From Gringo to Guarango: Language Shift in a Former Anglophone Community in Paraguay
Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch
Year: 2016
From gringo to guarango: language shift in a former anglophone community in Paraguay
Perez, Danae Maria
Abstract: Around the turn of the 20th century, over 600 English-speaking colonizers settled in rural Paraguay with the aim of establishing a socialist society called New Australia. The project failed, and the settlers either left the colony or gained a foothold locally. Today, their descendants mostly speak Guarani. New Australia is thus the only known case of a sizeable group of colonizers shifting from a European language to an indigenous one. This thesis provides a sociolinguistic study of New Australia and contextualizes it within the colonial and post-colonial spread of English in Latin America. On the basis of the literature, historical documents, and data collected in the field, I analyze the ethnolinguistic vitality of English over the past century. This shows that English was marginalized due to growing social inequalities and the value of English as a commodity on the international job market, which triggered out-migration. Moreover, the assignation of identity shifted from being based on primordial markers, including language, to socially constructed ones, such as financialand political power. This suggests that eventhough English was initially of overt high prestige, Guarani was, and continues to be, of covert prestige as a marker of solidarity. These findings contribute to our understanding of the vitality of Guarani in competition with English and Spanish in rural Paraguay today.
Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-169802 Dissertation Published Version
Originally published at: Perez, Danae Maria. From gringo to guarango: language shift in a former anglophone community in Paraguay. 2016, University of Zurich, Faculty of Arts.
From Gringo to Guarango: Language Shift in a Former Anglophone Community in Paraguay
Thesis presented to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of the University of Zurich for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
by Danae Maria Perez
Accepted in the fall semester 2015 on the recommendation of the doctoral committee: Prof. Dr. Daniel Schreier, English Seminar (main supervisor) Prof. Dr. Peter Finke, Institute for Social Anthropology Prof. Dr. Marianne Hundt, English Seminar
Zurich, 2016
I
Table of Contents List of Figures ...... iv
List of Tables ...... v
List of Maps ...... vi
List of Pictures ...... vii
Acknowledgments ...... viii
1 Introduction ...... 1
2 Framing New Australia: Language contact and English in Latin America ...... 10
2.1 Language contact and societal bilingualism ...... 10 2.2 Languages in competition: maintenance and loss of minority languages ...... 18 2.2.1 Language competition and shift ...... 19 2.2.2 Linguistic enclaves ...... 30 2.2.3 Models of language maintenance and shift ...... 32 2.3 English in Latin America ...... 38 2.3.1 English-speaking enclaves in Latin America ...... 41 2.4 New Australia as a case in point ...... 45 3 The methodological approach and data collection ...... 48
3.1 New Australia in the literature ...... 48 3.2 The data ...... 54 3.2.1 The field site ...... 54 3.2.2 Fieldwork ...... 62 3.2.3 The researcher(s) ...... 64 3.2.4 The interviews ...... 67 3.2.5 Written documents ...... 68 3.2.6 The questionnaires ...... 72 3.3 Summing up: exploring New Australia ...... 74 4 New Australia’s social history ...... 76
4.1 The inception of New Australia ...... 76 4.1.1 The recruitment of the settlers ...... 79 4.1.2 New Australia – where to? ...... 82 4.1.3 Leaving Old Australia ...... 83
ii 4.2 Paraguay – the Promised Land? ...... 85 4.2.1 The English-speaking community in nineteenth-century Paraguay ...... 88 4.2.2 Paraguay in the 1890s ...... 91 4.2.3 The sociolinguistic situation at the time of arrival ...... 93 4.3 New Australia ...... 94 4.3.1 Setting up New Australia ...... 95 4.3.2 Life at New Australia ...... 97 4.3.3 The division of New Australia ...... 103 4.3.4 Nueva Australia ...... 104 4.3.5 Cosme ...... 109 4.4 A word on the failure of New Australia ...... 114 4.5 New Australia in retrospect ...... 120 5 Language shift in Nueva Australia ...... 122
5.1 Language shift in Nueva Australia: the vitality of native English in Paraguay ...... 125 5.1.1 Language institutionalization in Nueva Australia ...... 126 5.1.2 The demographic development of Nueva Australia and Cosme ...... 133 5.1.3 The shifting status of English and its speakers in Nueva Australia ...... 138 5.1.4 Shifting orders of indexicality in New Australia...... 160 5.2. On the role of English in Nueva Australia today…………………………………….162 5.2.1 Motivation to learn English among Nueva Australia’s youths ...... 164 5.3 Language Shift in Nueva Australia: an exceptional case? ...... 172 6 Concluding remarks and outlook ...... 175
7 References ...... 179
8 Appendix ...... 198
The Henry Connelly manuscript, Nueva Londres, 1924 ...... 198 The questionnaires ...... 219
iii
List of Figures Figure 1: Language choice between German (G) and Hungarian (H) by 32 speakers depending on the interlocutor (Gal 1979: 135) ...... 21 Figure 2: The Three Concentric Circles of World Englishes (Kachru 1992: 356) ...... 28 Figure 3: The factors defining Ethnolinguistic Vitality (Giles et al. 1977: 309) ...... 34 Figure 4: The sociolinguistic assessment of language maintenance and shift (Porcel 2011: 625) ...... 36 Figure 5: The shifting sociolinguistic space of the Anglo-Paraguayan community over the twentieth century...... 161
iv List of Tables Table 1: First language spoken by the Paraguayan population of over four years of age in the 2007 census (Zajícová 2009: 66) ...... 17 Table 2: Ethnolinguistic Vitality of two ethnic groups (adapted from Giles et al. 1977: 317) 35 Table 3: Languages to be studied instead of Guarani, adapted from Zajícová (2009: 249) .... 47 Table 4: Five generations of New Australians………………………………………………120 Table 5: Overview of language use and shift in Nueva Australia ...... 136 Table 6: Overview of language use and shift in Cosme ...... 138 Table 7: Foreign languages of interest among fifth-generation descendants ...... 169 Table 8: Reasons for English language learning among Nueva Australia youths…………..170
v
List of Maps Map 1: The spread of English worldwide (Strevens 1992: 33) ...... 2 Map 2: The spread of English according to Crystal (2003: 70) ...... 39 Map 3: Paraguay today (www.lib.utexas.edu/maps) ...... 55 Map 4: South American borders in 1892 (source: www.lib.utexas.edu/maps) ...... 85 Map 5: Map of the Asuncion–Ciudad del Este–Encarnacion triangle with New Australia in the district of Ajos (today Coronel Ovideo) and Cosme to the south of Caazapá (Whitehead 1997: 198)…………………………………………………………………………………...105
vi
List of Pictures Picture 1: Edith Smith, a fifth-generation descendant, discovering her ancestors’ past with me ...... 67 Picture 2: Ardyne Kennedy in her family museum where she keeps the family documents ... 69 Picture 3: A letter by Iona Kennedy (1924) as an example of the documents used for this project ...... 70 Picture 4: Alexander Kennedy’s 1917 mathematics booklet ...... 128 Picture 5: A horsewoman during the patron saint festivities ...... 148 Picture 6: A horseman during the patron saint festivities ...... 149 Picture 7: A father preparing his son for the event ...... 149 Picture 8: The team of the Kennedy ranch gets the bull ready for his fight ...... 150 Picture 9: Harald Smith greeting the audience ...... 151
vii
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I would like to express gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Daniel Schreier, who approached me with this thrilling project and believed in me from the very first day. Thank you for making this research possible and for guiding me with your enthusiasm and experience. I also thank Prof. Marianne Hundt and Prof. Peter Finke, who taught me so much and supported me whenever I needed them. I wish to thank my fellow students in the Doktoratsprogramm Linguistik at the University of Zurich, the professors, above all Prof. Johannes Kabatek, and the participants of the 2014 SWELL meeting in Basel for their valuable feedback and encouragement. A particularly big Thank you is dedicated to Sascha Völlmin for his patience with my administrative chaos and of course to Nicole Eberle and Lena Zipp for being such reliable colleagues and friends. I am deeply indebted to the descendants of New Australia, who shared their experiences, concerns, and memories with me. Needless to say, the biggest Thank you goes to Sonia de Smith for her friendship, help, and hospitality, and to Rogelio Cadogan for his inspiring view on the world, his contacts, and knowledge. ¡Un millón de gracias por todo! On a more personal level, I am grateful to my extended family. In particular I wish to thank my two daughters, who went through it all with me – literally all. An immense Thank you goes to Baboo and Seema for their help with the manuscript and for always shaking enough common sense into me. And I am endlessly grateful to my friends who all actively contributed to this thesis in their own way. Last but not least, I send my grateful thoughts to a number of wonderful beings near and far, who accompanied me through this from a distance, and whose messages and gestures gave me strength to carry on. Thank you for sharing all those moments of gladness, sadness, and madness with me. I dedicate this thesis to all of you.
viii 1 Introduction
The spread of the English language over all five continents during the last five centuries has been giving rise to the most diverse contact scenarios between varieties of English and an uncountable number of colonial, transplanted, and indigenous languages. In certain territories, English was spoken by a majority of the population from early on and has developed into new regional standard varieties, such as in Australia and New Zealand; in other regions, by contrast, individual national standards are still evolving, as is the case in West and East Africa, for example. This development resulted in the emergence of new vernacular, creolized, as well as second-language varieties of English. As a consequence, while English had perhaps four million native speakers at the turn of the seventeenth century when massive colonization began (Trudgill 2013), it has today become the most widely spoken language world-wide with more than 335 million native and 505 million non-native speakers on all five continents (ethnologue; cf. Crystal 2003). Its international importance in today’s globalized world is undisputed. De Swaan therefore designated English the “pivot of the world’s language system” (de Swaan 2001: 6). In this system, English as the language of global communication is considered the world’s single “hypercentral” language. It is followed by “supercentral” languages, such as Arabic, Chinese, German, Spanish, or Swahili, which are relevant in certain regions, and “central” languages, i.e. well-established national languages of a limited reach, such as Dutch or Finnish. The “peripheral” languages, finally, many of which lack a written form, constitute 98 percent of the world’s languages (de Swaan 2001: 4–6). As the only hypercentral language present all over the globe, English has come in touch with a large number of the world’s languages. Strevens’ (1992) map illustrates nicely how English – either its British or American “branch” – has spread throughout the world.
1
Map 1: The spread of English worldwide (Strevens 1992: 33) On Strevens’ map there is nonetheless one region that constitutes a white spot: Latin America.1 The impression is given that Latin America is the only region in the world where English has not had a noticeable impact. It is true that English as an official language is of limited importance in this part of the world since the principal languages spoken throughout the continent are Spanish and Portuguese. However, also French (French Guiana), Dutch (Suriname), and English (Belize, Guyana), have official status in some countries, and an extended number of indigenous languages are recognized as co-official languages, for instance in Bolivia and Peru. In view of this linguistic diversity, English is often used for official and formal communication on the international level, such as in international forums and associations (Friedrich & Berns 2003: 85). The impression given by Strevens’ map of English being absent in Latin America is thus somewhat misleading. The English language has in fact also been present as a first language on the South American continent ever since the New World was discovered. As the following quote from the sixteenth century shows, the British Crown was at the forefront of the conquest of new territories, and British explorers were already involved in the quest for the legendary El Dorado:
The empire of Guiana is directly east from Peru towards the sea, and lieth under the equinoctial line; and it hath more abundance of gold than any part of Peru, and as many or mo[r]e great cities than ever Peru had when it flourished most. ... And I have been assured by such of the Spaniards as have seen Manoa, the imperial city of
1 In the course of this thesis, the cover term Latin America refers to nations on continental Central and South America to the South of the United States that have either Spanish or Portuguese as their official language. It further includes the Spanish- and Iberoromance creole-speaking islands in the Caribbean (cf. García 1999: 228). 2 Guiana, which the Spaniards call El Dorado, that for the greatness, for the riches, and for the excellent seat, it far exceedeth any of the world, at least of so much of the world as is known to the Spanish nation. (Sir Walter Raleigh [1595] 1910)
Sir Walter Raleigh’s report illustrates that Britain’s main interest lied in the exploitation of natural resources. In order to ensure their share in the material wealth of the New World, and to keep up the lead in competition with the Spaniards and the Portuguese, English colonizers settled all over the continent, including Central and South America. As a result, numerous English-speaking enclaves surrounded by other dominant colonial languages – mostly Spanish or Portuguese – were established in Latin America, and many of them persist until today (cf. Marshall 2000). The most intense phase of Anglophone immigration that led to contact between speakers of English and speakers of Spanish or Portuguese in Latin America took place during the nineteenth century. To obtain a clearer picture of this era, it is useful to distinguish between three different types of colonizers: military personnel, professional staff, and settlement communities. The British military personnel, to begin with, was mainly involved in the Wars for Independence; over 8,000 soldiers fought in Simón Bolívar’s war against Spain between 1817 and 1821, for instance, and the British contributed to the independence of Peru in 1821. Also Brazil and Chile, among others, hosted British military posts (Racine 2000: 11–13). Thus, speakers of English played a significant part in the political history of the continent and ensured the presence of the English language in a number of South American locales. Given that these soldiers rarely stayed for a longer period of time, however, their influence was rather limited to material culture and fashion, while their language did not have a noticeable impact on local languages (cf. Racine 2000). The second type of Anglophone immigrants in Latin America was the professional staff that was often recruited by national governments to enhance the country’s economic and industrial development. For example, English engineers and technicians built up most of the railways and urban transportation systems in Latin America. Furthermore, Britain played a dominant role as both an importation and exportation market for Latin America since cotton, sugar, coffee, meat, and nitrate were shipped to Great Britain while Latin America purchased large quantities of textiles and other industrial products from Britain. Given this significant proportion of British capital in Latin America, British subjects invested greatly and even founded local financial institutes, especially in Argentina (Miller 1993). In addition, individual skilled laborers found an occupation in places where a local network of British
3 immigrants already existed, thus giving rise to English-speaking neighborhoods, such as the one described in the following testimony by a British traveler in Chile in 1822:
English tailors, shoemakers, saddlers and innkeepers, hang out their signs in every street; and the preponderance of the English language over every other in the chief streets, would make one fancy Valparaiso a coast town in Britain. (cited in Mayo 2000: 182)
Most of these Anglophone residents belonged to the wealthy and powerful classes of their host societies, especially those in the River Plate region (Miller 1993: 41–60); none of these communities, however, succeeded in introducing the English language as a means of communication beyond their immediate contexts. The third type of settlers joined Anglophone colonies that were already established on the continent or founded new independent ones. Some of these settlements had been British territories since the very first phase of colonization, such as the Nicaraguan Miskito Coast (Holm 2014: 55), yet most of them experienced more intense Anglophone immigration during the nineteenth century. Port of Limón in Costa Rica, for example, saw the arrival of a large number of speakers of English and Jamaican Creole after the American United Fruit Company initiated the production of fruit on a large scale and recruited laborers from Jamaica (Herzfeld 2002: 13). In addition, as the United States gained ground in the Caribbean, Britain established enclaves on the South American continent, such as the rather unsuccessful trade colony in Esmeraldas, Ecuador, in 1860 (Fisher 2000), or the nowadays well-established Navy post on the Falkland Islands in 1833 (Britain & Sudbury 2010). The principal goals of these settlements were the access to the region’s most important waterways and the introduction and protection of British merchants; the focus of Britain’s interest laid on Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile (Miller 1993). In addition, the nineteenth century also experienced the foundation of new communities that pursued the aim of setting up an independent society in search of the “assumed Garden of Eden” (Livermore 1950: 290). Among them were the Confederados: settlers from the south of the United States who had abandoned their homeland after the Civil War in search of setting up a similar society in South America. Some of them settled in Mexico or Venezuela, yet the most visible Confederate community that lasted until the twenty-first century was established in Brazil (Harmon 1928; Montgomery & Melo 1995). In most of these settings, English continues to be spoken natively, yet bilingualism in either Spanish or Portuguese is becoming more widespread and marginalizes the use of the heritage language.
