Cara’i Colonel
[Mr. Colonel]
Calle San Jose, Paraguay, 1996
James Patton
A Veteran of the Chaco War of the late 1930’s. The second war to
devastate Paraguay in less than 50 years, costing the country 70% of its
population and 90% of its male population, by some estimates, it was apparently
a proxy war between the US and Great Britain over oil reserves in the
Chaco desert that never materialized. Cara’i Colonel was already
80 when I met him and was the only person in the site who could artfully
manage the shears that were used to cut the coarse hair of the horse’s
mane and tail. He made a gift to me of hand-made woolen horse blankets,
traditional to the old horsemen of the country. It was reputed that, after
the Chaco War (in which Paraguay was ‘victorious’), Cara’i
Colonel had traveled the country on horseback for years at a time, returning
finally to settle down with his wife, who recently passed away after over
70 years of marriage.
© 2002 The
Fletcher School, Tufts University