Habilitationsschrift--Philosophische Fakultät--Universität Köln, 1992. / Contient des notes en espagnol. Bibliogr. p. 468-502. Index.

Large-scale, multispecies monitoring programs are used widely to assess changes in wildlife populations; however, they often assume constant detectability when documenting species occurrence. This assumption is rarely accurate because animal populations vary considerably across time and space. Furthermore, detectability of a species can be influenced by a number of physical, biological, or anthropogenic factors (e.g., weather, seasonality, topography, sampling methods, urban development). Analyses of habitat factors affecting occupancy and detection of mammalian species have not been conducted in the Paraguayan Chaco. To address this gap in the literature and provide conservation recommendations, I estimated site occupancy rates using species-specific detection probabilities for focal mammalian species at 3 study sites in the Chaco ecoregion of Paraguay. During remote camera surveys conducted August - November 2011 - 2012, I used photographic data and model selection techniques to assess the influence of different survey and site covariates on occupancy of several focal mammalian species: maned wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), Geoffroy's cat (Leopardus geoffroyi), puma (Puma concolor), crab-eating fox (Cerdocyon thous), pampas fox (Lycalopex gymnocercus), collared peccary (Pecari tajacu), white-lipped peccary (Tayassu pecari), South American tapir (Tapirus terrestris), and giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla). I recorded 2,034 photographs of 24 mammalian species at 64 camera sites; among those, 1,353 photographs and 529 independent survey-detections were of these 9 focal species. Detection of maned wolves and peccaries was higher in 2011 than 2012; other species did not show significant differences in detection by year. Peccaries were detected more frequently during higher temperatures, but foxes were detected more frequently during lower temperatures. The crab-eating fox was the species occupying the most sites (68%) and white-lipped peccary was the rarest, occupying only 30% of the study area. Anthropogenic disturbances (i.e., urban areas, paved roads, and human structures) negatively affected most species. Maned wolves and collared peccaries appeared to prefer grasslands, while puma and crab-eating fox used areas closer to water. White-lipped peccaries appeared to be most common or widely-distributed at the Toro Mocho study site. My research will provide land managers and conservation planners with an understanding of how mammals are distributed across the Paraguayan Chaco, as well as informing future decisions concerning land use and development by the rural human population. To further broad-scale conservation goals, wildlife biologists in Paraguay should seek partnerships with rural stakeholders to mitigate the effects of continuing agro-industrial development. Moreover, additional protected areas and buffers should be sought to maintain lands in natural conditions, including large areas set aside as wildlife reserves.

No description available.

This thesis explores the cultural interactions between the Jesuit missionaries and the Guaraní indigenous peoples in the missions of Paraguay from 1609 to 1767. A particular attention is given to the missions’ formative years in which both groups refined their cultural strategies. Specifically, this thesis will explore the collaboration between the two groups and the cultural concessions made by both sides for the project to succeed. While missions are used as an area of evangelization by the Orders that operate them, involvement with the Jesuits allowed the Guaraní to avoid interactions with other settlers and colonial authorities. By agreeing to convert, they gained the protection of the Jesuits. However, they consistently threatened to leave or to refuse work if their protectors took away their most treasured cultural elements: their divine language and their use of sacred herbs like yerba mate. Furthermore, this thesis delves into power relations in the forgotten frontier. An inconsequential source of income for the Spanish Crown, the Province of Paraguay’s main importance was a presence in the buffer zone next to the Portuguese Empire in Brazil. Actors in this frontier─including the Guaraní and the Jesuits─were granted more autonomy and were able to interact with very little royal interference, resulting in an organic cultural exchange between the groups.