4 One of the most visible English-speaking communities in Latin America was the Anglo- Argentine community. It was the largest English-speaking community outside the colonized territories: in 1914, over 28,000 British subjects were registered in Argentina (Graham-Yooll 1999: 2). The Anglo-Argentine community was not only numerous but also financially powerful, which allowed the establishment of an English-speaking upper class and no less than 25 English-speaking schools in the wider Buenos Aires area (Cortés Conde 2007: 61). Today, however, only those descendants who can afford private schooling use English regularly. To sum up, these cases show that while the English language has been present in Latin America from early on, it did not establish itself as the dominant language in any country since it was in competition with the colonial languages Spanish and Portuguese. A relatively unknown settlement community that was in close connection with the British in Argentina and that I shall focus on here was established in Paraguay during the last decade of the nineteenth century. This settlement project originated in Queensland and other parts of Australia in 1891, when over 10,000 agricultural workers went on strike during the Great Shearers’ Strike. It aimed at setting up a New Australia in eastern Paraguay. The leader of the movement was the journalist William Lane, who harbored the dream of setting up an independent society based on socialist ideas to show the world that capitalism was outdated. He promoted his project as follows:
In this New Australia movement we exchange empty patriotism to a country in which we have no share, for the solid possession of a great tract of good land, secured under terms which could not possibly be secured here. On this land we can build the settlement we seek, can exert our labour as will satisfy our needs, can produce not only food and clothing and buildings, but articles to export in exchange for what we must import, can have plenty and be happy, and teach the world a lesson. It is our opportunity. (William Lane, cited in Livermore 1950: 298)
In other words, Lane’s idea was to overcome capitalism by setting up an egalitarian society in which survival was ensured, yet the main activity and product to be exported would be intellectual in nature, namely the production of “articles.” He envisaged bringing at least 1,200 Anglophone families from all social strata to New Australia with the final goal of establishing an egalitarian society in Paraguay and including it into the British Empire in the long run (Souter 1991: 169). Despite the enthusiasm and idealism, this utopian goal was never achieved. In total, approximately 600 colonizers settled in Eastern Paraguay between 1893 and the early twentieth century to join New Australia, and due to discord and diverging interests among the settlers, the community soon split up and reinitiated the project in another place called Colonia Cosme. Those who did not follow William Lane remained on the
5 original site and called it Nueva Australia. Today, the descendants of the original settlers still live on the land of their forefathers, but their heritage language has vanished: instead of English, they speak Guarani as their first language. This is surprising in light of the fact that the other communities seen so far are shifting towards the dominant colonial languages. The Anglo-Paraguayan community hence provides the only case we know of where a considerable group of speakers of English shifted from their prestigious European language to a local indigenous one.2 It hence seems to provide a counterexample to positions that see the spread of international languages, above all English, as a threat to local languages. In Calvet’s (2006: 4) terms, for example, English would be the “elephant language” and Guarani the “mosquito language”, and New Australia presents an example of inverted power relations. Mackey (1980: 37) was in fact one of the first to point out that there are a number of such “superlanguages,” as for instance English and French, which threaten local languages once they come into contact with them. Phillipson (1992) similarly considers English to be a “killer language” since its large-scale imposition and teaching promote linguistic imperialism, i.e. the oppression of local languages by politically more powerful colonial languages. This approach, however, was strongly criticized later, as for instance by Crystal (2000: 87), who explicitly mentions that throughout Latin America, English does not seem to have any greater impact and cannot be seen as the culprit of the extinction of numerous indigenous languages. In the same vein, Trudgill (2013) points out that also English, too, is endangered locally in a variety of contact settings, especially in Spanish-speaking Central America. Mufwene (2008: 239) therefore rightfully claims that, in spite of the increasing importance of English on the international level, processes of language shift occur on the local level and are determined by local actors, which implies that every case must be considered individually. The present thesis shall show whether, and if yes – to what extent –, the Anglo-Paraguayan case can shed new light on these debates. The aim of the present dissertation is thus to describe and understand the Anglo- Paraguayan case of language shift in detail. It is important to document the New Australian experience as it promises to provide the ‘odd one out’ on the global map that can complement the picture of the reach and limits of the English language in particularly heteroglossic environments. The Paraguayan case shall add new input to the debates on English as a global language with a particular focus on Latin America. My principal aim is to provide hitherto unpublished data from a peripheral region, i.e. rural Latin America, which still presents a
2 Brody (2001: 219) mentions a group of descendants of European immigrants in eastern Canada that ‘wear the clothes and speak the language of the Inuit’ today. However, no mention is made of when and whence they arrived and how the shift took place. 6 white spot on the world Englishes map. This shall then contribute to a more differentiated understanding of processes of language shift when languages of varying international relevance coexist in the same local ecology. The research questions to be answered in this dissertation are the following:
1) What were the factors that brought about the shift from English to the local indigenous language Guarani? 2) What was the role of English in the development of this community? 3) What is the role of English in rural Paraguay, i.e. in the South American hinterland, today?
Question 1) will deal with earlier generations in order to describe and reconstruct events and conditions that belong to the past in as much detail as possible, a challenge that has so far not yet been addressed satisfactorily. Its principal focus lies on understanding the social and economic forces behind the shift. Question 2) shall focus on the English language as a determining factor itself, i.e. the importance, or lack thereof, that the English language might have for its speakers as a potential symbol of prestige or instrumental tool. Question 3), finally, will look at the present status of English among the fifth generation of New Australians within the context of English in Latin America, above all the correlation between heritage language and identity, and the status of English as an instrumental language. By discussing these questions, I hope to provide new data and input to our still limited understanding of the role of English in Latin America, the hitherto mainly “forgotten continent” in English linguistics (Friedrich & Berns 2003). It must be pointed out that the three languages involved in this case study will be categorically treated as abstract units – as opposed to a more differentiated classification of language varieties as proposed, for instance, by Calvert (2006). The English language spoken by the settlers may certainly have included different varieties since its speakers came from geographically and socially divergent origins; the formation of a colonial koiné, however, is highly unlikely due to the very limited time depth (cf. Schneider 2003). The variety of Spanish spoken in Paraguay is a dialect that pertains to the River Plate varieties and is marked by the strong aspiration of implosive /s/ as well as the use of the second person pronoun vos (Sp. voseo). It displays phonological, morphosyntactic, and lexical influence from Guarani to varying degrees. Guarani (as will be explained in chapter 2) is itself a koiné that emerged from the contact between different varieties of Tupi-Guarani with Spanish, and it is thus
7 highly heterogeneous. Linguistic variation within each of these three languages did (and does) certainly exist, yet for reasons of simplicity, I will only refer to them as English, Spanish, and Guarani. This dissertation is organized in six chapters. Chapter 2 provides an overview of the debates on, and approaches to, language contact with a particular focus on the ecology of languages. I will outline cases of language contact in diglossic societies, i.e. bilingual societies, which will show that the principal factors that determine the competition of languages are usually extralinguistic in nature, i.e. tied to economic decisions of the speakers and political power. The case of Paraguay is particularly interesting, since it is the only nation in the Americas where the colonial language is spoken alongside an indigenous one by the majority of the population. It will thus be presented in more detail, which helps understand the contact of English with Spanish and Guarani in the context of New Australia. The second part of Chapter 2 centers on English in Latin America, i.e. English-speaking enclaves as well as the role of English as a foreign language in Latin America. This will define the value of this dissertation within the still relatively scarce landscape of studies on English in Latin America, especially in rural Latin America, from where data is particularly rare. Chapter 3 discusses the nature of the data on which this study is based. It outlines first the data found in the literature and discusses to what extent they provide reliable knowledge that helps answer the research questions. Further, it looks at the data collected in the field. After describing the field site, it addresses methodological concerns that are important in settings in which the collection of data is hindered not only by geographical and climatic conditions, but particularly by social challenges, such as distrust, with which the researcher had to deal. This description, it is hoped, will add to our understanding of why so little research is carried out in rural Latin America. Chapter 4 gives a detailed account of the social history of the community, especially the Nueva Australia community, which fills a gap in previous research. It explains the motivation of the movement in the very beginning and describes the important happenings that it experienced over the course of the twentieth century. Soon after the establishment of the settlement, the community split up into Cosme, where the project was continued until it was abandoned by the second and third generations, and Nueva Australia, where the community integrated into the local society. Given that new data are introduced that had not been considered before, Chapter 4 ends with a comment on possible reasons for the failure of New Australia as a utopian project that focuses on the role of women.
8 This account of the history of New Australia, Nueva Australia, and Cosme then provides the basis for Chapter 5, which describes the process of language shift in detail. The first section, following Giles et al.’s (1977) framework of ethnolinguistic vitality, shows that this particular ecology marginalized the English language on all levels of society, which ultimately brought about its fall into disuse. A particular focus is put on the ethnic identity of the community members in Nueva Australia. It will become clear that the English language faced a number of challenges in Nueva Australia, such as low prestige, which quickly marginalized its use; in the Cosme community, by contrast, the instrumental value of English on the job market proved decisive for the further development of the community as it triggered out-migration. This shows that English was decisive for the development of the Cosme community since it was abandoned and ceased to exist. In Nueva Australia, where English disappeared due to its marginalization whereas in the beginning ethnic identity was tied to primordial markers, such as origin as well as language, the descendants of the community today rather base their values on socially acquired markers, such as social status and property. The second section of Chapter 5 looks at the use of languages among the younger generations today to find out whether English still plays a role among the descendants today. Data collected by means of questionnaires shows that English has ceased to be tied to the cultural heritage of the speakers and seems to have become a second language that is of high instrumental value on the job market and social upwards mobility. These results allow a comparison of the role of English in this particular setting with other studies on the role of English as a second language in other parts of Latin America. The conclusion in Chapter 6 contextualizes the results of this case study by looking at the degree to which this case of language shift is extraordinary as well as at the importance of this type of study for the linguistics of English in general and for the value and role of English in Latin America in particular.
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2 Framing New Australia: Language contact and English in Latin America
As mentioned at the outset, English and its spread around the globe have often been claimed to be the culprit of the loss of smaller or less powerful languages with which in came in contact. This chapter looks at contact and competition between languages, and more specifically at the role of English in Latin America. The first part outlines possible results of scenarios of language contact. Communities in which more than one language coexist, especially bilingual or multilingual societies, and the concept of diglossia will be discussed, with a special focus on the Paraguayan example. The second part looks at the competition between languages, i.e. how languages of varying power and status are either maintained or lost, and how models seek to predict language maintenance or loss. Special emphasis is put on the conceptual framework of Ethnolinguistic Vitality by Giles et al. (1977), which will provide the backdrop of the description of language shift in Nueva Australia in chapter five. The third part will look at English in Latin America. After outlining the general attention given to the matter in the literature, this section will first focus on English-speaking enclaves in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries, to which the Anglo-Paraguayan case can be compared. This will help contextualize the New Australian experience in its regional context and illustrate the vitality of English in the face of Spanish.
2.1 Language contact and societal bilingualism Speech communities and their languages come into contact for a myriad of reasons, yet often due to population movements, colonization, or trade. Over the course of their contact, an increasing number of individuals may eventually become bilingual. Furthermore, depending on the intensity of language contact, the linguistic outcome can be either as limited as the exchange of a few lexical items only, or it can have structural consequences (cf. Trudgill 2011). If contact is intense and lasts over a longer period of time, new contact languages emerge, such as pidgin languages (mostly in contexts of limited contact), creole languages (when the contact allows for the nativization of the newly emerged contact variety), or mixed languages (languages in which certain items are systematically replaced by material from another language) (Thomason 1997). The focus here, however, lies on communities in which 10 more than one language is in use, i.e. bilingual societies or speech communities in contact, rather than on bilingual individuals or the linguistic processes triggered by the contact. When two languages are spoken in the same context, they rarely simply coexist without influencing each other. The relationship between the languages is often hierarchically structured, i.e. one of them is more powerful than the other or is used in contexts in which the other one is not supposed to be used. Such situations are generally seen as cases of diglossia (from Greek ‘of two tongues, bilingual’). The seminal paper on diglossia (or societal bilingualism) was provided by Ferguson (1959). Ferguson looked at societies in which a ‘high variety’ H and a ‘low variety’ L coexist and designated those situations as diglossic “where two varieties of a language exist side by side throughout the community, with each having a definite role to play” (Ferguson 1959: 325). In a diglossic society, the two coexisting varieties thus have clearly distinct functions, prestige, acquisitional contexts, grammars, lexica, phonologies, literary traditions, and levels of standardization. H is generally associated with, and used in, formal, upper class, or professional settings, whereas L is spoken among family members and friends in informal environments. In Ferguson’s initial definition, the concept of diglossia applies to societies in which two varieties of the same language are used, as in Greece, where katharévousa, a classical variety of Greek that is mainly used for official and literary purposes, coexists with dimotikí, a popular variety of Greek that has rather low social status. This situation is similar to Arabic-speaking countries, such as Egypt, where Classical Arabic is used alongside the spoken dialects of Arabic. In Switzerland, (Swiss) Standard German is the variety used in governmental services and the media while the entirety of the German-speaking population speaks one of the many dialects of Swiss German.3 In Haiti, Ferguson’s last example, French and kreyol, a French-lexified creole, are used as the H and L varieties, respectively. Later, Devonish (2003) proposed a further distinction between the first two types of society, in which two internal varieties are in use that have coexisted for a long period of time, and the latter two, where a foreign or external variety was imposed either artificially, as in Switzerland, or even forcefully, as was the case in Haiti, which is particularly distinct as a case of “conquest diglossia” (Devonish 2003: 158). Along with Winford (1985), Devonish also considers the sociolinguistic situation in Caribbean countries as diglossic, or, more precisely, he argues that the coexistence of creole languages and standard-nearer varieties of their lexifier should rather be seen as cases of
3 Yet, it is worth noticing that this situation has changed over the last decades as Swiss German (L) has gained ground. For example, there has been a significant increase in the use of Swiss German in the media and written communication, i.e. in domains that used to be restricted to H (see, for instance, Dürscheid & Frick 2014, for the use of Swiss German in short messages; cf. Snow 2010). 11 conquest diglossia. The challenge to this approach is, nevertheless, the question as to where the line between a language and a variety should be drawn. All the cases of diglossia mentioned so far have in common that they occur in societies in which two related varieties are in use. This restriction of the concept of diglossia to such societies was based to the fact that Ferguson saw this situation as the result of the evolution of a speech community over an extended period of time, which resulted in the emergence of divergent varieties. Fishman (1967) proposed that societies, in which unrelated languages coexist, should similarly be considered as diglossic. He added that there are in fact different types of diglossia, i.e. one type in which the majority of the population is bilingual, and one in which only a part of the population is bilingual; Paraguay and Switzerland are his examples of bilingual diglossic countries, while Nigeria or India rather count as diglossic without widespread bilingualism in both H and L (yet see Timm 1981 for a criticism of Fishman’s distinction as blurry). He explains that in diglossic countries, languages are assigned to certain domains, i.e. “the sociocultural context in which [a language] is being realized or implemented” (Fishman 1991: 44). Landry and Allard (1989, 1994: 17–20) argue that four criteria may help establish to what type of diglossia a bilingual society can be assigned: a linguistic criterion (whether the two varieties are related or not), a sociological criterion (whether the two languages are in a conflictual relationship or not), a functional criterion (whether the use of the languages is organized according to domains – such as family and friends, associated with intimacy, as opposed to school, work, and church rather associated with status), and a stability criterion (which generally applies when a diglossic state has been maintained over at least three generations). Thus, countries with a history of European colonization, i.e. scenarios where an external language was imposed, are often diglossic or even polyglossic (i.e. multilingual, cf. Platt 1977) today. Morocco, to name but one such country, is polyglossic: whereas the majority of the population uses dialectal Arabic in their everyday conversations, Moroccan Standard Arabic plays a well-established role in governmental services and politics, education, and mass media, especially since independence in 1956 when efforts of Arabization began (Marley 2011). In addition, French, the language of the former colonizer, is more present than before, as it has established itself as a symbol of, and a key to, material and social prestige. However, Marley (2011: 164) points out that the increasing use of English (or English loanwords) will challenge French as the language of Western standards and lifestyle. English is thus on the rise even in countries where two prestigious, supercentral
12 languages such as French and Arabic already coexist (cf. de Swaan 2001), thus turning triglossic countries into polyglossic ones. Snow (2010), however, questioned the traditional taxonomy of diglossia explaining that there are profound differences between fully industrialized and rather traditional societies. He opposes German-speaking Switzerland and Hong Kong to other cases of diglossia and claims that these two societies share a number of features that distinguish them from others: 1) they are modern societies in which mass education is provided, which means that the majority of the population is competent in both L and H, 2) their H variety (i.e. Standard German and Standard Chinese) are modern, rather than classical, varieties that are in use in economically powerful countries, and 3) the sociolinguistic situation is stable since the speakers identify with both L and H, which supports the use of both varieties. Snow (2010) hence proposes to distinguish between “traditional” and “modern” diglossia. The focus here lies, however, on Paraguay as the host country. The scholar to propose Paraguay as a diglossic nation was Fishman (1967). The Paraguayan diglossia is rooted in its colonial history. In pre-Columbian times, the indigenous population of Paraguay consisted of dispersed mobile communities that spoke different varieties of the Tupi-Guarani language family. During the initial phase of European colonization, only few – mainly male – explorers found their way to Paraguay and settled there. Among them, polygyny was commonplace, which entailed the birth of a relatively stable Spanish–Guarani bilingual population from early on. Nevertheless, the Christianization of the indigenous population was carried out in Guarani, which strengthened the use of the indigenous vernacular. At the same time, the exchange of indigenous laborers among the encomiendas brought about the intermingling of speakers of different indigenous languages, and the eighteenth century hence experienced the emergence of a new (and much-lamented) Guarani monolingualism associated with poverty (Melià 2011: 425–427). The use of Guarani as a secret code and strategy in warfare in the War against the Triple Alliance (1865–1870) and the Chaco War (1932–1935) again contributed to the development of Paraguay’s national identity as a Guarani-speaking nation (Zajícová 2009: 34). In consequence, it is not surprising that, today, Guaraní Paraguayo, one out of 26 Tupi-Guarani languages spoken in the South American tropics and acknowledged as Paraguay’s national language by the 1967 Constitution, is a koiné of earlier varieties of Guarani that underwent processes of simplification and leveling due to intense dialect and language contact (Melià 2011: 431). Only the increasing immigration of Europeans, who did not intend to learn Guarani, at the turn of the twentieth century strengthened the use of Spanish anew (Melià 2011: 439–440). The Paraguayan diglossia is thus the result of an
13 external language being established and institutionalized on a large scale, which is similar to what occurred in many a place where English was imposed by the colonial power. Paraguay would thus most precisely be considered a case of a “conquest diglossia” (cf. Devonish 2003) in which H is an external language imposed by the colonizers and L lacks social prestige.4 This coexistence of a European and an Amerindian language that are both widely spoken throughout the nation is hence unique in the Americas, and Paraguay is often referred to as a showcase diglossia. The situation today is defined by the 1992 Constitution as followed:
ARTICULO 140 – DE LOS IDIOMAS El Paraguay es un país pluricultural y bilingüe. Son idiomas oficiales el castellano y el guaraní. La ley establecerá las modalidades de utilización de uno y otro. Las lenguas indígenas, así como las de otras minorías, forman parte del patrimonio cultural de la Nación. (http://www.constitution.org/cons/paraguay.htm, accessed June 6, 2013)
Article 140 – about the languages Paraguay is a multicultural and bilingual country. Its official languages are Castilian [Spanish] and Guarani. The law shall establish the modalities of utilization of one and the other. The indigenous languages, as those of other minorities, are part of the cultural patrimony of the Nation. (my translation)
Paraguay is thus considered a bilingual country by its Constitution, yet other minority languages are acknowledged, including the languages spoken by indigenous communities, of which only a few persist, and a number of isolated immigrant communities, such as the Mennonite communities in the Chaco region. As a whole, Paraguay could thus be seen as a bilingual nation with small linguistic enclaves scattered over its territory. However, a schoolteacher from Cosme made the following statement about the bilingual competence of Paraguayans:
(1) McLeod, Gen 3: It is said that Paraguay is a bilingual country, but this isn’t true: the people in the cities don’t understand Guarani, and the people in rural areas don’t speak Spanish.
