“Don’t Do It” – A Passionate and Cautionary Tale from Non-Paraguayanists

Becoming and Being a Scholar of Paraguay

This usually involves being on the receiving end of strange looks from “other” Latin American scholars (let alone scholars of other nations/regions.)

These are some of the highlights of comments I have gotten from other scholars (names removed to protect the innocent academics from themselves.)

Conversation #1 

Famous Scholar #1: “You will never get a job.”
Me:  “I still want to study Paraguay.”
Famous Scholar #1: “Your family is from Argentina. Do that.”
Me:  “I want to study Paraguay.”
Famous Scholar #1:  “You will never get a job.”

Conversation #2

Famous Scholar #2:  “You want to study Paraguay? Have you been there?”
Me:  “Yes.”
Famous Scholar #2:  “And you still want to study it?”

Conversation #3

Famous Scholar #3:  “Nobody expected the Paraguayans to win the Chaco War.”
Me: “The Paraguayans did.”
Famous Scholar #3: “Oh.”

Converstation 4

Academic Friend: “Hi ‘famous scholar #4.’ Let me introduce you to Bridget Chesterton.”
Famous Scholar #4:  “Oh, your the Paraguayist.”
Me:  “Yes, I am!”
Voice In My Head: “Yes!  I can study Paraguay and have a job and be someone!”

Lessons learned (or not learned) from the Above Conversations:

1. You will not get a job.
2. Paraguay is terrible. 
3. Academics think Paraguay is invisible.
4. Paraguay is worth studying.

Follow Your Passions?

I do not believe in following your passions.  There are a couple of reasons behind this philosophy.

1.  It is an overused word.  Other words in this category include – but are not limited to – “very,” “amazing,” “big,” “horrible,” “tremendous.”  I will stop now, but clearly I could go on.
2. A scholar is not passionate about what they study.  They are curious and interested in questions.  There is a difference.  I am passionate about my husband, my following of the Argentine fútbal (during the World Cup) team… But overall, I am not passionate about Paraguayan history.  In other words, passions can let you down or diminish over time. (Sorry Jim – mmm…. I better stop now.)
3. I am curious and interested in Paraguayan history.  I have lots of questions that I am seeking responses to.  I got this way because:
   1. There is always something new to discover in the archives about Paraguayan history.
   2. There are lots and lots of unanswered questions.
   3. I always have a “new” twist (questions) on the way fellow Latin Americanists see the region and ask questions.
   4. I can teach people about Paraguay now.  Few people on this planet can do that!
   5. I am part of a pequeño but, tight group of scholars who are awesome. See a brief list of those people in the secondary texts section of this blog. They have asked questions and gotten responses; but that only begs for more questions! Such is academic life.
   6. I like different.

If you are interested and curious (have questions) in a particular topic/region/time, study it.  Do not let other academics drive your career.  Drive your own career.  If that means studying Paraguay, then do so.

The rest will simply be history (or future blog post fodder.)

Bridget María Chesterton
Professor of History
Buffalo State

 

 

 

 

Most Commonly Asked Question

Bridget and Her “Nona” Maria Margarita Tita de Gaido in Asunción (August 1989)

How did you become interested in Paraguay?

This question has been posed by academics, friends, and acquaintances many times over the years to all of those who study the landlocked nation of eight million.

Many of my academic friends who study Paraguay became interested in the history and academics for the following short reasons:

1.  They are Paraguayan
2.  They were missionaries to Paraguay at some point
3.  They worked for the U.S. Peace Corps in Paraguay
4.   They have family in Paraguay
5.   They married a Paraguayan (close to reason #3)
6.   They are Mennonite (also close to reason #3)
7.   Some business tie to Paraguay
8.   They are Anthony Bourdain and their great great great grandfather died there

I should note that this list is entirely unscientific and based only on conversations with fellow academics (I only know of Bourdain because he had a whole show about it.)

I do not have any of these particular narratives.  My story of of Paraguay comes from family in Argentina. Which while are geographically close are two certainly not one and the same.

Paraguay and Argentina in relation to one another.

Specifically, my mother was born in Córdoba, Argentina (I’ll leave the year out as not to embarrass her.)  But a lot of her family remained (and remain) in Argentina when she immigrated to the States.  I was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

Location of Córdoba, Argentina where Mom was born.

