Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
ontheArgentineborder.Adventuroustravellers canalsotakethestrenuoustrans-Chaco road,
which heads east to the Paraguayan border at Fortin Villazón, and then onto the Paraguayan
capital,
Asunción
.
THE GUARANÍ PEOPLE
The western Bolivian Chaco is home to the
Guaraní
people - known historically as the
Chiriguanos - the largest indigenous group in the Bolivian lowlands, with a population
of about 75, 000. The Guaraní originally migrated across the Chaco from east of the Río
Paraguay in search of a mythical “Land Without Evil”, occupying the southwestern fringes
of the
Andes
in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries just as the Inca empire was expanding
into the same region. Despite this, the Guaraní successfully resisted conquest by the Incas,
and subsequently proved among the fiercest and most tenacious indigenous opponents of
the
Spanish
.Not until well into the Republican era were they completely subjugated, when
the last great Guaraní uprising was brutally crushed in 1892, after which their remaining
lands were seized by the Bolivian state and divided into large private ranches defended by
army forts
. In recent decades, the Guaraní have been struggling to regain control of their
ancestral territories using
land reform
and indigenous rights legislation, and in spite of
obstructive bureaucracy have now recovered large areas, where they farm maize, cotton,
peanuts and other crops. Despite this, hundreds if not thousands of Guaraní still work on
large
cattle ranches
under conditions of debt servitude that are little different from slavery.
Villamontes
A hot and dusty but welcoming frontier town with a mostly Guaraní population,
VILLAMONTES
was the scene of one of Bolivia's few military victories during the dis-
astrous
Chaco War
with Paraguay. Today the town remains very much dominated by the
Bolivian army.
Museo Historico Militar Heroes del Chaco
Plaza 15 de Abril • Tues-Sun 8am-noon & 2-6pm • Bs2
Housed in a large white mansion, the
Museo Historico Militar Heroes del Chaco
is full of
military paraphernalia and the garden is filled with trenches, dugouts, bunkers and artillery
pieces. Inside, there are photos of the terrible conditions endured by troops on both sides in
the Chaco War, in which around 65,000 Bolivian soldiers were killed (out of a population of
roughly two million).
Yacuiba
The modern border town of
YACUIBA
lies about 90km south of Villamontes by road and
rail, and most travellers just pass through en route to or from Argentina. Yacuiba sprang up
following the construction of the railway and oil pipeline to
Argentina
in the 1960s, and re-