4 Férère (1977) in fact holds that Paraguay and Haiti are only partially similar, since Haitians are predominantly monolingual in creole without a basic command of French, while bilingualism is relatively widespread in Paraguay. 14 This suggests that Paraguay may in fact be a diglossic country without widespread bilingualism (cf. Fishman 1967). A closer look at the sociolinguistic situation is thus necessary in order to understand the degree of societal bilingualism in Paraguay. The first in-depth research published on Paraguayan bilingualism in English was Joan Rubin’s National Bilingualism in Paraguay (1968). Her goal was to contribute to a better understanding of the dynamics of bilingual societies by providing a field study that aimed at explaining the origins of the Paraguayan diglossia, the factors that ensure its maintenance, and the attitudes of the speakers toward the two languages. Regarding language attitudes, Rubin (1968: 46–47) notes that even though 90 percent of the population reported to be able to use Guarani, the general attitudes toward it were negative: Guarani-speakers were pejoratively labeled guarangos and considered less intelligent and less civilized than speakers of Spanish. However, though Guarani was often under attack, it was simultaneously defended as a symbol of “the national soul” and “Paraguayanism” (Rubin 1968: 49). As such, also the government reinforced the status of Guarani to foster national unity and loyalty, and those who disfavored the use of Guarani were considered to be “traitors” or “gringos” (Rubin 1968: 51). The use of Guarani was preferred in informal and intimate contexts, while Spanish was preferred for formal, non-intimate, or serious issues (Rubin 1968: 109). According to Rubin, Paraguay should hence be considered a clear case of diglossia. As for the sociolinguistic variables, Rubin found that the low command of Spanish, or even Guarani monolingualism, was tied to women; men generally had more access to education than women, as especially young girls often contributed to the household and childcare. Most of the rural population in fact had their first continuous exposure to Spanish when they started school, which was sometimes as late as in their eleventh year. The monolingual speakers had usually not had one single year of schooling. Thus, Rubin (1968: 77–84) concludes that rural Paraguayans were Guarani-dominant and their command of Spanish closely linked to the amount of schooling, whereas urban speakers were more proficient in Spanish, and especially upper-class children growing up in the city had little knowledge of Guarani. However, Rubin (1968: 93) observes a general increase in bilingualism, which leads her to raise the question of whether the use of Guarani will eventually decline. Since the publication of Rubin’s book, a considerable body of sociolinguistic research was done in Paraguay. Russinovich Solé (1996) carried out a sociolinguistic survey in the wider Asuncion area to shed new light on language use and attitudes thirty years later. Similar to Rubin, Russinovich Solé (1996: 100) found that even if some knowledge of Guarani was
15 necessary also in the capital (knowledge that is mostly acquired during childhood) Spanish was preferred by the majority of the informants, particularly the younger generation. However, the use of either Spanish or Guarani was determined by the social background and the linguistic competence of the interlocutor, not the setting or the content of conversation: “Guarani is tied to lower educational and/or occupational status,” as well as rurality (Russinovich Sole 1996: 101). In line with this, the appropriateness of using either Spanish or Guarani hardly overlap, and only with regards to affective relationships, one third of the informants answered that both languages could be employed equally. Yet, given the different contexts in which either Spanish or Guarani are used, Russinovich Solé (1996: 103) holds that “[l]anguage choice is not a matter of indifference,” as the inappropriate use of either language can cause unease for the interlocutors. The most important factors that trigger the use of Guarani rather than Spanish are those of negative affect, such as insults, anger, or sarcasm, which, according to Russinovich Solé (1996: 102), is the result of Guarani being tied to masculinity, since there are more men than women who claim proficiency in Guarani – which contradicts the findings presented by Rubin (1968). In addition, it is noteworthy that in both studies Guarani was generally associated with ungrammaticality and lower intellectual ability. Russinovich Solé therefore concludes along with Rubin (1968) that, in the long run, Guarani is likely to lose ground, and that the only way of ensuring its survival is its “emblematic and affective value” (Russinovich Solé 1996: 109). This is in line with general observations made on identity issues: her data strongly corroborate the widely documented awareness of Paraguayans as being distinct from all other countries in Latin America due to their national bilingualism. Even if, at least in urban areas, Spanish is favored, Guarani is appreciated as a marker of “ethnic legacy and nationality” (Russinovich Solé 1996: 103), and even immigrant communities “do learn the national languages, while at the same time holding tenaciously to their own language” (Russinovich Solé 1996: 107). This latter claim is not corroborated by the New Australian community since it did not hold to its heritage language; chapter five will explore the reasons for this. It is true, nonetheless, that Guarani soon became the community’s first language, which underscores the strength of Guarani. Fasoli-Wörmann (2002) provides a qualitative study of Paraguay’s bilingualism on the basis of 32 questionnaire-based interviews. She uses the term Sprachkonflikt (‘language conflict’) to refer to the division between the use of Spanish among the urban population and Guarani among the rural population. This situation is perpetuated by the fact that the working population is increasingly migrating from rural areas to the urban centers, thus leaving behind
16 Guarani-speaking elderly people with small children in peripheral areas. This development reinforces the low prestige of Guarani, and even though most of her informants expressed a positive attitude and loyalty5 toward Guarani, they also affirmed not to speak or even avoid it and rather use Spanish instead (2002: 285). Accordingly, Spanish seems to be invading domains that have traditionally belonged to the sphere of Guarani. On the basis of these observations, and in line with the previous studies, Fasoli-Wörmann (2002: 297) concludes that Guarani as the L variety is in fact endangered and that Paraguay is shifting from a diglossic to a monoglossic society. The most recent large-scale study on Paraguayan bilingualism, based on questionnaires distributed in rather rural areas, is Zajícová’s (2009) book on attitudes toward Spanish and Guarani. According to the 2007 census, the majority of the Paraguayan population self- reported as speakers of Guarani. Table 1 indicates the absolute as well as relative numbers from the 2007 census of the Paraguayan population over four years of age:
Language Guarani Spanish Portu- German Indigen. other total guese languages Number 3,915,089 506,185 53,822 13,255 55,876 11,670 4,555,897 Percentage 85.9 11.1 1.2 0.3 1.2 0.3 100
Table 1: First language spoken by the Paraguayan population of over four years of age in the 2007 census (Zajícová 2009: 66)
This table shows that Guarani is more widely spoken in Paraguay than Spanish. In terms of households, 60 percent of them prefer Guarani over Spanish (Zajícová 2009: 68). The use of Guarani is nevertheless declining among younger Paraguayans, and Zajícová’s informants indicated that they use Guarani most with their grandparents, less with their parents and even less with their siblings. This is surprising in view of the fact that Guarani is considered the language of Paraguayan identity in all the studies carried out so far and suggests that identity marking is, in fact, of secondary importance in a scenario of language contact and marginalization. However, it is important to keep in mind that most Paraguayans do not speak either Spanish or Guarani: they speak a variety of Jopara, a mixed code consisting of Spanish and Guarani, which is located somewhere on a continuum between these two languages. It
5 Language loyalty is a concept that was first discussed by Weinreich (1974: 99) as “a principle […] in the name of which people will rally themselves and their fellow speakers consciously and explicitly to resist changes in either the functions of their language […] or in the structure or vocabulary.” 17 consists of frequent code-switching and code-mixing, i.e. the use of the two codes within the same utterance as well as within the same sentence, respectively (cf. Thomason 2001: 132), yet it is not a mixed language with an established system (cf. Thomason 1997). Jopara can either be closer to Spanish or to Guarani, that is, consist of more Spanish or more Guarani elements (Zajícová 2009). The variety of Jopara spoken in New Australia is rather close to Guarani and thus unintelligible for speakers of Spanish. In sum, the statement made by the schoolteacher from Cosme seems to hold in that there seems to be a gap between the rural and the urban population: while the former is still rather Guarani-dominant, the latter is rather Spanish-dominant. And given that rurality is often tied to lower social class, less schooling, and poverty, it is mainly the rural poor that have Guarani as their first language. In addition, the studies on Paraguayan bilingualism suggest that L might be endangered. However, Paraguay is still unique in that it is the only country on the American continent with such a high proportion of speakers of both national languages, and one of the two languages is nota bene an indigenous Amerindian language. In the 1890s, the English-speaking settler community from Australia was thus likely to have been surrounded by a purely Guarani-speaking neighborhood, whereas Spanish was required when talking to the local administration as well as the upper-class society the settlers were in contact with in Villarrica and Asuncion.
2.2 Languages in competition: maintenance and loss of minority languages As has become clear in the previous section, language contact situations rarely simply imply that two languages are in use in the same place. One of the languages is usually politically or socially more powerful and marginalizes the other one. Diglossia, as we have seen, is a rather stable situation, as each language is assigned its own functions according to the domain in which it is used. Fishman (1967) argues that this compartmentalization of languages, i.e. their ascription to certain domains, is a fundamental feature of diglossic societies: the functional division of the involved languages ensures their maintenance, because without it one of the two languages would soon become superfluous and fall into disuse. Fishman therefore argues that diglossia strengthens the use of the low variety and ensures its maintenance. This is the reason why only a society with a relatively stable bilingualism and language maintenance over three generations is considered diglossic (cf. Landry & Allard 1994). When no such stability is given, that is when one of the languages is politically or socially more powerful and marginalizes other languages, we speak of language competition.
18 2.2.1 Language competition and shift It is a widely accepted fact that of the approximately 6,000 languages spoken world-wide today half will be extinct by the end of the twenty-first century due to the competition of socially weaker languages with stronger ones (Walsh 2005: 295). Language competition, however, is not limited to settings in which a world language comes into contact with local or marginalized ones. Even among small and isolated communities languages can be in an uneven hierarchical relationship. Dimmendaal (1989), for example, describes a case of hunter-gatherer communities in Eastern Africa, among which the least powerful communities are expected to be competent in the languages of other communities for trading, while speakers of more dominant groups are often monolingual. This situation usually leads to a so- called encroaching diglossia, i.e. the inferior languages are absorbed by the dominant ones due to unequal bilingualism (Dimmendaal 1989: 16). Language competition is thus the outcome wherever languages come into contact, be they world languages or indigenous ones, and in some cases one of the languages is endangered and likely to disappear entirely. In opposition to this scenario of indigenous groups being in contact, it is interesting to consider the contact between two world languages, i.e. English and Spanish. In the United States, for example, English is undoubtedly the dominant language, while Spanish as an immigrant (and a heritage) language is clearly a minority language – although the largest of all (e.g. Jaramillo 1995). In some settings, however, Spanish seems stronger than English, as for instance in Puerto Rico. When Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States, it was a fully Spanish-speaking nation; however, due to the imposition of English in the school system and politics from above, Puerto Rico would have had a number of reasons to shift from Spanish to English. Velez (2000) argues that even though policies were established that favored English, the demographic strength of Spanish speakers as well as their dense social networks impeded the spread of English as the population’s first language. The lack of competent English- speaking teachers and the “absurdity of teaching in a strange foreign language when teachers and students all had the same vernacular” added to the retention of Spanish in educational settings where the strongest influence of English should have taken place (Velez 2000: 11). Today, English is spoken by a considerable proportion of the Puerto Rican society, yet Spanish is the island’s vital first language. The reasons for language maintenance are in this case not tied to official and legal decisions but to the social and demographic reality of society, and it is thus insightful to understand cases where a politically inferior language is maintained. Velez (2000: 7–8) stresses the importance of social forces in Puerto Rico, such as the prestige or economic and political power of the speakers of either language, to be
19 determinant, irrespective of whether the speech community itself is either dominant or not. Thus, certain social factors, such as language policies or demographic determinants, either favor or disfavor the maintenance of a language. As seen above, cases in which one of the languages is weakened often lead to language shift. A large body of studies on cases of language shift has been produced during the last couple of decades. One of the pioneering studies on language shift in a bilingual community was presented by Gal (1979). Gal documented how the inhabitants of Oberwart, an originally Hungarian-speaking community in Austria that became bilingual due to the fluctuations of the national borders, shifted from German–Hungarian bilingualism to German. During the post- 1955 industrial boom, Oberwart’s geographical location on the trade route between Hungary and Austria brought about an influx of German-speaking immigrants, who soon constituted the wealthy upper class, whereas speakers of Hungarian mainly earned their money as agriculturalists. Hungarian was therefore originally associated with the rather poor peasant community and German with wageworkers in business and industry. German became indispensible for education and upward mobility and many Hungarian-speaking agriculturalists switched to German as they became wageworkers. By the time Gal carried out her research, the originally Hungarian-speaking community had mainly switched to German. Gal’s sociolinguistic field study further focused on the domains in which Hungarian and German were used and showed that the interlocutor, rather than other factors such as setting, occasion, or purpose, determined language choice. Thus, within the same situation, a speaker could use both languages depending on the addressee; a father, for instance, spoke Hungarian to the interviewer and simultaneously answered his son’s questions in German (Gal 1979: 120–125). Figure 1 visualizes that among Gal’s informants, elderly interlocutors as well as “God” (meant to represent religious practices in general) were addressed in Hungarian in most of the cases, and illustrates how the shift from Hungarian to German took place gradually according to the interlocutor (similar to domain, cf. Fishman 1991). Out-group professionals, such as the governor or the doctor, as well as the youngest generation, by contrast, were rather spoken to in German. The younger generation, above all young women, rejected the use of Hungarian due to its association with “the heaviness of peasant work” (Gal 1979: 167–170). In other words, both age as well as the peasantry-related social networks of the interlocutors correlated clearly with the use of Hungarian: the older and the more traditional and/or agriculturalist the interlocutor, the more likely the use of Hungarian. The use of either German or Hungarian was thus highly patterned and disfavored Hungarian whenever the context of higher social status was given.
