GUARAN

South American Indian group speaking a Tupian language (see Tupians). The aboriginal Guaran inhabited eastern Paraguay and adjacent areas in Brazil and Argentina. In the 14th and 15th centuries some Tupian speakers migrated inland to the Ro de la Plata, where they became the Guaran of Paraguay. Modern Paraguay still claims a strong Guaran heritage; most of the 1,000,000 peasants who live along the Paraguay River around Asuncin speak a language called Guaran. The aboriginal Guaran were typical Indians of the tropical forest. The women maintained fields of corn (maize), cassava, and sweet potatoes while the men hunted and fished. The practice of slash-and-burn agriculture required movement of their thatched house settlements every five or six years. As many as 60 patrilineally related families lived in each of the four to six large houses that composed a village. The Guaran were warlike and took captives to be sacrificed and, it is alleged, to be eaten. A few scattered communities of true Guaran Indians still survive marginally in the forests of northeastern Paraguay, but these were rapidly dwindling in the late 20th century. The best known of them were the Apapocuva. Spanish contact with the Guaran of Paraguay was initiated by the search for gold and silver. The Spaniards founded small ranches around Asuncin, notorious for their harems of Guaran women. Their racially mixed descendants became the rural population of modern Paraguay. In the 17th century the Jesuits established missions (reducciones) in eastern Paraguay among the Guaran of the Paran River. Eventually, about 30 large and successful mission towns constituted the famous Jesuit Utopia, the Doctrinas de Guaranies. In 1767, however, the expulsion of the Jesuits was followed by the scattering of mission Indians, often taken into slavery, and the confiscation of Indian land. Modern Paraguay's cultural nationalism emphasizes the continuity of Guaran customs, language, and habits of mind. Actually, a Spanish colonial way of life was established among the people very early in their history, and no truly aboriginal customs have survived except the now much altered language.