The Paraguay Reader. History, Culture, Politics ed by Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson (review)

The Latin Americanist, December 2013 barrio residents urged the lynching (actually, burning alive with gasoline) of suspected thieves. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with how barrio residents and others discuss lynching in the context of indigenous community justice practices validated in the recent Bolivian constitution, and as part of the international discourse of human rights. Goldstein determines that barrio residents do not practice an essentialized indigenous justice (imagined in what he calls “race-space-time”), but rather cobble together bits of various legal practices (through “legal bricolage”) as they improvise their own local government. He also highlights how barrio residents often view human rights as a concept imposed by the developed world which only serves to protect thieves and undermines barrio security. Since theory dominates this book, how it is received will depend very much on whether or not the reader appreciates highly theoretical works. Outlawed shares the problems of similar works: it cannot be described as eminently “readable,” and only time will tell whether Goldstein’s theoretical contributions will be taken up and expanded on by other scholars, or whether they will be forgotten within ten to twenty years. Many ethnographies engage less profoundly with theory than does Outlawed, and thus spend more time with the actual people who are the subjects of research. In the end, the reader will remember the death of Wilmer Vargas and the achievements and personality of don Miguel more than Outlawed’s theoretical language, and will perhaps wish that the book had concentrated more on stories like theirs. Gary Van Valen Department of History University of West Georgia THE PARAGUAY READER. HISTORY, CULTURE, POLITICS. By Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson (ed). Durham and London: Duke, 2013. p. 475, $27.95. The Paraguay Reader is a much needed and therefore welcome contribution to the practically nonexistent field of Paraguayan studies. Anyone who wishes to better understand Paraguay will find this book indispensable . As stated in its introduction, Paraguay has been surrounded by myths for too long. It is true that myths sometimes bring wealth to culture; nonetheless Paraguay’s “myths” tend to perpetuate injustice. I appreciate, therefore, the way in which this book weaves history, culture , and politics into a whole narrative. Its contextualization of those unfair myths open up the possibility of gaining a more comprehensive understanding of other constituting myths. The most notable intention of the editors is to find an equilibrium among the many different points of view regarding Paraguayan history, culture, and politics. Maybe the search for this equilibrium explains the absence of the greatest Paraguayan writer, 146 Book Reviews Augusto Roa Bastos. While his spirit dwells in the thoughts of other writers included in the collection, the reader nonetheless needs to be aware of this important absence. Peter Lambert and Andrew Nickson have divided the book following general chronological development into seven sections. The chronological approach, while at times simplistic, allows for an easier understanding of the Paraguayan problematic. The First Section, “The birth of Paraguay,” opens with a sacred guaranı́ chant “The Foundation of Human Speech” that had not been published in English previously. This section constructs a sense of the colonial period using the anthropological discourse generated during the twentieth century about the relationship between the Guaranı́, Jesuits, and the Spanish colonists élite. An anonymous report on Paraguay to the London Press published in 1824 inaugurated one of the most traumatic times in Paraguayan history, “The Nationalist Experiment,” which was characterized by the generation of many ambivalent effects. This period consisted in the creation of a self-sufficient, modernized, and independent Republic, as well as a bloody, violent and unjust war, the war of Triple Alliance. Oscillating between extremes, the section offers an interpretation of “justice” embodied by a relation to the Sovereign, Francisco Solano López. The line marking disagreement about the rightness of the war plays out as a difference between those who loved their sovereign, and those who opposed him. From the ruins of the war, the liberal national project produces its effects. In the Third Section again the editors show us a swinging point of view spanning from Rafael Barrett’s treatment of the devastating system of capitalist production in the yerba...