20
Figure 1: Language choice between German (G) and Hungarian (H) by 32 speakers depending on the interlocutor (Gal 1979: 135)
Gal (1979: 124, 165) also describes the fact that bilinguals usually switched to German if monolingual German speakers were involved in the conversation. This was of course increasingly the case once intermarriage and immigration became more common in Oberwart and the status of German was raised after World War II. Gal (1979: 166) also explains that the arrival of monolinguals introduced German as the more frequently used language, since outsiders perceived the use of Hungarian as hostile. The gradual decline in the use of Hungarian was thus brought about by the decreasing agricultural lifestyle, increasing mobility of the speakers, awareness of the social and linguistic background of the interlocutor, as well
21 as the social implication of language choice as a marker of social class. Russinovich Solé’s (1996) data on language choice in Asuncion are consequently in line with Hungarian–German bilingual Austria, where the interlocutor’s ethnic background rather than the context or the topic of conversation determines language choice. Nevertheless, even though the interlocutor will be of some relevance in the analysis of language shift in New Australia, too, there are certain differences between Oberwart and New Australia. On the one hand, the village of Oberwart had been bilingual for several centuries before shifting to German, while New Australia cannot be considered to have been fully bi- or even trilingual for more than a generation. On the other hand, language shift away from English in New Australia is already completed, which means that no synchronic data on shifting uses of English versus Spanish and Guarani can be collected. A more comparable case of shift in an immigrant community is analyzed by Haugen (1989), one of the pioneers in studying immigrant communities. He described The Rise and Fall of Norwegian in America. Over the course of the nineteenth century, over half a million Norwegians settled in the Midwest of the United States. Haugen interviewed his informants in the 1930s and documented how the local variety of Norwegian, while maintaining Norwegian grammar and phonology, gradually included an increasing number of English loanwords. Given the close social ties among community members and considerable efforts to maintain the heritage culture and language, Norwegian was the community’s first language until well into the twentieth century, yet, from the 1940s onwards, most community members were bilingual and gradually abandoned the community-centered activities. The most important conclusion to draw from the Norwegian-American experience is, perhaps, that neither a large number of speakers nor the institutionalization of a language guarantees that the ancestral language will be maintained. According to Winford (2003: 258), language shift usually takes place in five stages, i.e. from monolingualism to differing degrees of bilingualism in a diglossic state, to a limited knowledge of the ancestral language in phase four. In phase five, the ancestral language has mainly disappeared. Ihemere (2007), for example, provides a detailed study of language shift occurring in Port Hartcourt, Nigeria, where speakers of Ikwerre are shifting from Ikwerre to Nigerian Pidgin English within three generations only. For immigrant communities, the rule of thumb generally predicts that the community members will have shifted away from their ancestral language by the third generation: while the first generation tends to remain monolingual in the ancestral language, the second generation is usually fully bilingual. The
22 third generation, however, often lacks competence in the heritage language, which entails that the shift is complete (Riehl 2009: 72). The continuous spread of the English language, however, is unique in that it has been involved in copious contact settings and often successfully so. First, speakers of earlier forms of English moved from continental Europe to the British Isles, where their language came into contact with Celtic languages and Latin and later on French. Since the sixteenth century, English was taken from the British Isles to nearly all corners of the world, which gave rise to a large number of new varieties (Trudgill 2013). The competition of English with other languages on both the local and the global level has concerned linguists for quite some time (e.g. Wardhaugh 1987; Grillo 1989). One of the most influential works was Crystal’s (1997, 2003) English as a Global Language, followed by Language Death (2000), which raised a number of topics regarding the reasons for the global spread of English. Crystal (2003) argues that the political and economic power of Britain in colonial times, followed by the importance of English-speaking societies in the development of technological (e.g. industrialization), cultural (e.g. the media), and scientific innovation all contributed to English becoming the most powerful global language today. On several occasions, he points out that it ultimately depends on issues of utility, i.e. economic interests and social prestige, which determine whether speakers will keep their heritage language alive. He generally considers this development towards a diglossic situation on a global level as inevitable since globalization and internationalization are augmenting the need for a language in common, a global lingua franca (2000: 14). While such a function of English seems practical and does have a number of advantages, counterarguments have been given that claim that English is in fact erasing other languages (e.g. Dalby 2002). Phillipson (1992) holds that the massive teaching of English in the colonies has imposed English as a threat to local indigenous languages. Along the same lines, Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996: 432) express their concerns regarding the spread of English within Europe and beyond and the “strong global homogenizing tendencies” that this brings about. They call for language policies that protect language rights and ensure multilingualism for both dominant and minority groups. Following other researchers, they propose the differentiation between two different language policy paradigms: the Diffusion- of-English Paradigm and the Ecology-of-Language Paradigm. The first is tied to the general “English-Only” ideology mainly known in the United States. This paradigm pursues the ideal of one single national language, the competence in which shall permit social integration and mobility for its speakers (cf. Wiley & Lukes 1996). Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996:
23 437) claim that such language policies had devastating effects on local indigenous languages in colonial settings, which ultimately result in linguicism, i.e. “ideologies, structures, and practices which are used to legitimate, effectuate and reproduce an unequal division of power and resources (material and immaterial) between groups which are defined on the basis of language”. The latter, which is based on Haugen’s (1972) concept of the ecology of language (see above), pursues a “human rights perspective” that ensures equality in communication, multilingualism, and the maintenance of languages and cultures. By discussing these two approaches, which should be seen as the opposite poles of a continuum, the authors seek to raise linguists’ and politicians’ awareness of the precarious legal and social conditions to which many speakers of minority languages are exposed. The death of a language, i.e. when a language ceases to be spoken, is often lamented by society and linguists alike due to the loss of linguistic diversity. This diversity refers to both linguistic material, such as unique lexical items for very specific concepts, as well as to a certain way of perceiving the world (for instance regarding counting systems, orientation in space, or the reference to time, e.g. Harrison 2007; Evans 2010). Crystal (2000: 40) additionally points out that languages are also markers of identity and “repositories of history”. In Latin America, the economic and social force exerted by Spanish and Portuguese have had a particularly strong impact on local communities, many of which are in processes of language loss and the heritage language will disappear completely (e.g. Mayan in Mexico, Garzon 1992). In the case of English being lost in New Australia, however, no such loss or language death can be lamented, and the fact that the indigenous language was the one to be established promises to shed new light on the issue of language competition. Some scholars, however, do not participate in these debates of linguistic advocacy. Mühleisen (2003) sees the use of English as the principal language of science as a logical consequence of both the impact of scientific research published in English as well as the need for a common lingua franca, which in medieval times used to be Latin. Even if Mühleisen (2003: 177) does point out the disadvantages of this development, which mainly disfavors non-native speakers of English, she holds that if translation is guaranteed, there are a number of advantages in this “global diglossia.” Mufwene (2008) argues that, instead of seeing languages as being at war with each other, it is important to consider the speakers’ mostly deliberate decision to abandon their heritage language if they deem another language more efficient in allowing social mobility, access to better jobs, or a different lifestyle. He stresses that “[a]daptation to changing socioeconomic ecologies, provided the local population
24 structure allows the relevant groups access to the economic opportunities, is the primary reason for language loss” (Mufwene 2008: 232). In accordance with this, Blommaert (2010: 21) argues that a language is in fact a resource and postulates a shift of focus from a sociolinguistics of languages to a sociolinguistics of resources. In this context, a language must be seen as part of a speaker’s mobile resources that help achieve social and spatial mobility. Heller (2010) argues along the same lines to show how language in capitalist societies is “commodified”, i.e. language is seen not only as a marker of identity or a skill, but also as a good that can be acquired to achieve a certain goal. Such goals are usually tied to social or economic progress in some way. The areas in which languages, mainly powerful international languages –above all English–, are most frequently commodified are tourism, marketing, language teaching, translation, and call centers; however, also performance art, i.e. the skillful play with languages that often aims at challenging the established hegemonic order of languages, is a further field of language commodification (Heller 2010: 108–110). She points out that this new way of using language poses a number of challenges to anthropological linguistic research as new theoretical approaches are needed to deal with this development (Heller 2010: 110). Thus, in times of globalization and where an international lingua franca is needed, the instrumental value of English as a resource or commodity to get access to social mobility or achieve individual aims is undisputed, yet the theoretical framework to deal with these processes of negotiation is yet to be elaborated. The global spread of the English language is hence the result of the British cultural, political, and economic power rather than the properties of the English language. Mufwene (2008: 226–252) remarks that Native American languages have survived most in countries that are least industrialized and mentions Paraguay as an example, thus ascribing the strength of Guarani to the industrial lag of its nation. However, he points out that lingua francas already exist in many Third World countries in Latin America and Africa; the imposition of colonial languages hence often leads to a case of triglossia, while the ‘real’ threat to local indigenous languages are not world languages like English or French, but rather regional languages, such as Mandarin or Swahili (in the Paraguayan case, this would probably be Paraguayan Guarani in contact with small indigenous languages). Mufwene concludes that views that see English as a “killer language” are too simplistic, and that language loss always takes place on a local, not on an international level. In a similar vein, Joseph (2004: 184) remarks that English as an international language does not act as a “killer language”, but in fact rather fortifies local mother tongues. He argues
25 that English is a threat to national rather than small languages, and the national ones are more likely to erase smaller languages, as they are more powerful on the local level. Furthermore, he remarks that “most of those giving up their traditional language are […] doing so as part of constructing an identity for themselves that is bound up with a conception of modernity as communication extending beyond their village and their country to the world at large” (Joseph 2004: 23). Thus, Joseph (2004: 185–188) concludes that native languages are decisive to an individual’s identity, and that to claim that English has the power to erase all the languages in the world is equivalent to questioning the willpower and identity of individuals around the globe. Nevertheless, similar to Mufwene, Joseph also discusses Latin as an example, i.e. one of the first world languages that spread around a major territory, while he does not mention any recent case of language shift in particular. Despite their opposed positions, these debates have one aspect in common: they focus on the usefulness, or perhaps ‘fitness’, of a language in its respective environment. Such an approach goes back to Haugen (1972: 325), who coined the term “the ecology of language”,6 a metaphor that refers to the “interactions between any given language and its environment”, specifying that “[t]he true environment of a language is the society that uses it as one of its codes”. Haugen proposed to study the ecology in which a language exists by answering a number of questions concerning the external conditions of a language. With regards to language shift, Mackey (1980: 35) adds that such an environment “can be friendly, hostile or indifferent to the life of each of the languages. A language may expand, as more and more people use it, or it may die for lack of speakers. Just as competition for limited bio-resources creates conflict in nature, so also with languages”. He stresses that it is important to study how these processes develop, since they shed light on life cycles of, and conflicts between, languages. Mackey (1980: 37) refers to “superlanguages,” i.e. international languages spoken on a global level, such as English, French, or Spanish, and holds that they often induce speakers of local languages to shift away from their native languages in order to participate in activities and reach spaces beyond their local contexts. He adds that “any language shift will therefore be influenced by what is valued most by the culture and by what the people in the community want most” (1980: 37). As three of the most powerful driving forces in language maintenance and shift he mentions consumerism, ideology, and religion, yet also adds that these factors are usually complex and multiple, and that cultural norms, such as the
6 According to the focus of this chapter on multilingual societies, the aspect of the environment influencing the structure of the language, e.g. the lexicon, as part of Mufwene’s language evolution, is disregarded here. In addition, this term should also be differentiated from another perception of the “ecology of language,” sometimes referred to as ecolinguistics, which designates the study of the role of language in ecological or environmentalist studies (see Fill & Mühlhäusler 2001). 26 prohibition of intermarriage, can prevent a community from language shift. Even though Mackey does not provide a descriptive framework to analyze language maintenance and shift, he, together with Haugen (1972), is among the first to list the decisive points in the extralinguistic environment of languages and to encourage the study of language maintenance and shift. Mufwene (2001, 2008) similarly emphasizes the environment as being the determinant of the processes a language undergoes. He uses the term language evolution to describe how languages change over time due to “adaptive responses to changing communicative ecologies, both external (including other speakers) and internal” (Mufwene 2008: 17). Mufwene (2001) draws on an analogy between the development of languages, which are restructured due to their contact with other languages, and the contact and mutual accommodation between the speakers. He further explains that this process is similar to the adaptation of living species to their environment and refers in particular to “viruses whose genotypes can change during their lifetime” (Mufwene 2008: 28). The genes correspond to structural features that are selected from a common pool, a feature pool, from which speakers select and recombine and thus establish a new system, often a new colonial variety of a European language. Mühlhäusler (1996) explains in detail how the context in which a language evolves will certainly determine the way its speakers refer to it. Colonial dialects, pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages are thus the ‘normal’ result of evolutionary processes that can be found among living species and languages alike. The case of English, however, is still outstanding. It has not only successfully established itself in many a new environment, it has also evolved into numerous new varieties. Schneider (2003, 2007) proposes a model that describes the processes through which new colonial varieties of English go. These can be seen as five different phases: 1) The foundation phase, when the settlers accommodate their different varieties by converging into a more homogeneous koiné; 2) the exonormative stabilization phase, when the variety starts to set itself apart as distinct and expands into the indigenous languages; 3) the nativization phase, when the variety evolves into its own variety that evolves from its feature pool consisting of imported vernacular as well as substrate features; 4) the endonormative stabilization phase, when the new colonial variety is accepted as a new distinct and independent norm; and finally 5) differentiation, when the new variety has evolved into new local dialects which are not only fully independent structurally but also embody their local culture and identity (Schneider 2007: 53). Schneider (2003, 2007) thus proposes a five-step-model that describes what has occurred with the English language in many a contact setting in which new varieties emerged.
27 In the New Australian case, the community did not reach beyond phase one before it shifted to Guarani. New Australia is thus one of the few cases in which English was not established successfully. In most settings where this occurred, as described by Schneider (cf. 2007), new varieties emerged, yet their status as legitimate varieties of English used to be questioned. Kachru (1985) therefore proposed the model of the three concentric circles to classify the status of what he called world Englishes: each variety of English, be it a native, colonial or second-language variety, can be placed in either the Inner Circle, the Outer Circle, or the Expanding Circle:
Figure 2: The Three Concentric Circles of World Englishes (Kachru 1992: 356)
The Inner Circle consists of the countries that constitute the “traditional bases of English”, that is, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Given that English is the L1 for the majority of the population of these nations, the varieties spoken
28 there are considered to be norm-providing. Outer Circle countries are those nations that experienced considerable periods of colonization by the British and in which, as a result of their colonial history, English has been institutionalized to some extent. This means that it is used in several domains of everyday life, such as education or government services, and “with varying degrees of competence by members of society” (Kachru 1985: 13). The varieties spoken there are norm-developing. In countries belonging to the Expanding Circle, such as Greece or Israel, English is not spoken natively, which implies that it is norm-dependent. English does not have any officially assigned function; it is, however, acknowledged to be the most relevant language internationally:
Understanding the function of English in this circle requires recognition of the fact that English is an international language, and that it has already won the race in this respect with linguistic rivals such as French, Russian and Esperanto, to name just two natural languages and one artificial language. The geographical regions characterized as the expanding circle do not necessarily have a history of colonization by the users of the inner circle (Ituen, 1980). This circle is currently expanding rapidly and has resulted in numerous performance (or EFL) varieties of English (Kachru and Quirk, 1981). It is the users of this circle who actually further strengthen the claims of English as an international or universal language. (Kachru 1985: 13)
Thus, the nations belonging to the Expanding Circle “recognize” that English is internationally the most important language and may therefore take measures to promote its instruction and use. Given that today the entire world, not only countries in which English plays a certain role, is considered to belong to one of these circles, Crystal (2003: 60) proposed to rename the Expanding Circle as Expanded Circle. Whether Latin America, and Paraguay in particular, is part of the Expanding Circle or not will be discussed further below. Most of these settings have seen the emergence of new local varieties of English (cf. Schneider 2003), each of them characterized by its own linguistic particularities. This exemplifies Joseph’s (2004: 186) claim that the spread of world languages is ultimately the same process as the original emergence and evolution of languages, because the fact that smaller languages are being absorbed by larger ones does not simply lead to a decrease in linguistic diversity, but simultaneously brings about an increase in variation within one single language as new local varieties emerge. Thus, the view of world languages as killer languages is too simplistic in this respect, too. However, it is important to keep in mind that nearly all the discussions of English in the Outer and Expanding Circles focus on Asia, Africa, and, to a lesser extent, the Caribbean (Kachru 1992). Latin America is not mentioned in this model, which corresponds to the white spot on Strevens’ (1992: 33) map presented in the beginning.
29 2.2.2 Linguistic enclaves Nevertheless, not all minority languages are absorbed by the dominant culture. Some communities make great efforts to keep their language alive in spite of being surrounded by a heteroglossic environment. Some of them are successful: such communities are usually referred to as Sprachinseln (from German, ‘language island’). At first, the term Sprachinsel was used to refer to enclosed rural communities where an ancestral language is maintained that is different from the dominant language spoken by the surrounding society. Even though nowadays the term is also applied to urban communities that live at the margin of their societies, the relevant characteristic of a Sprachinsel is that it is isolated and surrounded by either a dominant variety or by a dominant unrelated language. They thus constitute a community that is clearly distinguishable from the majority of the society on linguistic and often also cultural grounds (Riehl 2009: 332–333). To remain in isolation is often a goal of such communities in order to ensure the persistence of their linguistic and cultural heritage. When analyzing isolation as an extralinguistic factor, Schreier (2009) distinguishes between three different types: geographic, social, and attitudinal isolation. Apart from living in a secluded community, which inhibits the interaction between community members and outsiders due to geographic conditions, a community can also be socially isolated. This is the case when social patterns hinder the integration of a minority group into its surrounding society. Finally, attitudinal isolation is a consequence of the negative attitudes toward one another between members of different groups, which impedes their cultural and linguistic convergence. Hence, isolation can occur on different levels, and it is to a certain extent a precondition to preserve a language that is surrounded by other dominant languages. Similarly, the internal structure of such Sprachinseln as a language-external determinant should also not be underestimated. As Milroy (1987) outlines, the constellation of personal networks and intra-community ties are decisive in the development of language change. While high-density, multiplex societies, in which individuals are connected in more than one way, tend to refrain from adopting innovations from other groups, communities with loose intra-community ties are rather likely to pick up features, and thus also languages, from groups with which they are in contact. A Sprachinsel is thus more likely to maintain its ancestral language if the network among its members is dense and multiplex. Edwards (1992, 2010) proposes a useful typology of minority languages in a given state along the same lines. He distinguishes between unique minorities, which only exist in one particular state, non- unique minorities that are minorities wherever they occur, yet they occur in more than one state, and local-only minorities, which are minorities that belong to a majority elsewhere but
30 are a minority in their respective state. Each of these minority groups can then be adjoining or not (except for the unique minorities) among each other, and be cohesive or non-cohesive, i.e. have internal spatial cohesion. Edwards (1992: 51) argues that such a typology is helpful in understanding the external forces at stake, especially when individual case studies are to be compared. In Latin America, there are several examples of such Sprachinseln, yet only few of them have so far been documented in detail. Blumenau in the Brazilian state of Santa Catalina is a well-documented German-speaking Sprachinsel. German immigration in southern Brazil began after Brazil’s independence in 1822, and the three southern-most states of Brazil experienced considerable immigration from Germany due to the famine in the homeland and the new opportunities and land offers in South America. German soon became institutionalized in a number of German-speaking enclaves, such as Blumenau or Joinville, and the German language and culture well established. However, due to changing language policies that banned German in 1983, the ancestral language was marginalized and today Portuguese is the dominant language (Zinkhahn Rhobodes 2012: 109–116). Zinkhahn Rhobodes (2012) shows how the use of German as the family language strongly correlates with German identity, because those who still use German mainly identify as Germans, while the Portuguese-dominant descendants consider themselves Brazilians. According to Edwards (1992), Blumenau would be a local-only, non-adjoining, yet today non-cohesive minority community. Another well-known Sprachinsel in South America is Chubut, the Welsh colony in Patagonia. This community was initiated in the mid-nineteenth century not only to exploit new territories, but also to ensure cultural continuity, as the Welsh culture and language had come under pressure and became marginalized in Britain. Protestant religion, Welsh-language instruction, Welsh newspapers, and a Welsh legal system were established to help constitute a Sprachinsel in which the survival of Welsh was ensured. In the 1880s, 1,650 settlers lived in Chubut (Williams 1991: 40), yet the community continued to grow. The socio-religious organization of the community contributed considerably to its unity as most of the people belonged to the Nonconformist religion from Wales, and religious instruction was provided in Sunday schools in Welsh only (Williams 1991: 247). Another factor that strengthened the unity of the community and thus the language was the social and geographic isolation due to cultural differences as well as a lack of mobility. Nevertheless, in the course of the twentieth century, the Welsh language became a marker not only of Welsh identity but also of rurality and “backwardness”, which weakened its standing in Argentine society (Williams 1991: 255).
