melancholic melodies that encapsulate the Paraguayan identity. Feliz Pérez Cardozo and Emiliano R. Fernández are also noted for their musical compositions.

The number of books published in Paraguay increased significantly in the 1980s and particularly after the coup in 1989. Paraguay’s most-famous author is Augusto Roa Bastos, whose novel Yo, el supremo (“I, the Supreme”; 1974), based on the life of the 19th-century dictator José Gaspar de Francia, won wide acclaim.

Cultural institutions

Paraguay’s principal cultural institutions are located in Asunción. There are learned societies concerned with Paraguayan and Guaraní history and culture as well as various other societies and research institutes. The Normal School of Music, the Conservatory of Music, the National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Asunción Symphony Orchestra are major arts institutions. Paraguay has museums of ethnography, natural history, and military history as well as art galleries with collections of the work of Paraguayan artists such as Carlos Colombino and Ricardo Migliorisi.

Library services are centred in Asunción. The largest collections are in the National Library and the National Archive as well as in the private Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic University.

Sports and recreation

Paraguayans are fond of sports. While football (soccer) is the most-popular sport, fishing, tennis, basketball, and golf are also common. The annual Transchaco Rally, a three-day motor rally covering thousands of miles of dirt roads of the sparsely populated Paraguayan Chaco, is held in September. Paraguay made its Olympic debut at the 1968 Games in Mexico City.

Media and publishing

Censorship was widely practiced during the Alfredo Stroessner years but was relaxed considerably under the Andrés Rodríguez Pedotti government. Virtually all newspapers and periodicals are published in Spanish. The Asunción daily newspapers include ABC Color (shut down during the Stroessner regime from 1984 to 1989, it resumed publication in 1989), Última Hora, El Popular, and La Nación.

The National Telecommunications Administration oversees radio and television broadcasting. Radio Nacional is the government network, but there are many privately operated stations. Commercial television networks transmit from Asunción, Encarnación, and Ciudad del Este.

Early history

The Guaraní occupied the region between the Paraguay and Paraná rivers long before the arrival of Europeans (about 2000–1000 bce). They were a Tupian-speaking people, and in most respects their customs resembled those of the other Indians in the tropical forests. The women cultivated corn (maize), cassava (manioc), and sweet potatoes, and the men hunted and fished. They were warlike seminomadic people who lived in large thatched dwellings grouped in villages; each village was surrounded by a defensive palisade. In the 15th century raiders from the Gran Chaco region made frequent attacks upon Guaraní tribes. Crossing the Paraguay River, the Guaraní retaliated and subdued their enemies, carrying the conflict into the margins of the Inca empire. They were, therefore, the natural allies of early European explorers who were seeking short routes to the mineral wealth of Peru. Alejo García, making his way from the Brazilian coast in 1524, and Sebastian Cabot, sailing up the Paraná in 1526, were the earliest of those explorers to reach the area.