The Economist magazine has a semi-tongue in cheek indicator of exchange rates it calls “The Big Mac Index“. The indicator compares the price of a Big Mac, converted to dollars at the going exchange rate, across several countries, to gauge currency over- and under-valuation and the extent to which there is purchasing power parity. It is a quick and not completely dismissible test of serious issues.
I have my own version of the Big Mac Index as I travel to countries I have not been to before-it is the “first five minutes in the airport” test. Obviously, it shares the same weakness as the fast food test, in that it’s based on a tiny sample, yet, also similar, it is based on a sound principle, in this case the acuity of first impressions.
My first trial of the test came when I went to Guatemala. As I headed for the airport exit, I was struck by the quiet, order, and even solemnity that pervaded the Guatemalans waiting behind the crowd barrier. Dark, sunburnt farmer faces with black cowboy hats and big belt buckles. Few people talking and the small crowd of people standing there continued the straight line, even after the barrier ended. How sharply this scene contrasted with Lima, where I had come from-there everyone pushes to get to the front of the barrier, while others pretend that the barrier doesn’t apply to them, strolling into the space beyond (and often get away with it). Disorder, noise, and characteristic pushiness.
A friend with years living in Guatemala recently referred to a famous Guatemalan dance, el son, as “typically Guatemalan”: head down, hands clasped behind the waist, and quick foot movement-reserved, even shy, and not showy. My first minutes in the airport appeared to register these characteristics immediately.
Sunset over Asuncion
My second test of the gauge occurred a week ago, as I landed in Asunción, where I am writing from. As we wait for the luggage, a man with a sunburn, dirty blonde hair, and a face as European looking as mine leans on a dolly, wearing a vest that reads “Maletero” (luggage handler). He turns to his fellow luggage handler and breaks out in Guaraní, the native language, which accompanies daily life here in Paraguay. Coming from Peru and Andean sensibilities, such a scene turns the world on its head, so much so that I don’t know if your average Peruvian would even be able to comprehend it.
To be clear, there are both white European faces and native languages in Peru-in fact, lots of both. But I can assure you that there is not one white European face in all of the 9 million people in greater Lima who makes his living through physical labor-and very few are fluent in any native language in Peru, such as Quechua or Aymara. The luggage handler was not a rich person, slumming, but rather your typical Paraguayan, a mix of Guaraní Indian with European immigrant stock-and like most Paraguayans, fluent in Guaraní as well as Spanish.
As I leave the terminal, balmy air gusts this way and that laced with a pleasant aroma of wood smoke, almost like eucalyptus leaves burning. Later that night, as I wander out to the street outside my hotel, I see an additional reason for the pleasant smell: small hibachis set up on the street cooking fat little German sausages.
An American acquaintance summed up Paraguay like this, “there are no hard edges here.” Questions asked of strangers are answered with straightforward, attentive replies. In the week I have been here, I have been asked detailed questions about the bus routes, which-shocked that I wasn’t spotted as a foreigner, something Peruvians recognize from an easy quarter mile away-I tried to carry off, nonchalantly saying as much as I could, until I had to admit that I wasn’t familiar with any bus routes, because I was a foreigner.
What would a society that was blind to race and considered kindness to strangers a basic tenet of life look like? What if such a human society were in a bountiful, generous and benign natural setting, as if nature were complicit, and wanted to show its approval? And what if the rest of the twenty-first century seemed only tenuously connected to you, something about as real as Hollywood movies? Such a place might look like Paraguay.
Behind altar of main church at Trinidad reduction
I am not the first to be inspired to flights of Utopian fantasy by this place. The deep sense of isolation and paradisiacal beauty of the landscape and Paraguayans leads the mind to thoughts of starting afresh, re-creating life based on first principles and true values. Immigrants from places like Germany, Russia, Ukraine, even Japan, have re-made their lives here over more than the past century. Early in the twentieth century, Mennonites came from Canada, the U.S., and Russia and move out deep into the Chaco to start afresh. The Paraguayan map is a testament to this history. While dominated by names in Guaraní (Caacupé, Río Jejuí Guazú) and in Spanish, with an often religious bent (Asunción, Encarnación, Villa Rica), it has places like Juan E. O’Leary, Filadelfia (center of the Mennonites), and Hohenau (founded by Japanese immigrants).
Starting over, as immigrants do, is part of the attraction here. Famously, one of Paraguay’s great leaders, Mariscal Francisco Lopez, on a major state tour of Europe, fell in love with an Irish woman, who it is often said was a high-end prostitute at the time, who then accompanied him back to Paraguay. “Madame Lynch” as she universally became known in Paraguay, returned to become the focal point of Asunción’s high society. Or consider the plot of Graham Greene’s Travels With My Aunt, where the protagonist escapes his troubles by moving permanently to Paraguay, marrying a Paraguayan, and running a small contraband operation.
Main plaza of Jesuit reduction, Trinidad, Paraguay
The history of seeking to start anew and create the perfect society in splendid isolation goes back to the Jesuits, who between 1587 and 1768 created small self-contained villages (“reductions”), where they converted the Guaraní to Christianity, but also taught them to read, write, and to become skilled craftsmen. Generally known as one of the few benevolent and positive interactions between the Europeans and Indians in colonial Latin America, eastern Paraguay and northern Argentina contain the ruins of 30 such settlements.
The communities were based on free association, and contained areas for vegetable gardens, workshops, a school, and even a house to care for widows and orphans. I visited what is said to be the best preserved of the Jesuit ruins, those of the town of Trinidad. I was impressed by the completeness of the complex and its picturesque layout, with bell towers and cloistered walkways leading from one courtyard to the next-a little Oxford University in the fertile plains of Eastern Paraguay, next to the massive Paraná.
Frieze showing cherubs in main cathedral
Round faced cherubs line the frieze of the impressive main church at Trinidad, and I can make out one blowing a trumpet and another serving a chalice, others appear to be busy at a desk with books and another in carpentry. I am alone at the site on a cloudy mid-40 degree (Fahrenheit) day of stern weather. The cherubs, who appear just slightly non-European, give the place a dreamy feel and a sense of the Jesuits’ vision of culture and industriousness and all being right on earth and in heaven. That optimism contrasts with the gloomy day and the fact that, after all, this is a ruin. The Jesuits were expelled from the Americas in 1768 by King Carlos III of Spain and the residents of the reductions became fewer and fewer until the settlements were eventually abandoned.
Cherub, Jesuit reduction, Trinidad, Paraguay
I return from the ruins to the small border city of Encarnación. The Paraná river forms the border between Paraguay and Argentina at this point and the Argentine medium-sized city of Posadas lies on the other side. It is the day of the World Cup 2010 eliminatory match between Argentina and Paraguay. I decide to spend game time on both sides of the border to get a feel for the two cultures. I cross the bridge over the Paraná-over a mile wide at this point-and immediately begin to pick up differences at Argentine immigration. But, ah, that is a story for another edition of the five minute airport test.