31 Today Chubut is not an isolated community anymore, but integrated into the mestizo population of rural Argentina. The Welsh in Patagonia were thus a non-unique, non- adjoining, cohesive minority group, yet the vitality of Welsh has declined. In fact, several similar communities exist in Paraguay. Nueva Germania is a German- speaking community, and particularly the Mennonite communities spread throughout the Chaco region have kept their cultural and linguistic heritage alive. New Australia originally had the aim of becoming such a non-unique, non-adjoining, and cohesive Sprachinsel that could eventually be expanded and integrated into the British Empire. However, its isolation from the local environment did not ensure the maintenance of its ancestral language due to reasons explained in chapter five. Descriptive models can provide the necessary framework to describe processes of language maintenance and shift in enclave communities.
2.2.3 Models of language maintenance and shift As seen above, the loss of such a language can either bring about the loss of valuable linguistic material as part of cultural knowledge, or have an effect on the identity of the speakers of the languages that are lost. This sometimes calls for actions to be taken that ensure the survival and revitalization of the language in question, such as the standardization of the language or its establishment in educational services. Language vitality is thus one of the key concepts in the study of language contact, maintenance, and endangerment, since it can give hints at what measures should be applied when decisions on language revitalization or language planning and policies are taken (cf. Sallabank 2011; Flores Farfán & Ramallo 2010). Giles et al. (1977) were among the first to propose a conceptual framework to approach settings of asymmetrical language contact, maintenance, or shift that could be applied to a wide range of different cases. They proposed to determine a community’s “ethnolinguistic vitality” in order to predict whether a community is “likely to behave as a distinctive and active collective entity in intergroup relations” (Giles et al. 1997: 308), which would favor the maintenance of its ancestral language in contact with other, usually dominant, groups. The variables that determine a community’s ethnolinguistic vitality belong to three different domains: 1) institutional support, 2) demography, and 3) status. Institutional support, to begin with, refers to both informal and formal support. While the former emerges from within the group and locates the community within its environment, the latter is provided by out-group agents or institutions, such as the educational system, government services, mass media,
32 industry, religion, and the dominant culture. In order for a community to be strong and distinct, a balance of the two is crucial (Giles et al. 1977: 315–316). Demography as a second determinant of ethnolinguistic vitality refers to the distribution of speakers over a territory, their concentration and proportion vis-à-vis other communities or groups, and to numbers of births, mixed couples, and migration. In general, it is assumed that immigrants, such as Latinos in the United States, are more likely to maintain their heritage language when a considerable number of individuals around them speak the same language, i.e. when a “critical mass” is given (e.g. Linton 2004). Spanish in the United States, though of lower prestige and inferior social status than English, is maintained thanks to the continuous arrival of new monolingual immigrants, which, added to continuous contact with the homeland, ensures that the sizeable Hispanic population in the Southwest, Texas, Miami and New York is highly retentive (Russinovich Solé 1990). The case of Norwegian in the Midwest, however, undermines the argument that numbers alone are decisive, since over half a million well-organized Norwegians did not maintain their ancestral language in the long run (Haugen 1968) despite the expectation that such a large number should ensure language maintenance. The third factor that Giles et al. (1977: 310–312) propose is status, which is divided into four different sub-factors: economic status, such as the use of a language in economically powerful domains, social status, dealing with attitudes toward languages and groups, sociohistorical status, referring to a common past that benefits feelings of common origins and identification, and finally language status, which addresses the interplay of ideologies and prestige of the languages involved and towards their speakers. The following Figure 3 shows how Giles et al. (1977: 309) perceived of their model of ethnolinguistic vitality:
33 Ethnolinguistic Vitality
Institutional Support • Mass media • Education • Governmental Services • Industry • Religion • Culture
Demography • National Territory • Concentration • Proportion • Absolute numbers • Birth rate • Mixed marriages • Migration
Status • Economic status • Social status • Sociohistorical status • Language status (within and without)
Figure 3: The factors defining Ethnolinguistic Vitality (Giles et al. 1977: 309)
If all of these determinant factors are favorable, the vitality of a language is strengthened, and the language is more likely to continue to be spoken in the future. In other words, high ethnolinguistic vitality helps ensure language maintenance. As shown in Table 2, the end result of such a descriptive study would then be to determine whether a variety’s ethnolinguistic vitality is rather low or rather high, which ultimately allows a prediction regarding its maintenance. Spanish in the United States would thus be rather likely to disappear (note that this analysis stems from 1977, which is likely to have changed in the meantime due to the demographic development of the US population7):
7 The United States 2010 census reported over 50,000,000 inhabitants of Hispanic origin (U.S. Census Bureau 2011). 34 Group Status Demography Inst. Support Overall Vitality Anglo-Americans High High High High Mexican-American Low Medium Low-Medium Low-Medium Table 2: Ethnolinguistic Vitality of two ethnic groups (adapted from Giles et al. 1977: 317)
However, it is important to consider that this framework does not determine the probability of language maintenance or shift in numbers; rather, it provides a useful taxonomy to describe the factors that are relevant in processes of language maintenance and shift from a qualitative point of view. In response to this gap, Fishman (1991) proposed an eight-stage scale to measure ethnolinguistic vitality and the degree of language endangerment in more precise and comparable terms. Landry & Allard (1994) added further factors to the model, such as language behavior, which includes the social interactions as well as the individual aptitude to language learning. This is particularly important nowadays, because social networks are not only limited spatially but are very much transplanted to the virtual world and the Internet. Due to its elaboration in the 1970s, however, it is noteworthy that Giles et al.’s (1977) framework does not include the new communication technologies that accompanied the movement of people and groups on a global level, which has increased substantially in the course of the last couple of decades. However. This fact that the shift took place before the digital era commenced (in fact even before electricity was installed in the village), added to the fact that language competence and linguistic interactions among the first three generations of New Australians cannot be measured anymore, suggests that this framework can be applied to the analysis of language shift in New Australia. A more recent, yet similarly descriptive, model of language vitality was proposed by Porcel (2011). He defines language contact, maintenance, and shift as “ongoing processes whose directionality may change at any time” (Porcel 2011: 624). In cases of language contact and maintenance, the coexistence of the two languages remains stable, whereas language shift implies that one language is marginalized by the dominant one. In order to understand such processes, they must be assessed from a sociolinguistic perspective. Therefore, Porcel (2011) proposes to identify three groups of variables: a) variables that affect the internal structures of the speech community, b) variables that determine the social standing of the community within its larger (host) society, and c) variables concerning the individual speakers, such as language attitudes and social status. Figure 4 shows the model as proposed by Porcel:
35 Direct
Language Assessment
Surrogate Indirect
Speech community variables • Contact situation • Spatial Distribution • Language Functions
Sociolingusitic Assessment Attitudinal Structural variables variables • Attitudes towards • Demographic status English • Socioeconomic • Attitudes towards status Spanish • Cultural status • Acts of identity • Legal status
Figure 4: The sociolinguistic assessment of language maintenance and shift (Porcel 2011: 625)
However, the contact between Spanish and English, especially in the United States, is known to follow different paths, because the use of both languages and code-switching (i.e. Spanglish) becomes “a rightful variety” in bilingual settings, thus questioning the validity of the claim that diglossia favors language maintenance (Porcel 2011: 632). By “internal structures” Porcel mainly refers to the intensity of contact with native speakers of the heritage
36 language. The more contact with monolingual native speakers there is, the more meaningful the language is for its speakers. Thus, more emphasis is put on the importance of transnationalism, since many immigrants maintain a feeling of belonging to the homeland (as is frequent in diaspora communities, cf. Safran 1991). The contact maintained between the Hispanic immigrant communities in the United States and their respective countries of origin, for instance, increases the value of the heritage language. Accordingly, the frequency of contact with other speakers of the heritage language is crucial for language maintenance. In addition, it is commonly held that rural dwellers, who live in relative isolation, are less prone to shift to the local languages than the urban population (Porcel 2011: 630–631). The variables regarding the (host) society, then, are the second pillar of Porcel’s (2011) model. An important factor among them is the demographic constellation of the community, such as group size, which is among the most important factors determining the maintenance of a language in a multilingual setting. This includes not only the number of founders, but also the number of new arrivals as well as birth rates. Spanish in the United States of course benefits from the continuous arrival of new monolingual immigrants. In addition, the instrumental value attached to a language is crucial, such as the economic value ascribed to a language. In the Paraguayan context, as in most other Latin American countries, Spanish continues to be the code with the highest social status. In the United States, in contrast, Spanish is of relatively low prestige, yet its value is increasing as the buying power of the Hispanic and Latin American clientele is growing (Porcel 2011: 635). Finally, the institutionalization of a language, i.e. its use in the media and schooling as well as its legal status, is relevant. The third and final pillar of Porcel’s (2011) model includes attitudinal variables. Attitudes on both sides are a determining factor here, i.e. those of the dominant and those of the subordinate group. This variable has to do with the status of the language and its speech community, i.e. whether it is economically or socially rewarding to be competent in this language or associated with it. Bourhis and Giles (1977), for example, argue that speakers of a heritage language can either identify with the cultural heritage group or not. If such a group orientation is sought, speakers of Welsh, for example, appear to speak a more Welsh-accented variety of English than speakers who do not identify with the heritage group. When a community’s heritage language is endangered as is the case in Wales, the speakers have different motivations to learn the language and thus contribute to its maintenance. In general, while the former are rather oriented toward the group, the latter are said to pursue individual interests. Learners of Welsh as a second language thus tend to either be integrative learners,
37 i.e. interested in learning the language due to the cultural heritage, or instrumental leaners, who seek to enhance their professional profile by adding the locally required language as a professional skill (Bourhis & Giles 1997: 121). Thus, attitudinal variables can determine both the structure of the language as well as its persistence in society (cf. also Schreier 2009, see above), which makes them relevant to any study on language vitality and maintenance. These models, however, ‘only’ provide a descriptive or conceptual framework to approach and understand processes of language maintenance and shift and are thus mainly useful for qualitative analyses. If a study works with surrogate measures (Porcel 2011), quantitative and mathematical methods will be applied. Kabatek (2012) insightfully discusses the usefulness and applicability of a number of such mathematical models to cases of language contact and shift in Spain and concludes that, though useful on a macro level, these models are too simplistic and need further elaboration. For the purpose of the present study, the factors that determined the rapid loss of English in Paraguay will be described on the basis of Giles et al.’s (1977) theoretical framework and expanded by Porcel’s (2011) emphasis on language attitudes in order to obtain as complete a picture of this particular case of language shift.
2.3 English in Latin America Even though English has been present in Latin America since the early days of colonization, it is generally considered the continent where English has not had any impact at all. McArthur (2003: x–xi) states that the only South American country “for which English is an important language” is Argentina, and he claims that “indeed, if there is an area that has escaped the net of English, it is South America – or rather Latin America in its entirety” (McArthur 2003: 44). García (1999: 230), in fact, ventures a stronger claim and holds that one of the defining ethnolinguistic characteristics of Latin America as a whole is “[a]n insistence on using Spanish and Portuguese as markers of ethnolinguistic identity and in opposition to Anglo America.” Strevens’ (1992: 33) map hence appears to rightly display Latin America as a white spot on the global map of English. We have seen, however, that English has been present on the continent for a long time now. Crystal (2003: 70) thus rightfully added further lines to Strevens’ map that connect Guyana and the Falkland Islands with the British English branch, thus representing the fact that English did reach the Latin American continent:
38
Map 2: The spread of English according to Crystal (2003: 70) In spite of the limited influence of English on this continent, however, Latin America is still seen as part of Kachru’s (1985) three concentric circles, i.e. it belongs to the Expanding Circle:
Falling within [the expanding circle], the countries of South America share other features: English is taught as a foreign language, inner circle varieties serve as classroom models and determinants of norms; the range of uses and numbers of users of English are growing; and English serves instrumental, interpersonal, regulative, and creative functions in several domains. (Friedrich & Berns 2003)
Rajagopalan (2009: 147) in his chapter on South American Englishes similarly ascribes Latin America to the Expanding Circle. Such a categorization implies, as seen above, that “performance or (EFL) varieties of English” (Kachru 1985: 13) are expected to exist. Rajagopalan (2009), however, hardly provides actual data on language use, apart from listing the existence of certain characteristic linguistic features present in these countries. This raises the question of whether the ascription of Latin America to the Expanding Circle is in fact justified. In line with the general absence of the English language in Latin America, also studies on the role and function of English in Latin America are scarce. Schreier et al. (2010) and Williams et al. (2015) include a highly needed selection of a number of English-speaking enclaves in Latin America, such as the Falkland Islands or the Honduran Bay Islands. Apart from these descriptive accounts, a number of studies were published on the history and
39 sociolinguistic behavior of the Anglo-Argentine community (Cortés Conde 1994) and the US- Brazilian community (Montgomery & Melo 1990).8 A noticeable exception to this lack of literature was provided by the special edition of World Englishes (2003), which featured a number of articles on the role of English in Peru, Ecuador, Argentina, and Brazil. In all of these countries, English is seen as an instrumental tool that helps gain access to higher education, well-paid jobs, and upper-class lifestyle. Niño Murcia (2003: 121), for instance, describes how English is seen as a “hard currency” in Peru as it is compared to a good that has a market value in line with Heller’s (2010) commodification of English. She explains that languages are highly racialized in Peru, i.e. ethnic and social attributes are assigned to speakers of certain languages, such as bright skin to speakers of standard-nearer forms of Spanish (Niño Murcia 2001: 126). Bilingualism in Spanish and an indigenous language is hence not as highly valued as bilingualism in Spanish and another European language, and the hierarchical relationship between Quechua, a co-official Amerindian language of Peru, and Spanish is similar to the relationship between Spanish and English (Niño Murcia 2003: 125– 126). Her interviews in a rural village showed that English is seen as a “key to emigration” (Niño Murcia 2003: 133). Similarly, Ovesdotter Alm (2003: 155) finds that in the Ecuadorian commercial context, English is seen as a “commercial capital;” the limited access to learning English, however, is a disadvantage for members of the lower social strata and reinforces social dichotomies. Interestingly, Ovesdotter Alm (2003: 155) places Ecuador as “partially inside and partially outside the Expanding Circle.” English in the Peruvian and Ecuadorian context are thus a symbol of prestige to which only the upper classes have access, rather than a required skill for the professional context. The same seems to hold for Argentina. Friedrich (2003) explains that among MBA students in Buenos Aires, English is seen as an asset that gives access to higher positions in international companies. Also in certain cities of Colombia, English is increasingly becoming a necessary requirement on the job market and in the academic domain, yet this is still limited to urban areas such as Bogotá and Medellín (Vélez Rendón 2003). Similar trends in the use of English in advertisement and branding to reach the wealthy urban population are observed by Mora (2015), who innovatively studies second-language literacies in Medellín. As for Brazil, where English is still restricted to the urban middle and upper classes, Bohn (2003: 160) points out that “[t]he elite, who hold power, dominate the media, and manage public resources in these countries, can use the lack of competence in foreign languages to exclude the majority of the population from the most competitive professional careers.” In order to
8 To my knowledge, no study was ever done on the US Confederates who settled in Mexico after the Civil War (cf. Hidalgo et al. 1992: 115). 40 overcome these social inequalities aggravated by a lack of competence in English, Bohn advocates a more unified English-language teaching policy in Brazil. Rajagopalan (2003: 96) holds that even though certain linguistic advocates claim that English is threatening the unity of the country due to its spread in Brazilian society, “no comparable speech variety of English that could be considered distinctively its own” has emerged in Brazil, and thus he questions the ascription of Brazil to Kachru’s (1985) Expanding Circle (notice that he later assigned it to the Expanding Circle [Rajagopalan 2009]; see above). Rajagopalan’s classification seems particularly justified when Latin American countries, such as Brazil, are compared to other countries of the Expanding Circle, such as Western European nations. In the Netherlands, for instance, over 90 percent of the population speaks a relatively homogeneous variety of substrate-influenced second-language English (Edwards & Laporte 2015: 139), which is in sharp contrast with a lack of competence in Brazil. As a result, studies on English in South America mainly focus on the instrumental role of English as a foreign language, language learning and teaching, as well as the status and role of English as an international language. It is striking, however, that most of these studies principally focus on urban areas and claim that the use of English is still restricted to the middle and upper classes. This, again, suggests that only a very small proportion of the population in Latin America, i.e. above all the urban middle and upper classes, have access to English, and that English can rather be considered a symbol of prestige and an asset for social mobility than a necessary requirement for professional contexts. In accordance with the emergence of English in metropolitan areas, most studies on English in Latin America focus on urbanized areas, while nearly no data from rural areas or peripheral countries, such as Bolivia or Paraguay, are available. This calls for more studies from rural areas in order to ensure a more complete picture of the sociolinguistic standing of English in Latin America.
