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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.
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