Paraguay

Paraguay is sometimes called Corazon de America (the Heart of America) because of its central location landlocked in the middle of South America, bordered by Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia. The country, the second poorest in South America, suffers from deep income inequalities; further, the land ownership inequality is one of the worst in the world, with 10 percent of the population controlling 66 percent of the land and a third of the rural population landless, an inequality that is more frequently referenced in Paraguay's class conflicts than that of incomes.

While many Latin American countries have become involved with drug trafficking in one way or another because of the continent's hospitable environment for the coca leaf, Paraguay has a history of smuggling that predates any serious ...