2.3.1 English-speaking enclaves in Latin America As seen above, English-speaking British, American, and (creole-speaking) African- descendant communities have been present in Latin America for the past five centuries. Accordingly, a relatively large number of historical studies on Latin America is available, such as Miller (1993) (with a focus on Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, and a marginal consideration of Uruguay, Peru, and Mexico). Also Marshall’s (2000) compilation on English-speaking enclaves in Latin America provides a valuable overview of former English- speaking communities on the continent. However, the fact that neither of these works
41 mentions Paraguay in particular suggests that this country attracted little interest of scholars concerned with the English language. With regard to the persisting English-speaking enclaves surrounded by Spanish or Portuguese, the most well-researched communities in Latin America are the British Falkland Islands community (e.g. Britain & Sudbury 2010; Sudbury 2001), the Anglo-Argentine community (e.g. Cortés Conde 2007; Jefferies 2010), and the linguistic enclaves in Central America. The latter often speak creolized varieties of English transplanted from Caribbean islands such as the Puerto Limón community in Costa Rica (Herzfeld 2002) or the San Andrés community in Colombia (Bartens 2003). In certain cases, a creolized variety spoken mainly by African-descendants exists alongside a colonial koiné variety that is used among descendants of white colonizers, such as in the Bay Islands in Honduras (Graham 2010). Apart from the Falkland Islands community, which receives support from Britain and exists in geographic isolation, English is endangered in all these enclave communities. Whilst they have maintained their heritage language for more than a century, most of their speakers nowadays are bilingual or even Spanish-dominant, which indicates that their English heritage language could be lost within the next generations (cf. Schreier et al. 2010). Most of the settler communities mentioned at the outset, such as the one in Ecuador or the southern-most tip of Chile, have already disappeared. In Argentina there were in fact several English-speaking communities. There were the Scots, who immigrated to work the land, the Irish, who fled from poverty, and the British, who quickly belonged to the wealthy and powerful upper class as they administered a large part of the nation’s financial and industrial capital in Argentina’s larger cities (80 percent of Argentina’s foreign capital was British at the turn of the century, Cortés Conde 2007: 54). As a consequence, the British established their own schools (25 of which are still registered today), Protestant parishes, as well as clubs where they strengthened the ties among the community members. However, the community today hardly speaks English anymore, and most of the descendants only use it at home or as an instrumental second language (Cortés Conde 2007: 78). This shift seems to be promoted by peer pressure in spite of the considerable efforts made by parents and the state that does not discourage the study of English (Cortés Conde 1996: 121). Accordingly, the variety of English spoken among these descendants shows a relatively high degree of variation, i.e. no colonial variety seems to have existed, or survived, among Anglo-Argentines (cf. Jefferies 2010). In line with this, the Anglo-Argentine identity does not appear to be tied to the language or physical traits, such as bright skin, anymore (Cortés Conde 2007: 114). It is thus questionable whether the Anglo-
42 Argentine community can still be considered a linguistic enclave or rather a social group that is part of the international melting pot of Buenos Aires. Another well-known case of an English-speaking immigrant community in Latin America is the Confederados community in Brazil.9 After the American Civil War, many US- Americans from Confederate States decided to leave the United States disillusioned in view of the deplorable state in which the American South was left. They hoped to find a “kindred culture” in Brazil (Dawsey & Dawsey 1995: 17), since the production of cotton based on slave labor was similar to their homeland. Most of these immigrants arrived during the decade following the civil war, i.e. 1865–1875. They settled in different places, mainly in the São Paulo region and in Santarém on the Amazon River. As the community grew, recruiters were sent to the United States to bring more colonizers to Brazil. Estimates suggest that between 2,000 and 4,000 immigrants from the southern United States tried their luck in Brazil, half of whom returned to their homeland or moved on to other places (Dawsey & Dawsey 1995: 18– 19). According to historical accounts (Dawsey & Dawsey 1995), the colonizers from the United States did not seem to integrate quickly into their host society. It is documented that the American immigrants imported new technologies, such as the American plow and the buckboard wagon with steel-rimmed wheels, and highly productive watermelon seeds. In addition, they very much furthered the presence of the Presbyterian Church in Brazil because many Reverends joined the community upon the request of the immigrants. In cooperation with the missionaries, the first Colégio Internacional American school was established near Campinas in 1871. The school aimed at offering higher education by teaching Latin, Greek, Mathematics, and Philosophy, among many other subjects. After primary education, many children would then get higher education from the American school (Dawsey & Dawsey 1995: 84). This resulted in a close network of Southern immigrants who were linked via the Church and institutions of higher education, which isolated them from the Brazilian context and favored the maintenance of the English language among the first generations. At the end of the twentieth century, however, only elderly people still spoke English as their first language, and many of the features used by these speakers, such as non-rhoticity, are reminiscent of older forms of Southern American English. Most of the younger descendants
9 A Confederado community akin to the Brazilian one was established in Mexico, where approximately 5,000 Southerners settled in the 1860s. The descendants of this community, however, failed after a few years only due to a lack of financial capital, conflicts with the local indigenous population, riots and revolutions in Mexico, as well as “the natural antipathy at the time of the Mexicans toward all Americans” (Harmon 1928: 482). Most of these settlers thus returned to the United States or moved on to similar settlements in Venezuela, Jamaica, or Brazil before a local culture could be established (Harmon 1928). 43 of the original settlers do not speak English as their first language anymore (Montgomery & Melo 1990). Yet, it is important to see that a shift took place from English to Portuguese, another locally prestigious colonial language. This, as well as the fact that the process of shift took several generations, is different from the Paraguayan case, where no English-variety survived for more than three generations, and where the shift took place towards a local indigenous language. The English-speaking enclave communities surrounded by either Spanish or Portuguese in Latin America are similarly non-unique, non-adjoining, and cohesive, and they have maintained their heritage language until today. Such peripheral varieties have come to be known as part of the lesser-known varieties of English (Schreier et al. 2010; Williams et al. 2015). They are spoken and transmitted natively within the community and can thus be ascribed to Kachru’s Inner Circle even though they may orient toward another variety as their norm. Schreier et al. (2010: 4) define such varieties as follows:
1. English is spoken as the first language 2. The variety is identified as distinct by the community as well as others 3. The community is stable 4. Typically minority communities speak these varieties 5. Many of them were transmitted by British settler communities during colonization 6. They were formed by processes of dialect and language contact 7. They are often identity markers of their speakers 8. They are usually endangered by surrounding dominant languages
These varieties are very often spoken in isolated settings as Sprachinseln or linguistic enclaves. The study of these varieties is worthwhile because such communities, due to their exceptional settings and social history, shed light on processes of language or dialect birth and death, on processes of contact-induced as well as internally motivated language change, and on patterns of transplantation (Schreier et al. 2010: 3). However, not only the study of their linguistic features is of relevance, but also their sociolinguistic development, since they belong to the family of world Englishes, and it is important to understand what ensures their vitality. Had English persisted in Paraguay, the descendants of New Australia would surely speak such a lesser-known variety of English today.10
10 A preliminary description of the recordings by Whitehead in the 1980s was provided in Perez (2015); the speakers, however, have all passed away. 44 These examples of English-speaking enclaves and the role of English as a second language mainly accessible to urban middle and upper classes make evident that on the Latin American continent English is considerably less powerful than Spanish and Portuguese. Even though it seems to be considered highly instrumental in most areas and is thus promoted by certain states, very few people have any actual knowledge of the language. In Buenos Aires, in fact, the use of English is even marginalized by peer pressure that induces speakers to refrain from using it (Cortés Conde 1996). This is in sharp contrast with what is occurring in the United States, where Spanish is the inferior language associated with lower-class immigrants. More research into English in Latin America is thus highly needed to understand why English struggles to gain a foothold in Latin America. In view of this still marginal role of English on the continent, it may be questioned whether it is justified to assign Latin America to the Expanding Circle. We have seen that in certain urban areas English is spoken to a limited degree, and that on the state level the importance of English is acknowledged, which underscores such a claim. The fact that most of the Latin American population, i.e. the lower class and rural population, that is, does not seem to have any competence in English and is even excluded from access to social mobility on the basis of this (cf. Avesdotter Olm 2003), questions this position. Perhaps a more differentiated distinction between certain areas, such as Buenos Aires as opposed to rural Peru, may provide a more precise picture.
2.4 New Australia as a case in point To wrap up, Russinovich Solé’s (1995) offers a useful comparison of four different contact settings in the Americas. She looked at languages that were also focused on in the present chapter, i.e. Spanish in the United States, English in Argentina, Guarani in Paraguay, and Quechua in Peru. For the first three cases of language contact, she predicts that stable bilingualism may prevail for a couple of generations to come due to several factors. In the United States, the continuous influx of monolingual immigrants will keep the Spanish language alive. In Argentina, the international and instrumental status of English will ensure its maintenance. In Paraguay, finally, its value as a national symbol of belonging and pride as well as the large proportion of rural Guarani-speaking population will keep Guarani alive for the next decades to come. In Nueva Londres, however, cases two and three overlap, since the instrumental value of the international English language faced the strength of the rural Guarani-speaking population. Yet, it is questionable whether trilingualism would have been possible in New Australia. Cortés Conde (1996) in fact argues that not even stable bilingualism is possible, such as in the Anglo-Hispanic contact scenario of Buenos Aires
45 where English is only maintained on the basis of a considerable financial effort. This dissertation will address this question and see which factors finally determined the fate of native English in New Australia. New Australia was meant to constitute a Sprachinsel in which not only the language but also the Anglo-Saxon culture and literary tradition would be preserved and advanced. Additionally, even though the community soon split up and the project failed, the English language continued to be one of the community’s main languages for a certain period of time. It could thus have turned into one of the lesser-known varieties of English still transmitted natively in a heteroglossic setting. Yet, due to the reasons that will be described in Chapter 5, English lost its competition against Guarani. Today, the community is predominantly Guarani-speaking while the functions of Spanish are limited to the educational domain and English has disappeared completely. The fact that this happened in spite of the international importance of English and its instrumental value as an asset on the job market is remarkable and deserves a closer look. Such an in-depth study of language shift based on a detailed account of the community’s social history and the speakers’ current relationship with their ancestral language, shall provide new data for the discussions on processes of language shift as well as on English in Latin America. As we have seen, most studies carried out on language use and shift so far have been done on the basis of questionnaires, while ethnographic data are rarely adduced. Furthermore, many researchers (e.g. Joseph 2004; Mufwene 2008) have complained that most of the conclusions drawn from cases of language competition are too simplistic; this study sets out to provide a detailed ethnographic description in addition to questionnaires, which shall on the one hand not simplify facts, and on the other, be useful for future comparative studies. Even though Paraguay’s sociolinguistic situation and diglossia have received considerable scholarly attention, the role of English in Paraguay as a second language in general and in rural New Australia as a first language in particular is entirely underresearched. Fasoli-Wörmann (2002: 280–281) mentions that in her study on the use of Spanish and Guarani in Paraguay most of her informants explicitly stated how important they deemed English as the most universal language that is required for better job opportunities. Zajícová (2009) in her large-scale study included a question that asked with which language her informants would replace Guarani in school. English was by far the most frequently mentioned language followed by Portuguese and French or German, even though it is not among the most frequent home languages after Spanish and Guarani (see section 2.1). Table 3 shows which languages the participants of her study wish to learn:
46
Language Dept. Itapúa Dept. Concepción Dept. Guairá English 59.7 % 64.4 % 45.6 % Portuguese 17.0 % 17.8 % 9.6 % German 5.5 % 2.3 % 3.0 % French 4.6 % 4.1 % 2.7 % Japanese 2.9 % 0.7 % 0.3 % Italian 1.7 % 2.1 % 0.8% Table 3: Languages to be studied instead of Guarani, adapted from Zajícová (2009: 249)
The contribution of New Australia to our knowledge on English in Latin America and in competition with an indigenous language is thus twofold, and its study pursues two goals: on the one hand, it aims at filling the gap on this particular community that is part of the colonial expansion of the English language just as all other English-speaking enclaves. Since most discussions of the spread of international languages and the processes of language shift that come along with it often remain on a theoretical level (e.g. Crystal 2000), scholars have repeatedly called for more detailed descriptions of processes of language shift on the micro level (e.g. Mackey 1980; Mufwene 2008). Given its unusual history presenting the only case we know of where English disappeared in contact with an indigenous language, New Australia promises to shed new light on processes of language shift. Furthermore, with the aim of expanding the British Empire by establishing a larger community of speakers of English in Paraguay, a new contact-influenced variety of English could have emerged in this setting, yet the ecology was not favorable for language maintenance. On the other hand, the present study attempts to add new data to our knowledge on English in rural Latin America collected in ethnographic research. As most sociolinguistic research in Latin America have so far been based on questionnaires, this method has so far rarely been applied and promises to give insights not only into this particular community but also into possible ways of studying English in Latin America. In order to ensure comparable data, however, questionnaires will also be employed in this study. Finally, as the next chapter will show, there is, to my knowledge, and to the knowledge of the community, no account of the community’s social and sociolinguistic history available today. Thus, with this study I hope to explore a still marginal field in English linguistics and to provide fresh data and insights into English in rural Latin America that is still a white spot on the world English map.
47
3 The methodological approach and data collection
The previous chapter outlined that the knowledge on English in Latin America is still very limited. The literature on Paraguay and New Australia is similarly poor. To explore and understand the fate of English in Paraguay, it was therefore necessary to work with new data that had not yet been brought into the discussions. On the one hand, the literature of other disciplines, such as history, as well as the locally produced literature, which is mostly in Spanish, provide valuable information on the history of the community. On the other hand, new data had to be collected in situ. This chapter provides the details on how this research project was carried out. I first describe the knowledge on the community that was available prior to entering the field and how I approached the community as a researcher and person, which then allowed me to elaborate the research questions. Secondly, I present the data on which this research is based and explain how the data were collected in the course of this project. This is particularly important for the present study because the analyses make claims that are only possible based on the type of data gathered in the course of this project. Finally, I will add a number of observations on the role of the researcher and the difficulties a researcher may find in settings similar to this one.
3.1 New Australia in the literature The first and one of the most valuable sources of data is William Lane’s own book, The Workingman’s Paradise – An Australian Labour Novel (1892). Using the pseudonym John Maurice Miller,11 Lane published this novel during the time he was recruiting members and raising funds for his utopian project. In Part One of the book, which is set in Sydney around 1888, the 20-year-old dressmaker Nellie spends a weekend with her former playmate Ned, a so-called “Queensland bushman.” In order to show him the “real Sydney” (Miller 2007: 27), Nellie takes Ned to the slums to meet her friends. In the evening, they visit her upper-class friends, who represent the “radical intelligentsia” (Scates 1990: 48), and with whom they spend the rest of the night talking about socialism and societal concerns. The most prominent discussant is Geisner, a wealthy and well-traveled man. He is the story’s “principal theorist”
11 Kellett (1997: 4) explains that Lane had taken the name of John Miller from William Morris’ A Dream of John Ball, in which this name is used as a password by fellow villagers during a peasant revolt in fourteenth-century England. 48 (Scates 1990: 48) and introduces Ned to the principles of Socialism. In part two, Ned returns to see Nelly again and proposes marriage to her, yet she does not accept. The manager of a Mortgage Agency then offers Ned a rewarding job, but he rejects the offer as it goes against his socialist principles, which induces Strong to arrange his arrest. The story’s end is inconclusive, but in the preface, the author himself invites the reader to “take their choice” with regards to the ending of the story (Miller 2007: 7). As the plot indicates, the content of the book is closely related to the reality that Lane and his unionist mates experienced in the years preceding the Great Shearers’ Strike. While the plot itself is relatively straightforward and brief, the dialogues and inner monologues constitute the main body of the text. In line with the Platonic tradition, verbal interactions between the characters are the author’s principal stylistic resource to transport his message. In the preface, the author explains that the characters and setting were not chosen randomly, but willfully to represent his ideology:
The intention of the plot, at first, was to adapt the old legend of Paradise and the fall of man from innocence to the much-prated-of ‘workingman’s paradise’ – Australia. Ned was to be Adam, Nellie to be Eve, Geisner to be the eternal Rebel inciting world-wide agitation, the Stratton home to be presented in contrast with the slum- life as a reason for challenging the tyranny which makes Australia what it really is; and so on. (Miller 2007: 7)
Thus, all the characters and locales seem to represent a possible take on, and place in, the world, which is why this book provides a useful introduction to the motivations and goals behind the New Australia project. Furthermore, the preface explicitly states that the book aims “(1) to assist the fund raised for Ned’s mates now in prison in Queensland and (2) to explain unionism a little to those outside it and Socialism a little to all those who care to read or hear, whether unionists or not” (Miller 2007: 7–8). These lines confirm that the author had a specific idea regarding the effects of his book on the readership, which suggests that the content of the book, labeled “realistic” by Livermore (1950: 292), can be taken as representative of the ideologies and motivations of the Labour Movement. In addition, the debates about the novel, as well as the conclusions drawn from it, such as, for example, Lane’s view on mateship or feminism (Scates 1990), reiterate the reliability of the novel’s content. Therefore, it is justified to consider The Workingman’s Paradise an important source of data with regard to Lane’s vision. More important to the reconstruction of the social history of New Australia, however, is the scholarly literature published so far. Among the most complete works on New Australia
49 are those published by historians. New Australia has attracted considerable attention due to its roots in the Great Shearers’ Strike and the ideologies that originated from it. William Lane as a journalist and leader was a prominent figure and his ideology was analyzed by several historians, such as Livermore (1950), Gollan (1965), Scates (1990), Kellett (1997), or Souter’s very detailed A Peculiar People (1991 [1968]). These accounts of the motivations of the participants and the inception of New Australia in nineteenth-century Queensland are particularly insightful, as they are based on first-hand data written by New Australians (very often William Lane himself) and other contemporary witnesses (participants of Lane’s project were very active letter writers, and their addressees careful letter keepers). This means that these works are available for analysis and also contain the (often literally reproduced) voice of the settlers as well as give insights into their experiences, aims, and struggles. At the same time, however, there are a number of contradictions in these letters regarding statements, dates, or numbers, some of which will become apparent in Chapter 4. Souter’s (1991) book is not a novel, but a historical account of the happenings in Australia and Paraguay. Its principal focus lies on the rise and fall of the utopian idea and the implementation thereof, and it ventures an analysis of responsibilities as to why the settlement project failed. It begins by narrating the political environment of strikes and conflicts in Western Australia during the late 1880s and how the idea of New Australia came into being in the first place. On the basis of a corpus consisting of original letters, documents, and personal interviews carried out in the 1960s in both Australia and Paraguay, Souter explains why New Australia emerged, who was involved, and how the project progressed and finally ended. Given the large number of quotes and historical data, this piece of research is an invaluable contribution to our knowledge on the motivations, the reality, and the experiences of the New Australian community. However, given its focus on Lane and his ideas, its account of New Australia ends with Lane’s departure to Cosme, which means that Nueva Australia was neglected by Souter. Nevertheless, it is a rich collection of historical data on New Australia, which is why I will cite extensively from this book in chapter four. Souter’s (1991) book is the only book-length study exclusively based on historical data. Further works with a historical focus were produced by novelists or journalists. Wilding’s The Paraguayan Experiment (1984) is “a documentary novel”, centered on the journey from Melbourne to Asuncion, and ultimately aims at narrating the events and arguments between Lane, his loyalists, and the rebels (see section 4.4.3). The focus of this book, as of most of the others, is to discuss the arguments and responsibilities for New Australia’s failure. Whitehead’s Paradise Mislaid (1997) is an extensive 600-page book that assembles the
50 author’s personal travel narrative from Australia to Paraguay, historical information on Paraguay in general, and personal accounts from interviews she carried out herself in Australia and Paraguay in the 1980s. Whitehead’s book traces the story of New Australia from its very beginning in Barcaldine throughout the Paraguayan experience to the individual biographies of the descendants of the community after they left Cosme. It is thus an impressive collection of data. As a radio journalist, Whitehead also used these materials for a radio broadcasting series on the events in Australia during the Great Shearers’ Strike, one of which focuses on New Australia and Paraguay (these broadcasts are also part of the corpus of the present study). Her work is useful as it provides testimonies of New Australians, most of them in their eighties when she interviewed them, and the recordings are in English. However, akin to Souter (1991), her focus lies nearly exclusively on Cosme, which means that very little is said about Nueva Australia. Finally, Stubbs’ Ticket to Paradise (2012) is a travel journalist who undertook a trip to Paraguay together with his Argentine wife in 2010 and spent a month in Paraguay. He describes his personal experiences and observations in the village and the events that occurred in the aftermath of an influential couple’s murder. This account, similar to Whitehead’s travel narrative, is highly subjective and represents the perspective of an outsider with limited knowledge and comprehension of the local language and culture. This subjectivity is important in the context of New Australia and must be discussed in more detail. Stubbs (2012), to begin with, collected background knowledge in historical archives, yet his account is narrated from his personal perspective. After being inspired by his great-great-great-grandfather, who was one of the builders of the community’s ship, he began inquiring deeper into the history of the Australian colony in Paraguay. In 2010, he traveled to South America to learn more about the route and country chosen by the settlers as well as the community’s traces and descendants. However, Stubb’s visits to Nueva Londres and Cosme are presented as a tourist’s experience rather than a structured ethnographic account. For example, the descriptions are often explicitly opinionated. His exploration of Nueva Londres is described as a trip into the wild as he observes “the wooden hovels of the Paraguayan arrivals of over the last 118 years. Pigs recline in the mud of doorways as mothers and daughters sit on banana leaves picking the nits from one another’s ponytails” (Stubbs 2012: 144). This kind of description presents the inhabitants of Nueva Londres as uncivilized (in fact, it is likely to be exaggerated as banana leaves are rarely used to sit on) and suggests that the goal of the book is to entertain a wide readership with the description of a cultural curiosity rather than providing a neutral account. Stubbs’ (2012: 51) summary of the
51 intercultural encounter at the time of arrival is a similarly representative example of the literature on New Australia written so far: “the leaders of the ‘Land of Women’ assumed the Australians were coming here for a good old-fashioned sex tour. The Australians spoke bush English, the Paraguayans spoke the Guaraní language and Spanish. Something was lost in translation.” Throughout the book these Eurocentric assertions remain unanalyzed. Stubbs’ book is thus a travel account, which Marcus & Cushman (1982: 34) define as “self-confident and authoritative in tone, and certain of a readership that wants a culturally shared translation of another way of life.” Also Whitehead’s (1997) work falls partially into this category, yet she provides a more solid historical analysis and database than Stubbs. Nevertheless, it is important to stress that these rather reader-oriented travel accounts did not remain unnoticed by the English-speaking descendants of the community. In fact, the community itself has its issues with the literature and reports that have been produced on the community so far. A third-generation descendant of Nueva Australia said:
(2) Cadogan, Gen 4: These reports cannot be trusted; only oral tradition that does not distort anything can be trusted, what the elderly, the grandparents, the parents tell.
