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National Geographic : 1982 Aug
Contents
expanse where only three of every hundred Paraguayans live: the Chaco Boreal, known by some as the "green hell." Yet I found spectacular beauty in Para guay, especially in the thundering cascade of Guaira Falls on the Parana River, which forms the eastern border (page 246). In a chartered plane I flew over that magnificent cascade, marveling at the sight of a slow moving river suddenly roaring into life, sending a rainbow-laced cloud of mist into a bright blue sky. Not much longer will anyone witness the sight; soon the Parana will back up behind giant Itaipu Dam, and rising waters will drown the spectacular falls. We flew on to Itaipu, 150 kilometers downriver-one of the mightiest construc tion projects on earth. From above it was an ugly landscape of red earth and raw gray concrete (page 247). But to most Paraguay ans it surely must be beautiful, for it symbol izes an economic future filled with promise. Status symbol for a member of the first family, a mansion patternedafter the White House in Washington, D. C., goes up in Asunci6n (right)for businessman Hugo Alfredo StroessnerMora, son of the president. Witnesses to Paraguay'scolonialpast, angel heads (below right) once adornedthe Jesuit mission of Trinidad, founded near the Parand River in 1706 and now being excavated by archaeologists.At the height of the Jesuit influence, 100,000 GuaraniIndians lived at settlements surrounding 30 missions in the Parand and Uruguay River Valleys. The Spanish crown, wary of the Jesuits' power, expelled themfrom the empire in 1767. I toured the project with Luis Hernando B6beda, an engineer on the technical control staff. "It's the largest hydro dam in the world," he stated proudly. "After it goes fully on stream in 1988, it will produce 12,600 megawatts, six times as much elec tricity as Egypt's Aswan High Dam." In addition to the 18 giant turbines at this site, shared with Brazil, two other dams, in partnership with Argentina, will harness the Parana farther downstream. "These dams have been a dream for years," Sefior B6beda said. "It was President Stroessner who got the projects moving." Though Argentines began buying Para guayan properties heavily in the 1880s, there was little investment from overseas. "Businessmen just didn't trust a country that changed governments as often as we did," he said. "But Stroessner has brought us more than a quarter of a century of stabil ity. Europeans, North Americans, and Jap anese are (Continued on page 250) 244
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