It's nearly impossible to get a good espresso in Asunción (this is, after all, the native country of yerba mate and this is to be had in copious amounts and in creative ways). I haven't been able to buy coffee beans at any price (which is why I brought in several bags of coffee as well as a cappuccino machine in my luggage when I moved here-- it raised a few eyebrows at customs).

Nevertheless, Cafe Literario, in the microcentro of Asunción serves a compelling brew. It's located on Estigarribia (aka Palma) between Caballero and México just next to the Plaza Uruguaya and is open daily from 4pm-ish until past midnight. Outdoors there's great people watching. Indoors is a cozy two-level room crammed with books and tables around which you can crowd and talk anthropology or sit quietly at your computer trying your best at a dissertation chapter.

One exposed-brick wall is a photo tribute to Paraguay's literary greats. This is the only cafe of its like/caliber I've been able to find in Asunción that isn't an imported franchise. And it's excellent.

No internet, unfortunately. The food and desserts and drinks are fine. The chocolate mousse cake is particularly worth a try. As is the "cafe literario"-- sweetened-condensed milk and espresso.

This is from the 20th anniversary of Stroessner's fall memorial early February, and an incredibly close shot that I got by sheer luck. Rather, I was too timid to stand where all the journalists and photographers were huddled up in the steps of the Panteon and instead stood at the edge of the sidewalk and got to see this.

Uroš Dojčinović is the first Serbian guitarist to ever perform in Paraguay. Last night, his concert of compositions and folk melody arrangements from around the world was to a packed audience at the Centro Cultural de España Juan de Salazar. The program included pieces by Agustín Barrios Mangoré (the Paraguayan composer/guitarist whose work Dojčinović recorded for the first time in Serbia), Villa Lobos, Tárrega, Cottin, Lebedew, Dojčinović himself, as well as works from Malta, Egypt, China.

It was amazing how one instrument, tuned a bit differently for different pieces, could effectively capture such different musical styles. (Yes, I used the word "different" three times in that sentence. Oh, well.) Also cool were variations on strumming, sliding, plucking, playing with the left hand on the neck, tapping and knocking on the wood.

The video I've taken is of three pieces: the first by Mangoré, the latter two by Dojčinović.

On Pte Manuel Franco between Ayolas and Montevideo (micro-center), Asunción, Paraguay. Here you can get excellent breads (including many whole-grain varieties), desserts, a middling cup of coffee (par for the course in Paraguay), baked breakfast goods, and sandwiches. Open during the day (and not on weekends).

Notice the empty shelves? It's 9 in the morning and they are already selling out of delicious breads. Mostly German recipes (quarkbrot), but their ciabatta sells briskly. But fear not, through a large window you can see more being prepared. And while you sit, sipping coffee and nibling on your palma, read the local German newspaper. Note: no air-conditioning (this is a bakery, after all).

(Images by me.)

Whatever was in this envelope, sent to Augusto Roa Bastos from Costa Rica sometime in the 1970s, probably never made it to the recipient since the Paraguayan police intercepted and opened and read and then filed it away in a secret archive that was discovered in 1992. It's been separated from the envelope; I couldn't find it this morning. The envelope was nestled in-between personal letters belonging to people whose names I wouldn't recognize, all confiscated and read and filed away by the military government in its attempt to surveille the whole population. The letters are a bit "disappointing"--sentimental accounts of daily life and declarations of affection. Nothing politically seamy.

Just to give you a sense of what four different parts of Iguazu are like -- yes, those are birds (pay special attention to the scene where I clean the lens!).

Again. I love the falls. And I only seem to go there when it's raining (as you can see from the first photograph, where the flash captures some of the water droplets... the next image is exactly the same, except without flash).

Ha ha. The book, Etica Judicial, was her doctoral dissertation, which was suspended last year due to the plagiarism.

Now she's up for appointment to the Supreme Court of Paraguay.

Two decades to the day after a military coup lead by "Carlos"'s and "Victor"'s, Paraguay has officially celebrated its first commemoration of the fall of the three decade dictatorship. In this morning's wreath-laying ceremony at the Panteon de los Heroes attended by the current administration (including President Fernando Lugo and Vice President Federico Franco), members of human rights organizations, and members of Paraguay's armed forces, the coup leaders were notedly absent. They supposedly were not invited, but it's difficult to ferret out the dynamic between the current government and "Carlos # 3," Lino Oviedo, who's been accused of conspiring against Lugo.

Possible the most dramatic moment was unscripted: Just before Lugo took the podium to give a speech on human rights, Ananías Maidana bolted from his seat and shoved his way to the from to demand the right to speak out in memory of the tortured and the disappeared (600 of which are still unaccounted for). Maidana, a political prisoner for 24 years before his exile, was a Colorado incarcerated and tortured for "communist sympathies," without knowing what the word "communist" meant, for protesting the corrupt nepotism of the Stroessner regime. The great irony, of course, is that now he leads the Paraguayan Communist Party.



And, of course there are many who think Stroessner times weren't so bad--including his grandchildren who don't think of him of as a dictator at all.