Another third-generation descendant from Cosme said that she was upset when Whitehead’s (1997) book came out, because it talks about certain facts of her private life that she herself had not talked about with the author and that were only partially true. Further, she complained that
(3) McLeod, Gen 4: [t]he journalists only take pictures of what is broken, of a broken roof, or a pig in the street, or a redhead, but not of the secondary school, for example.
In other words, the community sees these accounts as a ridiculing description of a historical faux pas that aims at entertaining the wider public (oftentimes with the purpose of making profit) rather than serious historical research. Along with the community, this thesis aims at blinding out Paraguay’s perceived ‘exoticness’ and offering a more distant but deeper look into the community’s sociolinguistic history. In addition, as the first non-Australian and Spanish-speaking researcher to do work with this community, it is my hope to also provide
52 the Nueva Londres community, which generally lacks competence in English, with information on its history.12 Furthermore, the entertaining aspect of the New Australian experience has also attracted the interest of newspaper journalists, both national and international. Shortly before I arrived in the village, a Paraguayan journalist had been investigating the socialist past of the community, yet given that the locals refused to talk to her, she left disappointed. An Australian journalist (Leach 2002) passed through the village and wrote an article on the basis of this visit describing Nueva Londres as a sleepy place. He recounts his search for the Anglo- Saxon heritage of the inhabitants by depicting them as “certainly […] Anglo-Australian. Were Ernesto and his son Malcolm to walk down Queen Street in Brisbane few people would blink” (Leach 2002: 93). Interestingly, however, Leach was able to elicit a number of words in English by one of the third-generation descendants who did not want to speak English with me as he favored Spanish over English. The foci of this kind of article13 are similar to the travel accounts and determined by the readership that is addressed. They thus do not add to our knowledge of the community, yet they still complete the picture of how New Australia is presented toward the wider public.14 In sum, this study mainly relies on two types of literary sources: on the one hand, historical accounts elaborated by historians who reconstructed the events on the basis of Lane’s book, personal letters, and other documents kept in archives and private collections; on the other, journalistic productions that had an interest in presenting New Australia and its descendants to a certain extent as a cultural curiosity, perhaps with the aim of addressing a larger readership. In most of these works, the boundaries between history as a scientific discipline, journalism, and fiction are blurred. Thus, these sources are at once valuable as well as problematic, as they offer information on the past and present of the community that is highly needed but, at the same time, must in certain cases be taken with a pinch of salt.
12 A Spanish translation of an expanded version of Chapter 4 four shall be provided for the community. 13 The most recent article on New Australia was published by the Guardian on July 6, 2015, entitled Nueva Londres: where Paraguay, Australia, and Britain converge. A local magazine that published on Nueva Australia in 2005 was Contacto Turístico. It provides a brief overview of the village’s settlement history, yet its main focus does not lie on the origin of the community – which suggests that it may not be seen as too outstanding in the Paraguayan context – but on the tradition of the fiesta del tuyu (see below), which is considered unique in Paraguay. 14 Also a number of videos can be found on the Internet. They represent the community with a similar focus on the local customs. 53 3.2 The data Given the limited knowledge on the community prior to entering the field, it was not clear from the beginning what the focus of this study would be. The original goal was to find the vestiges of the native variety of English in Paraguay and elaborate a typological description of the variety along the lines of Schreier et al. (2010). Yet a pilot trip to Paraguay showed that the last originally native speakers of English today are not competent enough to maintain a conversation in English, as attrition is nearly complete. A study of language attrition (cf. Polinsky & Kagan 2007) was thus not possible either. The fact that English lost the competition against Guarani, however, drew my attention to the need of documenting this community’s experience of language shift, which entailed a change in research focus. Thus, even though there was an original research focus on documenting an isolated variety of English, this research project ultimately became rather data-driven than theory-driven. What does this imply? In the first place, it is important to note that both the research questions as well as the data had to be elaborated in the course of the project. The field site had to be studied first, in order to determine what data could be collected and what research questions could be answered. Yet, multilingual and heritage communities usually constitute particularly challenging settings to carry out research (Bowern 2010) due to the highly heterogeneous nature of the linguistic and socio-cultural data. Secondly, as seen in chapter two, it became clear that the fact that English had lost its competition against an indigenous language was an outstanding situation deserving further scrutiny. The focus of this study was hence placed on the sociolinguistic development of this particular community rather than the linguistic outcome of this case of language isolation and contact. In the following, I describe the field site and data on which the present sociolinguistic study is based.
3.2.1 The field site The field site consisted of two villages: the district of former New Australia, whose main village today is Nueva Londres (‘New London’) on the one hand, and Cosme, the site where Lane reinitiated the settlement project after the division, on the other. Nueva Australia, however, was at the center of this research project for two reasons: firstly, the general lack of data on this community calls for a detailed description of its development. Secondly, in comparison with Cosme, this community has been intact and has grown uninterruptedly ever since the first settlers arrived in 1893. Paraguay as the host nation, to begin with, consists of two geographic and climatic zones separated by the Río Paraguay: the vast semiarid plains in the northwest called Chaco and the
54 subtropical east covered by extensive forests and characterized by substantial rainfalls. Whereas the Chaco is still sparsely populated, most of Paraguay’s population lives in the eastern part within the Asuncion–Ciudad del Este–Encarnacion triangle. Paraguay is thus divided into the accessible, rather urbanized, and progressive eastern part and the relatively underdeveloped Chaco (Vázquez 2011). The climate is equally divided into two main seasons: most of the rain falls during the Paraguayan summer between October and March, when the temperature often rises above 40°C. During the rather dry winters temperatures may occasionally drop below 0°C, between May and August. The main crop of Paraguay’s agriculture is maize, manioc, soy, tobacco, fruit, cotton, and yerba mate, and the forests provide the national and international industry with timber. The vast properties in the Chaco region are used for cattle raising. Since the 1970s, the Itaipú Hydroelectric plant, for which pristine forests and indigenous settlements at the Brazilian border were flooded, produces energy on a large scale, yet most of it is destined to be used in Brazil. However, in spite of its abundance of natural resources and water, nature in Paraguay can sometimes be harsh with either heavy rains and floods or extended droughts. New Australia is located at 120 kilometers to the east of Asuncion as indicated on the following map.
Map 3: Paraguay today (www.lib.utexas.edu/maps)
The New Australia district covers 46,000 hectares and counts approximately 5,000 inhabitants; several hundreds of them live in the neighborhood of the village, while a large number of people live scattered over the district. The village is accessed from the main
55 highway over an asphalted road after passing underneath a large Bienvenidos a la ciudad de Nueva Londres (‘welcome to the town of Nueva Londres’) sign at the crossroad where the road to Nueva Londres begins. The village itself does not have asphalted roads, yet the roads around the central square are unusually broad and paved. It is organized around a large central square where the ‘best’ houses of the village are situated. In this area reside mostly descendants of the Smith and Kennedy clans. This, as the following chapter will show, is the consequence of Juan Kennedy and Ricardo L. Smith being the founders of the village. The houses are all set apart by either low walls or fences, and the grass along the streets is cut regularly on a voluntary basis by the inhabitants. There are a number of small shops in this neighborhood as well as the office of the municipality. Electricity and limited telecommunication services15 are available, while the Internet connection must be installed individually (and hardly works). The houses in this area collect their drinking water from water wells and drain it back into underground tanks, which allows the village to keep the drainage under the surface. The village is organized in regular blocks similar to most colonial towns in the Americas. In every direction from the central square, there are approximately three to four blocks until the end of the village. The streets have names that remember the original settlers, such as Calle Dorothy Kennedy. The church and a health post as well as the local school Escuela León Cadogan, which offers instruction from first to sixth grade before the pupils go to college in Oviedo, are located two blocks away from the central square. It is thus a rather small village, where the neighbors move around without motorized vehicles. Yet, to visit the nearby city of Coronel Oviedo (at approximately 20kms from Nueva Londres), most inhabitants use their motorcycles or take one of the daily buses that leave for the city in the early morning. Apart from this low number of motorized vehicles, oxen and horse-pulled carts are used, and the cattle workers ride their horses to move around. This shows that Nueva Londres is a very rural, yet at the same time also well-organized and orderly village. Cosme, by contrast, is smaller than Nueva Londres. It is located approximately 170 kilometers to the south of Nueva Londres in a more isolated place. The village is reached over a dirt road 20kms to the South of Caazapá, and, given its location between two rivers, the road is impassable when it rains. Cosme consists of a small number of houses only, some of which still show traits of Australian architecture, and the roads are not paved. Nine families live in Cosme, and the only New Australians still there are two descendants of the Wood clan, who are both in their sixties and live in Cosme with their young families. Cosme also has a small
15 In the house I lived in there was only one spot in the front yard where cell phones work, which results in the family often gathering there holding their cell phones into the right direction. 56 chapel and a cemetery that were built by the original settlers. Thus, little reminds visitors of the history of William Lane’s settlers in Cosme today. The only language that I heard was Guarani, yet most of the inhabitants were willing to talk to me in Spanish, and I was able to interview one of the Wood descendants, who had spent several years in Australia, in English. In comparison to the very small village of Cosme, the structure and orderliness of Nueva Londres are thus striking. The orderliness ends, however, at the edge of the village. Except for a couple of large and wealthy ranches, the housing situation on the outskirts of the village is rather simple. The same holds for the surrounding villages (such as Caraxi), which are connected via dirt roads and only consist of wooden huts. The terrain is completely flat and only interrupted by ‘islands’ of bush, and fences divide the large cattle properties of the two principal landowning families, the Smiths and the Kennedys. In summer (between November and March), the heat in the sun presents a serious challenge regarding the conservation of food and other products on the one hand, and to the burning of light skin,16 on the other. In winter (June to September) the cold and humidity cause sickness and colds. Whenever it rains, many roads within and outside Nueva Londres are flooded and impassable, yet the asphalted road ensures the connection with Coronel Oviedo. The inhabitants of Nueva Londres all know each other; most of them are related in some way. They visit each other frequently to drink terere or mate together (the local tea varieties, either cold or hot) and exchange the local news. When they visit, they clap their hands instead of ringing a bell and then bring chairs to the patio. These visits are part of their daily activities, and the only language used in these friendly and intimate gatherings is Guarani – or rather a Hispanicized variety thereof, i.e. a variety of Jopara that is relatively close to Guarani and unintelligible to native speakers of Spanish. Interestingly, language choice is not influenced by the presence of an outsider: while the speakers do address the outsider in Spanish, they switch back to Guarani when talking among each other irrespective of the presence of the outsider. This is partially due to the fact that certain individuals lack competence in Spanish; many of them, however, seem to prefer the more intimate code whenever addressing a person who they usually speak Guarani with. This lack of accommodation toward outsiders is in clear contrast with the observations made by Gal (1979), who found that the shifting community always switched from low-prestige Hungarian to the outsider’s high-prestige German in the presence of an outsider even when a speaker of Hungarian was addressed. This may be an indicator of the strength of Guarani in this area.
16 Some of the Smith descendants suffer from skin cancer and avoid the sun at all costs. Most of the younger descendants use long sleeves during work, which is rather rare among Paraguayan workers. 57 These habits suggest that life in Nueva Londres is generally friendly and quiet, and that this rural community has a dense social network (cf. Milroy 1987). However, the calm of the village may also conceal that the community is disrupted for a number of reasons. Firstly, there are considerable social and financial differences between certain families. As will become clear in the following chapters, the two powerful families in Nueva Londres, the Smiths and the Kennedys, own most of the properties and are politically influential, while others live at the margin of the community and are often employees of these two families. In the interviews, some of the members from families with low income remarked that the distribution of the land at the beginning of the twentieth century was unfairly done, which provided them with a smaller capital to start off.17 Secondly, there are also considerable differences between the generations of one family: as third-generation descendants often own a large part of their forefathers’ original property and live a lifestyle that their children cannot afford, members of the forth generation expressed that they feel disadvantaged by their parents. This is illustrated by the following quote:
(4) Smith, Gen 4: My grandfather had a lot [of property]. And now my father has a lot. He inherited a part of it because they were four brothers and they inherited a part each. […] But we are now seven. And that’s how it is.
