Historical Filth- The worst place on Earth

[Heresson]

Originally posted by Boshko

That bit of land is pretty White Russian too, my family comes from there (I'm descended mostly from Russo-Japanese War draft dodgers) and they're definately not Polish.

I don't say that entire population of that grounds were Poles. In Polesie region, Poles were definite minority for example.

[Plan Austral]

Paraguay is quite fascinating.
My sister used to be married to a paraguayan, they have a daughter.

After their war against Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, most of the paraguayans males died, and because of that, having more than one wife was allowed for many decades.

They are big producers of oranges, but, their main economical activity is contraband, there was a big scandal 2 years ago because it was discovered that the car of the Paraguayan president was a stolen car from Argentina.

The big center of contraband is Ciudad del este (Eastern city), it used to be called Puerto Stroessner, (Stroessner Port), it is located in "La triple Frontera", it is near the Iguazu falls, and it is a very strategic place because it is a border shared by Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.
Ciudad del este has a heavy islamic presence, there are many mosques and you can see woman in the streets wearing the shador like in the middle east.
It is said (The american embassy says) that there are Hezbollah cells living there, in Argentina we had 2 big terrorist attacks against jewish buildings, one against the embassy of Israel and one against the argentinean jewish mutual.
Probably the terrorists came from and through Paraguay.


I remember when I was a little kid, once I went to Paraguay, I bought 5 Super Nintendo games for 50 dollars, when I returned back home only 3 worked, but anyway, It was good business.

[Odd]

I have been in Paraguay once, when I made a trip to the beautiful Iguaçu falls, we also made a stop in Ciudad del Este. Boy, what a dump! I mean, brazilian cities are tipical 3rd world nightmare megalopolises, but Ciudad del Este beated all of them, with lots of trash piling up on the streets, a huge mess of people and cars filled up to the top with smuggling and lots of malls dedicated to selling illegal software, smuggled electronics and false whiskeys. Since Paraguay has no real economy, the city lives on all sort of illegal activities, like smuggling weapons and so on...

The other reason that gives Paraguay some sort of importance is that he owns half of the river where is built the Itaipu (http://www.itaipu.gov.br/) hydroelectric, a mamoth power plant built by the brazilian dictatorship that generates up to 13 gigawatts. There´s a deal that states that Paraguay can use all the power he needs (very little), and the rest goes to Brazil.

This war causes a lot of controversy. If you want to see a brazilian soldier get really pissed off, only say something about the war of Paraguay and massacre. He will then start preaching to you the same way an american would if you suggested that Dresden bombing was an barbarian act. What happened was that Paraguay was a little ahead of other latin american countries in terms of industrialization, but no exit to the sea. That´s the reason for the invasion. What followed was that the alliance army (Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina) pounded into Paraguay and leveled everything to the ground (hey, guess who killed that 70%). This feat is a great source of pride for the brazilian army, even because it was one of the very few occasions that they actually fight another country. The main role of the army here was to maintain "order", repressing internal revolts and overthrowing the government once in a while. With little support from the population the army is now underfunded (a colonel won´t make more than US$2000/month) and no one gives a **** about it.