Precolumbian Paraguay
Pre-Columbian society in the wooded, fertile region which is now Paraguay consisted of semi-nomadic tribes, who were recognized for their fierce warrior traditions. These indigenous tribes were members of five distinct language families, and 17 separate ethnolinguistic groups remain today.
First European contact (1516)
Europeans first arrived in the area in 1516. The settlement of Asunción was founded on 15 August 1537, by the Spanish explorer Juan de Salazar de Espinosa. The city eventually became the center of a Spanish colonial province, as well as the primary site of the Jesuit missions and settlements in South America in the eighteenth century. Jesuit Reductions were founded, and flourished in Eastern Paraguay for about 150 years, until the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Spanish crown in 1767.
Independence from Spain (1811)
Paraguay overthrew the local Spanish administration on 15 May 1811. Paraguay's first ruler was the dictator Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia. He ruled Paraguay from 1814, until his death in 1840, with very little outside contact or influence, creating a utopian society based on Rousseau's Social Contract.
Paraguay gained its independence from Spain in 1811, and its first president was Jose Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, who was originally appointed with Fulgencio Yegros as alternative consul, but in 1814, de Francia was appointed president. He established new laws that more or less completely removed the powers of the church and the cabinet, forbade colonial citizens from marrying one other, being allowed to marry only blacks, mulattoes or natives, and cut off Paraguay from the rest of South America. Because of de Francia's abolition of freedom, and his drive for complete power, Yegros and several other ex-politicians attempted to host a coup-d'etat against him, which failed, and they were imprisoned for life.
After his death, Paraguay went through
