Northern Paraguay & the Chaco

Introducing Northern Paraguay & the Chaco

The Gran Chaco is the place to escape the crowds and experience raw wilderness. This vast plain – roughly divided into the Low Chaco (west of Asunción), Middle Chaco (the Mennonite region) and High Chaco (low density thorny scrub to the north) – encompasses the entire western half of Paraguay and stretches into Argentina and Bolivia. During the rainy season large tracts become swampy plains, while in dry weather it’s an arid dustbowl with harsh thorn forest.

Although the Chaco accounts for over 60% of Paraguayan territory, less than 3% of the population actually lives here. Historically it was a refuge for indigenous hunter-gatherers; today, several indigenous groups continue to live here – some have their assigned regions, following the assignment of land in the middle Chaco to the Mennonite communities in the 1930s. Close to the Río Paraguay, campesinos (rural dwellers practicing subsistence agriculture) have built picturesque houses of palm logs while army bases and cattle estancias (extensive grazing establishments) inhabit the denser thorn forests of the high Chaco.

Over recent years Brazilian settlers have moved into northeastern Paraguay, deforesting the countryside to plant coffee and cotton and squeezing out the existing population, including the few remaining Aché. Both the regions in the northeast and northwest are renowned for trading in contraband goods.

Controversy hit the area in 2000 when the Moonies (Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church) purchased 360, 000 hectares of the Chaco, including the entire town of Puerto Casado, for an estimated US$15 million.

Each September sees the Trans-Chaco Rally, a three-day world motor-sport competition, said to be one of the toughest on the planet.

Last updated: Mar 2, 2009