GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
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Spotlight on Paraguay
JOHN GREEN relishes the rediscovery of a Spanish anarchist and radical, and the light he throws on the little-known story of Paraguay
NATIONAL TRAUMA: Paraguayan families displaced during the England instigated and organised war of the Tripple Alliance (Brasil, Uruguay and Argentina) the brutal conquest in which between 60-80 per cent of the population was killed.
[National Archives of Brasil/Public domain]
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
ANDY HEDGECOCK welcomes an accessible - and optimistic - take on our relationship to new technology
JOHN GREEN suggests that a new, biased, and highly readable re-hash of the story of the Cambridge Five be taken with a large pinch of salt
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a timely reminder of the long history of protests and the outdoor spaces in which they takes place
Paraguayan Sorrow: Writings of Rafael Barrett, A Radical Voice in a Dispossessed Land
Edited and translated by William Costa, Monthly Review Press, £21.99
PARAGUAY, probably the least-known of South America’s republics, is a landlocked country squeezed between its two powerful neighbours, Argentina and Brazil. It has a population of around 6.1 million, nearly 2.3 million of whom live in the capital and largest city of Asuncion, and its surrounding metro area.
Paraguay threw off the yoke of Spanish colonial rule in 1811 and Jose Rodriguez de Francia was installed as the first Paraguayan-born leader. He ruled until his death in 1840 as an authoritarian but visionary leader. He reduced the power of the Catholic church and attempted to create a utopian society based on Rousseau’s ideas.
Only two decades after his death, the so-called war of the triple alliance (1864-70) broke out between Paraguay and an alliance of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. In the preceding years, Paraguay had been involved in boundary and tariff disputes with its more powerful neighbours.
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