El objetivo del presente trabajo de investigación fue explorar cómo el bilingüismo castellano-guaraní perdura en jóvenes de áreas urbanas de la ciudad de Fernando de la Mora, Asunción, Paraguay. Para esto, se contó con la participación de alumnos, padres y maestros de tres centros educativos de dicha ciudad a partir de lo cual se levantó información mediante entrevistas semi estructuradas y las observación participante en los diversos espacios de socialización de los jóvenes. A partir de la investigación se descubrió, en cuanto al uso del guaraní por los jóvenes, que estos se sienten libres para hablar en una u otra lengua, en cualquiera de los espacios en los que se encuentren (en la calle, hogares y escuela). Sin embargo, existen situaciones y temas generales en los cuales los alumnos, consciente o inconscientemente, consideran pertinente el uso de una u otra lengua. Hay una especie de libreto que se aprende, el cual indica que el guaraní tiene mayor cabida en contextos y en temas informales de conversación (para bromear o fastidiar) y el castellano tiene lugar en los aspectos más formales de la vida.

My thesis examines from an ethnographic account how history has been made, told and interpreted by the Angaité people of the Chaco since the Paraguayan nation-state effectively carried out the colonization of this territory in the 19th century until the present day. The key elements of this account are the Angaité’s notions and practices on alterity, storytelling and shamanism and how they interplay with one another. I explore the notions of alterity and its counterpart similarity in the context of multiple material transactions in which the Angaité engage both among themselves and with outsiders. I also examine the inseparable socio-moral evaluations attached to such transactions. I show how certain transactions such as exchange or commoditisation do not necessarily conflict with good social relations. Nevertheless, the closest relationships – preferably evoked in kinship terms - are constantly constructed by the combination of several practices including sharing, pooling, cohabitation and companionship and the relational morality that underpins them. This relational morality, I argue, is both inscribed and enacted through the telling of Nanek Any’a narratives –“Old news/events”. I analyze some of these narratives in order to show how the Angaité people interpret the consequences of the colonization of the Chaco. For this I provide an intelligible context for the Nanek Any’a that may otherwise appear contradictory or incomprehensible to a non-Angaité listener. The Angaité’s versions of history compared to the official accounts challenge the simplistic of the Angaité as “acculturated” and a homogenous indigenous people and situate them as main actors of their own lives. Rather than the Angaité being the victims of history the Nanek Any’a emphasize that it was the mistakes and failing of their ancestors in their original encounter with the Paraguayans that resulted in an unbalanced relationship with the latter in socio-economic terms. In addition to this, I describe in the light of the historical processes undergone in the lives of the Angaité, how the shamanic discourses and capacities and Angaité cosmology have changed. I explore how they have constantly incorporated external elements, and thus such shamanic elements pervades contemporary areas of life and interactions that include not only the paradigmatic indigenous shaman, but unusual figures such as pastors, powerful outsiders and leaders.

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1979 C53 / Master of Science

Call number: LD2668 .T4 1985 G74 / Master of Science

"Cine en Emergencia: National Identity in Post-dictatorial Audiovisual Production in Paraguay," is an academic study of narrative and documentary film from Paraguay. Cinematic production in Paraguay has "boomed" only with the last decade in part due to the censorship of the long-standing Stroessner regime and in part because new digital technologies have made audiovisual production more accessible. This study explores the dominance of a particular essentialized national identity in narrative and documentary film in Paraguay. This iconic protagonist and space (the campesino in the rural setting) is not the site of true Paraguayan authenticity, but rather, the product of competing national and transnational forces. Inside Paraguay, rural icons become the grounds from which to express political resistance and frustration with the status quo. Outside of Paraguay--particularly in the European power center of film festivals, funding and awards--a homogeneous and uncontested set of representations of national identity becomes the paradigm that satisfies the "first world" need to essentialize and orientalize the "third world." In the introduction I make my methodology clear, stressing that I am focusing my critical apparatus on circulating discourses regarding what it means to be a citizen of that Paraguay. I also grapple with the difficulty of dealing with a film archive that is classified as national while trying to dislodge the national frame as the paradigm for analysis and provide a problematization of the relationship between film and nation that has been so widely and uncritically accepted. In Chapter 1 I provide a historical contextualization for the relationship between film and the nation and provide important details in regards to the history of the moving image in Paraguay. In Chapter 2 I explore Hamaca Paraguaya's (2006) potential for resistance through formal subversion, historical revisionism, self-reflexivity and political denunciation. Using a double-register, in Chapter 3 I describe the transnational power structure as a palimpsest against which Paraguayan film is necessarily constructed and how this bleeds through into Hamaca as a cultural product. In Chapter 4 I analyze Frankfurt (2006) as a documentary that creates parallels between Paraguay's historical border wars and present-day global neoliberal capitalism.

