Sunday helped me to get to know a town of less than two thousand souls who live in front of Asunción and which is known as Chaco i. I went to the name day of a foreign friend who decides to leave his “boring” English life to find in Paraguay the color, aroma and flavor that his country may not offer.
Chaco’i is a city very close to the Paraguayan capital and was founded by Carlos Antonio Lopez and today is a new district and changed its name: Nueva Asunción. It is a small community linked to the Paraguay River and with a development potential that has not been addressed, but rather survives in a reality that is destroying and “drowning” it due to the floods that are blurring well-known places such as parks, private houses and vehicular traffic routes. The last one in 2017 exceeded two meters and its effects are marked on the trunks of the city’s trees.
It is a life of precariousness in every sense. They lack access in the form of cobblestones or asphalt from the asphalt that leads to Nanawa. Although it is close to the new bridge that will unite both regions of Paraguay, when cars need fossil fuel to move, they must go to Nanawa, where the supply of smuggled Argentine fuel is sold for less than 7,000 guaraníes when our gas stations exceed 10 thousand of the best diesel. One of the first unpleasant experiences we had traveling with our car was not finding a gas station, service station or “pump” open on a Sunday afternoon.
As time goes by, the “little Chaco” or Chaco’i is becoming more and more connected by the construction of new roads that can be used by the inhabitants of this city or by foreigners who wish to reach it in the direction towards the border. But if high waterfronts are not built to prevent water from entering, nothing will change for them and the many who have bought land moved by the possibilities that open up with the new bridge that is almost 80% complete.
A town isolated and far from urbanity and everything that makes lives more comfortable, accustomed to being with internet, electricity, water and basic services that are not usually found in places far removed from cities where other types of jobs, codes and even are carried out. lives. Looking at Asunción, 20 minutes by raft and almost an hour by car from the center of Asunción through Mariano Roque Alonso.
many tasks ahead
There are many things to do in Nueva Asunción, the corrupt are more and have taken political control of the new district that should not have been established since it does not have 10,000 inhabitants as required by law. People brought in from abroad joined to give legal status and political power to the bosses of the area who manage everything with clean money.
Chaco or now Nueva Asunción is a metaphor for the country that we are. Unfair, poor, inequitable and with great corruption. This small community in the western region must be a chapter that we have to care for, recover and promote among ourselves.
It is a place to show commitment and responsibility with public affairs. And it must be a place to be visited by the Asuncenos to learn more about our long civic task of improving the living conditions of thousands who among them live in Chaco i in really dramatic conditions. People still have expectations of improving their condition, but no one cares for them as they should.
Perhaps with the bridge to conclude it will be a moment that reaches the development for this forgotten region of our country. The trip to Chaco and it was for me a journey for the task that we owe ourselves as Paraguayans.-
