A comprehensive, up-to-date history of Paraguay is greatly needed by Paraguayans and students of Latin American history in general. The announcement that Julio César Chaves was working on a seven-volume history suggested that this need might soon be fulfilled. However, the disappointing first volume, Descubrimiento y conquista del Río de la Plata y el Paraguay, which covers the sixteenth century, is an inauspicious beginning for such an ambitious project.
The work contains little new information and cannot be considered a serious addition to the scholarly literature of Paraguayan history. The small amount of original interpretation offered is intuitive and unconvincing, and the new source material used is generally irrelevant. It is written in the manner of a high school text, being broken up by innumerable superfluous headings and illustrations. Chaves makes extensive and unselective use of documents within the text, sometimes without proper acknowledgment, and he frequently relies on questionable earlier interpretations such as Enrique de Gandía’s work on the same subject.
Factual and typographical errors are liberally scattered throughout the book. A few examples will suffice. The heading of chapter IV refers to a nonexistent voyage of exploration in 1521. On p. 38 Chaves confuses Guaraní with lengua geral; and on p. 76 he refers to a governing Spanish queen in the 1530s, when Charles I was the monarch of Spain. This book is obviously a commercial enterprise, aimed at rich collectors and American universities. Its high price puts it beyond the reach of the Paraguayan and Argentine seeking general knowledge of that area’s early history.
