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Politics, Power, and the Role of the Village Priest in Paraguay*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Frederic Hicks
Frederic Hicks*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology and Social Anthropology, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky
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Extract

The parochial priests in small Paraguayan towns are generally reputed, in Paraguay, to exercise an extraordinary amount of power and influence over the people of their parishes—to a greater extent, it would seem, than in most other Latin American countries. This is, moreover, despite the fact that the church, as an institution, is considerably weaker, economically and politically, than in all but a handful of such countries. Therefore, what power the individual priest may have can not be viewed as simply an extension of the power of the church. Most urban Paraguayans, including at least some members of the church hierarchy, are inclined to attribute this situation to the alleged superstitious or credulous nature of the Paraguayan peasants. The rural people themselves, on the other hand, are apt to explain the influence of their own local priest, at least, as due to his personal qualities or strength of character, as did the Services when referring to the prestige of the local priest of Tobati.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Inter-American Studies , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 1967 , pp. 273 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 1967

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Footnotes

*

A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Central States Anthropological Society at St. Louis, in April, 1966.

References

1 Service, Elman R. and Service, Helen S., Tobati: Paraguayan Town (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), pp. 84–85.Google Scholar

2 Field work in Capiatá was carried out intermittently between April and August, 1965, while the author was a lecturer in anthropology at the Universidad Nacional de Asunción, under the Fulbright-Hays program. Dr. Egidio Picchioni, of the Ministerio de Salud Pública y Bienestar Social, collaborated in the field work.

3 Frederic Hicks and Egidio Picchioni, “Algunos aspectos de la industrialización en una comunidad paraguaya”, Suplemento Antropológico de la Revista del Ateneo Paraguayo, II, núm. 1 (Setiembre 1966). In press.

4 Two other political parties which have legal status in Paraguay at present are the Febrerista and the recently-formed Demócrata Cristiano. However, their membership is small and is concentrated among the urban bourgeoisie. While occasional members are to be found in the rural areas, the parties themselves do not function there in the same way as do the traditional parties.

5 Cardozo, Efrain, Paraguay independiente (Barcelona: Salvat Editores, 1949); pp. 287–288 Google Scholar; Carlos Centurión, Historia de la cultura paraguaya (2 Vols. Asunción: Biblioteca “Ortiz Guerrero”, 1961), I, 408 ff.

6 This has not always been understood by North American writers, and deserves some clarification. In recent years, the Colorado Party has consciously sought to identify itself with such traditional conservative parties as the Blancos of Uruguay and the Conservadores of Colombia, but this is not an old tradition of the party, and one suspects it is intended today primarily to obtain foreign good will. Occasionally also, toward the end of the period of Liberal dominance (1904-1940), opposition Colorado propagandists sometimes took stands against Liberal principles, which were by then becoming outmoded. However, when the actual behavior of the two parties in government, particularly during their formative decades, is examined, the hberalism of both is apparent.