 

In 1989, I was visiting my family – living with my aunt, uncle, and cousins in Córdoba.  That year the Argentine peso was in free fall.  It was the era of hyper-inflation. As a result, traveling in Argentina on the U.S. dollar was quite inexpensive.  My parents were able to pay for some nice trips for me including a wonderful trip to Bariloche with my Aunt and cousins and a trip to Iguazú Falls.

I traveled to Iguazú with my grandparents, Carlos and Maria.  The bus tour we were on went through Asunción, Paraguay.  We were given a guided tour of Asunción and saw many of the tourist attractions of the city.  The Panteón de Heroes, the Palacio de los López, and went to one of Asunción’s famous dinner/music/dance shows.  It was great.

But what I most loved about Paraguay was not the tourist attractions, but how it was not Argentina.  It was the first time in my life when I felt out of place, like a real tourist.  Because I had been traveling to Argentina since I was a small child, I felt at home in Argentina.  I knew the food, the language, the culture.  I had a strong connection to Argentina.

In Paraguay I did not.

I tired palmitos (hearts of palm) for the first time.  Saw people drinking tereré.  Heard Guaraní.  I was hooked.

When I went to graduate school, first at the University of New Mexico and later at Stony Brook, I knew I wanted to study Paraguay.  And I did!

The rest is history.

Bridget María Chesterton

Professor of History

Buffalo State

Genaro Romero and Digitalizing My Collection

When I was writing my dissertation “several” years back, I got interested in a Paraguayan from the early twentieth century named Genaro Romero.  His extensive collection of published writings were difficult to track down.  But the Museo Andres Barbero in Asunción did have a collection of his work for the Boletín de la Direccion de tierras y colonias and after weeks of investigation I came to find out that the Universidad Iberoamerica del Paraguay (UNIBE) has an extensive collection of his work in their archive.  I was also able to purchase a few volumes of the Boletín from used bookstores in Asunción.  In all honesty I never came back with that much material, but enough to make me wonder what I was going to do with it when I was “done” with it.  The though that so much material was available for purchase in used books stores is avaible for sale to foreigners and locals alike is problematic.  It means that much material ends up in the hands of private collectors or in archives outside the country and as such as as is not always accessible to historians and the Paraguayan public in general.

Year I No. 1 (1926)

A Decade Later

It has been over a decade since this material has landed in Western New York and over 4 years since the book on which my dissertation was based was published by the University of New Mexico Press (The Grandchildren of Solano Lopez: Frontier and Nation in Paraguay 1904-1936) and yet much of the material I brought back from Paraguay sits on a shelf.  Over the years I have begun to digitalize some of the material and posted it to my academic page on Academia.edu.  But, Academica.edu does not allow for larger files, so much of the material I have been unable to “publish.”  More importantly, Academia.edu requires uses to have an account (although free) to view the material.  This means that much of the material is still unaccessible to a larger group of users.  I want to start to change that in my own small way.  I am hoping that I can use this site to publish more of the material that I have begun to digitalize.  Also, once digitalized, I am going to start sending the original material back to Paraguay, where it belongs.

Genaro Romero

Today we start with Genaro Romero and his Boletín.  He was a Paraguayan agronomist and the minister of the Department of Land and Colonies in Paraguay.  The journal he published under the name of the department began in 1926 (I do not know the end date of the journal) and emphasized the following in the first 10 numbers that I have digitalized as a .pdf:

• The efforts of the Paraguayan government to bring immigrant to the country
• Agricultural products that could be grown in Paraguay with ease
• The importance of the Chaco frontier in the development of the nation
• Various types of Paraguayan mining and industry
• Facts and figures including but not limited to trade, agronomy, population, immigration statistics, land, water
• Various laws pertaining to land and land usage in Paraguay
• Mennonite colonization
• Wood products and production

This is not an inclusive listing of the material he published, nor have I digitalized the collection I have in its entirely yet.  But over the next few months I hope to have more of his material available to the public and am eager to return the originals to the land from which they came.

Genaro Romero

The above link is to the a .pdf of the the first for numbers of the Boletín de la Dirección de tierras y colonias (1926, 1927) No. 1-4

Genaro Romero 2

This link is for the numbers 1-10 of Boletín de la Direcctión de tierras y colonias (1927-1928)

Bridget María Chesterton, Professor of History, Buffalo State