Este ensaio percorre algumas cartografias imaginárias do Paraguai, e suas transformações, pensadas a partir da produção literária de autores paraguaios, incluídas a música popular e a produção cinematográfica, desde finais do século XIX até finais do século XX. As reflexões estão articuladas em torno a representações insulares, partindo de imaginários universais. Com frequência, o Paraguai é definido como insular, em função de condições geográficas, políticas, econômicas e culturais mediterrâneas, que marcam uma distância das metrópoles globais e regionais a princípio ressaltando a falta de costa marítima do Estado paraguaio . Historicamente, estas condições teriam contribuído a um suposto estatuto de invisibilidade do país, e dificuldade de participação e posta em circulação de produções simbólicas. Algumas representações aludem a um sentido de perda, em termos territoriais; outras, à impenetrabilidade cultural ou distância geográfica do país, incluída uma suposta ausência de processos modernizadores no país, comparado com a região. O conceito de heterotopia de Michel Foucault é empregado para interpretar algumas destas representações, assim como a formação de ilhas geológicas e da imaginação descritas por Gilles Deleuze. A reflexão sobre a formação e a transformação da metáfora do Paraguai insular apela à ideia de movimentos verticais e horizontais: de separação implicada na imagem de elevação para uma reconstrução, nos períodos de pós-guerra; ou na barbarização do Paraguai por parte de seus opositores culturais ; de fuga e implosão, como saída do fechamento insular; assim como de aproximação, que alude à modernização do Paraguai, e sua integração a processos regionais e globais. Nos autores estudados, uma tensão entre línguas está presente na escrita de ficção: o guarani é a língua majoritária da sociedade paraguaia, mas a produção literária em castelhano é hegemônica; porém, existem textos híbridos que misturam as duas línguas. Logo após a queda da ditadura de Alfredo Strossner, e em coincidência com a fundação do MERCOSUL, escritores paraguaios e brasileiros intensificaram uma produção literária que mistura castelhano, português, e também guarani: signo possível de abertura dos limites insulares, e uma aproximação a processos modernizadores, o fenômeno também pode ser pensado como uma expressão de maturidade do colonialismo brasileiro no Paraguai / This essay covers some imaginary cartography of Paraguay, and its transformations, thought from the literary production of Paraguayan authors, including popular music and film production from the late nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. The reflections are articulated around island representations, starting from universal imaginaries. Often, Paraguay is defined as insular, due to geographic, political, economic and cultural landlocked conditions, marking a distance from the global and regional metropolises at first, highlighting the lack of coastline of Paraguayan State . Historically, these conditions would have contributed to a supposed invisibility status of the country, and a difficulty of participation and circulation of symbolic productions. Some representations allude to a sense of loss, in territorial terms; others, to cultural impenetrability or geographical distance of the country, including the alleged absence of modernizing process in the country, compared to the region. Michel Foucaults concept of heterotopy is used to interpret some of these representations, as well as the formation of geological and imaginary islands described by Gilles Deleuze. Reflection on the formation and transformation of the metaphor of insular Paraguay appeals to the idea of vertical and horizontal movements: separation involved in the image of a rising for a reconstruction, in periods of post-war; or in barbarization of Paraguay by its cultural opponents ; leakage and implosion, as output of insular closure; as well as approach, which refers to the Paraguayan modernization, and its integration into regional and global processes. In the authors studied, a tension between languages is present in their fiction writing: Guarani is the majority language of the Paraguayan society, but the literary production in Spanish is hegemonic; however, there are hybrid texts that mix both languages. Soon after the fall of Alfredo Stroessners dictatorship, and coinciding with the foundation of MERCOSUR, Paraguayan and Brasilian writers intensified a literary production which mixes Spanish, Portuguese and also Guarani: a possible sign of opening of island boundaries, and an approach to modernizing processes, the phenomenon can also be thought as an expression of Brazilian colonialism in Paraguay