Note 187 — Chapter VI

A recent writer in the little journal published on yellow packing-paper in the Socialist colony of Cosme, in Paraguay (Cosme Monthly, November, 1898), has a curious passage corroborating what I have so often observed myself. Under the heading of ‘A Paraguayan Market’, he says: ‘The Guaraní clings stubbornly to the Guaraní customs. This is irritating to the European, but who shall say that the Guaraní is not right? . . . European settlement cannot but be fatal to the Guaraní, however profitable it may be to land-owning and mercantile classes. . . . The Paraguayan market is a woman’s club . . . they will come thirty or forty miles with a clothful of the white curd-cheese of the country, contentedly journeying on foot along the narrow paths. They will cut a cabbage into sixteenths and eat their cheese themselves rather than sell it under market price.’ Long may they do so, for so long will they be free, and perhaps poor; but, then, in countries such as Paraguay freedom and poverty are identical.