Indeed, these differences between and within families have created feelings of animosity among some of the inhabitants of the district, which has a negative effect on community life. It is common, for example, that cattle or horses disappear due to the high number of rustlers in the area. In 2010, a powerful and wealthy couple was brutally murdered and the murderers were known to be thieves and rustlers, yet they were not sentenced for this crime. According to some community members, such crimes are rarely sentenced due to the politics of the district. Even though these pieces of information are but rumors, these happenings suggest that social stratification arouses feelings of rancor and increases delinquency. In addition to the social differences, there are also political divergences. After the division of the community, some of the New Australians got involved in local politics and joined the local parties – either the neoliberal Liberales party or the neoliberal Colorado party. A number of others remained faithful to the original socialist ideology, and many of them were persecuted during Stroessner’s dictatorship. One of Gilbert Casey’s grandsons was tortured in jail and can hardly speak today as a result of his trauma. The combination of these
17 Padre Santiago believes that the economic success of certain families as opposed to others is closely tied to their work ethics, i.e. their continuous reinvestment of capital. 58 social inequalities and the disruption of the community foster distrust among community members. This particularly affects the position of a foreign researcher as certain people refuse to be interviewed out of distrust, resentment, or indifference. I was lucky to be able to interview one of the socialist families, the descendants of Gilbert Casey, yet Padre Santiago informed me that in earlier projects a number of members were unwilling to answer questions as they were suspicious of the researchers belonging to the CIA. In addition to this distrust, language itself was an obstacle. Firstly, some of the fourth- generation inhabitants of the community are illiterate, which implied that the collection of data on the basis of questionnaires was limited to the younger generations and entailed that interviews had to be carried out personally and individually. Finally, even though this is the first study on New Australia carried out by a speaker of Spanish, which allows me to shed additional light on this community, my lack of competence in Guarani was still a limitation. For some of the interviews, as well as for certain informal conversations, the assistance of Sonia de Smith as an interpreter was necessary and it did not seem to affect the conversation considerably as she was always warmly welcomed by the people. These caveats and challenges bring me back to the issue of the data-driven approach, which required a flexible assessment of the field before the research questions could be formulated. In light of the complete attrition of English in New Australia, the documentation or analysis of neither a lesser-known variety of English (cf. Schreier et al. 2010) nor the process of heritage language or language attrition (e.g. Polinsky & Kagan 2007) could be attempted. The fascinating context of English as the minority language in the face of an indigenous one, however, provided a hitherto unknown case in the history of the colonial spread of English and thus suggested that a sociolinguistic focus on language shift was adequate for this study. In order for such a study to be done, it was necessary to determine what data could be collected. The setting imposed a number of limitations on the study; I had to choose the methods that were most likely to yield results that would a) allow to respond the research questions and b) be useful for a comparison with other studies. Furthermore, given the originally transnational character of this community, the interplay of place of origin, language, and identity would be part of the focus of this study; for such transnational studies, Levitt & Glick Schiller (2006: 1012–1013) propose the combination of ethnography, participant observation, and interviews, as it allows the exploration of individual experiences as well as social practices.
59 In line with this, Porcel (2011: 626–627) points out that in order to assess the vitality of a language, three methodological approaches will allow the collection of data to understand a community’s language practices: direct, indirect, and surrogate measures. Direct measures involve the observation of participants to understand which language is used. If no monolingual speakers are found in the community, then language shift is likely taking place. Indirect measures, in contrast, rely on the self-assessment of the participants, whose linguistic behavior is documented on the basis of questionnaires that look into current and former uses and language choice. Surrogate measures, finally, use large-scale data from censuses in order to understand, and perhaps predict, processes of language maintenance; such data were not available and not of particular relevance in New Australia (cf. Levitt & Glick Schiller 2004). In this study, therefore, direct as well as indirect methods were employed to outline the changes in language vitality among Anglo-Paraguayans: participant observation was the principal method to describe the current use of languages in the village as well as to understand social patterns. The history of the community and attitudes towards languages were approached on the basis of semi-structured interviews. Finally, questionnaires among fifth-generation members were used as indirect measures in order to provide data on the current value of English among young rural Paraguayans. The goal of these questionnaires is to allow the comparison of young rural Paraguayans with other groups in Latin America, such as, for instance, in Argentina (cf. Cortés Conde 1996), since most of the studies on English in Latin America prior to this one have relied on questionnaires (see section 2.3). Thus, apart from the questionnaires distributed among younger descendants, this research is of a qualitative nature. Johnstone (2000: 60) argues that, given that in qualitative sociolinguistics
[t]here are no universally agreed on methods for proving things in our field (we can give ourselves credit for realizing that there cannot be), qualitative sociolinguistic researchers cannot incontrovertibly prove that they are right (or wrong). But we can discover and say things that are plausible, relevant to practical problems, and important for our understanding of how language and society work.
Indeed, it is generally acknowledged that bare numbers or statistical results are often considered to be more valid (i.e. closer to an ‘objective truth’, if such a thing exists at all) than results based on a qualitative analysis that does not include numerical results. Yet Johnstone (2000: 36) also holds that “sociolinguistic research projects are neither exclusively quantitative nor exclusively qualitative. They are most often both.” And while sociolinguistic research is always empirical, i.e. based on observation, it is also interpretive, i.e. it includes
60 the interpretation of the data based on knowledge on the context (Johnstone 2000: 25–36). Many recent research projects (e.g. Cortés Conde 2006) seek to provide both, quantitative and qualitative, data. However, given the uniqueness of this case of English in contact with Spanish and an indigenous language in ‘laboratory conditions’, it is not the principal aim of this study to come to representative, quantitative conclusions; the aim is to arrive at replicable conclusions, i.e. applicable to other settings, which in the future may allow us to observe and compare similar cases of language shift. Hence, ethnographic data are indispensible in a research site such as Nueva Australia. The data collected for ethnographic descriptions, however, are usually heterogeneous, consisting of visual data, such as photographs, a variety of text types found in the literature and media, as well as new data collected with either a recording device, a camera, or on a note pad in participant observation or interviews (cf. Jaffe 2014: 214). The collection of field notes in participant observation is the most unintrusive method to get to know the local living conditions as well as the habits, values, and interactions of the community members. It was thus the most efficient way to get to know the Nueva Londres community. Especially emic distinctions and categories that represent the viewpoint of the community under study can best be explored on the basis of an ethnographic approach and sociolinguistic interviews (Hoffman 2014: 28). Such ethnographic data are indispensible to understand the value of languages or language practices. Concerning ethnographic data in sociolinguistic research, Johnstone (2000: 84) states that
although many sociolinguists believe that the ‘best’ data come from actual recorded speech, knowledge about the cultural world in which speech is embedded is almost inevitably part of the knowledge sociolinguists bring to the analysis of these data. […] In other words, ethnographic observations are part of the methodology of sociolinguistics.
Ethnography, though somewhat chaotic, is thus nearly unanimously considered to be among the most efficient methods to collect data on emic views and social distinctions, which are relevant in the understanding of the interplay of language, identity, and attitudes (e.g. Blommaert & Jie 2010; Bowern 2010: 352; Hoffman 2014: 37). Blommaert (2015) explains that ethnography is often wrongly perceived as a description of a community and the fieldwork needed to provide it. He stresses that there is much more to ethnography than the description of the speech community and its linguistic habits. In order to understand language and how it is used in a society, he argues that ethnography “involves a perspective on language and communication, including an ontology and an epistemology,
61 both of which are of significance for the study of language in society, or better, of language as well as society” (Blommaert 2015: 5, original emphasis). Ethnography is thus not only limited to the description, but also includes the interpretation of social phenomena, in this case the sociolinguistic behavior of this particular speech community. The theoretical frames to be adduced for the interpretation and understanding of this speech community will thus be decided on as the phenomena are observed, which is an integral part of the data-driven approach. Ethnographic research, however, must also be scrutinized. Garcia insightfully describes the fact that the interest an ethnographer shows in a particular community or social phenomenon will arouse certain reactions in the community studied. Her concerns go back to an issue raised by Hastrup & Elsass’ (1990), who claim that ethnographic knowledge collected by anthropologists should not be used for any kind of activism or advocacy (see also D’Andrade 1995). Garcia (2000: 91) holds that even neutrality within a community is itself a political stance and the effect this may have on the community should not be underestimated. As outlined above (see also section 5.1.3), the Nueva Australia community has been disrupted both socially and politically for a long time now. The interest of a foreign researcher further stirred feelings of distrust, which were noticeable, for instance, when I returned to the village for my second stay and the people jokingly asked me why I had come back as they believed they had already told me all they knew. This suggests that the community expects research to pursue a certain interest. Especially in a community disrupted by distrust, ethnographic data based on field notes and participant observation are hence of pivotal importance.
3.2.2 Fieldwork It is clear, however, that a more profound cultural knowledge can only be gained during a longer period of time spent in the community. I spent a total of eight weeks in Paraguay. Is it possible to get to know a community well enough to understand it during eight weeks? In fact, a negative answer to this question would seem more reasonable than a positive one. Therefore, it is important to have a closer look at the researcher and her eight weeks of fieldwork in Paraguay. During my pilot trip to Paraguay in early 2011, I did not know one single person in Paraguay. My only goal was to find out whether the community still existed and whether it would be possible to carry out research with a focus on this particular community. Once in Asuncion, I took the phone guide and searched for English family names. My fourth call was successful, as I found one of the numerous descendants of León Cadogan, who gave me the
62 number of her brother. This contact proved crucial, since Rogelio Cadogan, apart from being an important informant (who would never allow me to record our conversations), also brought me in touch with Sonia de Smith, a schoolteacher in Nueva Londres. The following day, I visited Nueva Londres, and even if I only spoke to Sonia de Smith for a few minutes, her openness and her family’s kindness to invite me to return to the village and carry out fieldwork made me confident that this research project would actually come into being. Her family showed great interest in this research project being carried out in order to know more about the past of the district, which was still largely unknown to most of its inhabitants. When I returned to Paraguay in July 2011, I lived four weeks with the family in a shack in their backyard and got to know the community as I participated in the village’s events and interviewed all those who were willing to talk to me. I also visited and interviewed descendants of New Australia in Caraxi, Santa Catalina, Cosme, and Asuncion. The principal events I attended, apart from family and community gatherings, church services, and horse races, were the Patron Saint’s festivities in December 2012. I spent Christmas with the family and participated in all activities, such as the children’s lunch that is offered on December 25 to all the children from the surroundings. On December 28, the fiestas patronales begin, which include horse and cattle shows, auctions, bullfights, and a rodeo. From a safe distance I also observed the fiesta del tuyu ‘party of the mud’, which is celebrated before New Year and consists of a communal bath in the mud while dancing to music and consuming drinks, particularly popular among the youth. The observation of these events provided valuable insights into local customs, the system of prestige and values, as well as language practices in the community. Life with a family had several advantages. Firstly, it allowed me to immerse myself in the everyday life of a family in Nueva Londres. Sonia de Smith spent a large amount of time conversing with me about her family, the families living in the district, community life, and local customs. Apart from being a welcoming host, she also instructed me in basic Guarani with her expertise as a schoolteacher and assisted me in my conversations and interviews. Her function as a teacher in the local school proved invaluable as a source of information on the struggles of the local school system. Moreover, even though she is not a descendant herself, she married into the two largest and most powerful families at once, since her husband is a descendant of the Kennedys and the Smiths. She shared her extensive network of relatives, friends, and acquaintances with me, introduced me to many people, and sometimes even organized the interviews before I had to ask for them myself. Her excellent reputation as a
63 reliable and competent person reduced the bias of the community disruption to a certain extent, as I was able to visit people that are generally at feud with her family. Furthermore, I stayed in touch with a number of informants during the entire time of my research. Gille & O Riain (2002) claim that in times of globalization and a “global ethnography,” which requires a form of multi-sited ethnography that includes research in multiple locations,18 the correlation between the social and the local have lost importance as the boundaries of the field have become more blurred. This decreases the need for a long-time stay in the field. To stay in touch with the community allowed me to be informed about local events and collect data even during my absence. Thus, the fact that I was able to collaborate with this particular family and uphold contact with them via telephone and the internet also during my absence considerably increased my efficiency and reduced the time required in the field.
3.2.3 The researcher(s) It is generally agreed on that it is necessary to reflect on the researcher in ethnographic research, as he or she is at once an observer but also observed by the community, which may to a certain degree influence the setting, the community under study, and the data (e.g. Garcia 2000; Tusting & Maybin 2007; and of course also Labov’s [1972: 209] Observer’s Paradox that is a hindrance to the collection of authentic speech samples). As stated earlier, access to the community is relatively difficult, and, in addition to the lack of English speakers, this may be the principal reason why Nueva Australia had been neglected in the literature so far. In a community where all the members know each other and are prejudiced and distrustful, it is particularly challenging to find informants. In my personal experience, however, access to the community was principally facilitated by my host and friend Sonia de Smith. Given her friendly and caring nature, I got the opportunity to accompany her while visiting friends and thus spend many hours in conversation with elderly people and other village inhabitants, without a special focus on my research; on many occasions, I would tell these people more about the places I know than I learned about them. In consequence, many persons said “you are not a gringa” after getting to know me personally (see section 5.1.3 for a discussion of the term gringo). Such a personal approach, though time-consuming and engaging, was not only
18 Multi-sited ethnography is a term that goes back to Marcus (1995) and proposes that ethnographic research should be “embedded in a world system [that] moves out from the single sites and local situations of conventional ethnographic research designs to examine the circulation of cultural meanings, objects, and identities in diffuse time-space” (Marcus 1995: 96; for a criticism of ethnography as traditionally multi-sited and transnational due to the particularities of its focus [e.g. the Caribbean], see Mintz 1998). 64 enriching for me as a person, but also helped me bridge the gap between me as the foreign researcher and the local informants. Furthermore, the fact that I am competent in Spanish and knowledgeable of neighboring countries was certainly helpful in this context. It did not only allow me to fully participate in most activities and bring new input to discussions and conversations, but it also allowed the informants to ask questions, express their concerns, or joke. In fact, it is important to reiterate that, so far, most research had been carried out by Australians with limited knowledge of Spanish and the local context. However, the possibility of conducting conversations in Spanish simultaneously limited my chances of collecting data in English, since Spanish was the preferred language of all informants. Finally, my foreignness to the Australian or even Anglo-Saxon context might have been an advantage after all. Stubbs (2012: 125, my emphasis), for instance, describes the Caledonian Ball in Asuncion in a highly biased manner: “I feel I don’t belong amongst these men as they jig and swig the night away in remembrance of the old country they’ve got no real affection for. The Australian in me feels like a convict in the room. This isn’t the diaspora I came to Paraguay in search of […].” My lack of emotional involvement, as well as the missing expectations on behalf of the community to belong to their community (which was to a certain extent the case with Australians; see also Garcia’s [2000: 92] experience of how the Andean community assumed she belonged to them), ensured my necessary independence and critical distance. It may also have helped to reduce possible feelings of shame over the loss of the heritage culture. Another crucial factor that relaxed the relationship between the researcher and the local population were my daughters. During my first stay in Nueva Londres in July 2011, I was pregnant and had my two-year-old daughter with me. During my second stay, the older one was three and the little one nine months. Being pregnant and accompanied by one or two little girls certainly challenged this project in many respects, above all due to the difficult living conditions to which the children were exposed (e.g. the climatic conditions that offered the entire spectrum, from heavy rains, temperatures below 5ºC in July to 42ºC in December, dwelling in a rudimentary shack that was flooded and surrounded by mud half of the time, dog bites, mosquitoes, and other plagues, etc.).19 Yet, to do research as a woman and mother also undoubtedly opened many doors. It reduced the distance between me and other women, most of whom are mothers themselves; it ensured that there was never a shortage of topics to talk about; and it reduced my distinctness as a foreign researcher by creating an environment
19 A brilliant description of what fieldwork may feel like is provided in Nigel Barley’s (1983) The Innocent Anthropologist – Notes from a Mud Hut, which I often remembered while in Nueva Londres. 65 of mutual comprehension and trust. The access to women was crucial since women play an important role in the community. Last but not least, the cultural exchange was an enriching experience for all involved. Last but not least, Sonia de Smith proved to be the most valuable fieldwork assistant a researcher can wish to have. As has become clear throughout this chapter, she was involved in most activities and even collected data during my absence, such as the questionnaires. Also, her wide network of contacts within the community and her image as a respectful and respected schoolteacher and person facilitated my access to many a community member. At the same time, she did not have any experiences with field research prior to this one, which implied that she could not be considered to be a “professional stranger handler” (Agar 2008: 135) who is used to dealing with foreigners and may thus distort certain facts in his or her own interest. I rewarded her efforts financially even though she explicitly refused to accept any money, yet the amount did not go beyond the expenses she had had herself. One of the greatest satisfactions for her and me, however, was the mutual appreciation and friendship as well as the fact that she was grateful for participating in this project and repeatedly expressed that she enjoyed learning a lot from my work and our conversations. After distributing the questionnaires in a small village, for instance, she remarked the following:
(5) Sonia de Smith: [My] friend, visiting the people and getting to know them is very interesting, I thank you for giving me this opportunity.
Also, she was grateful that I spent time with her children talking about school, careers, and life in other parts of the world as well as for the books I gave them for school. In a nutshell, fieldwork in Nueva Londres was at once a challenge and enrichment for the researchers.
66
Picture 1: Edith Smith, a fifth-generation descendant, discovering her ancestors’ past with me
3.2.4 The interviews The interviews were conducted with descendants of the original settlers mainly, yet also other people involved were considered, such as Sonia de Smith and the Catholic Padre Santiago (James Feehan) who had a rich knowledge of the history and the members of the community as well as the linguistic habits and competence of the speakers. The interviews consisted of a number of open questions that I needed in order to document the shifting uses. Apart from basic information as well as any topic they would like to talk about, I tried to ask all informants the following questions:
1) Who speaks or spoke English in your family? 2) What languages did / do you speak at home and at school? 3) What does your heritage mean to you? 4) How would you identify yourself today? 5) Do you feel that you have any advantages or disadvantages because of your heritage?
Questions 1) and 2) were designed to provide information on language competence and use in the family and the community. Questions 3) and 4) aimed at finding out more about the values attached to the heritage as well as the self-identification as either Paraguayan, Anglo- Paraguayan (or similar concepts), or Anglo-Saxon (and related terms, such as British or European). In order to avoid influencing the answer, these questions were posed as open questions and a couple of options were provided only if the person would hesitate or ask for
67 clarification. Question 5), finally, sought to find out what their heritage means for the descendants in their daily life, such as, for example, the importance of their family names. These questions were integrated into the interview in as natural a way as possible to ensure keeping the informant at ease, yet it had the consequence of making the analysis more labor- intensive as the answers needed to be interpreted from the discourse rather than having them in a clear order. The aim of these interviews was thus to gain insights into both the history of the community as well as language use and attitudes. In total, I interviewed 30 persons, 25 of whom were from Nueva Australia, and most of these interviews were partially recorded.20 Given the conditions outlined above, a number of informants did not feel at ease with the recording device, and in these cases I relied on taking notes. Even though this limited the efficiency and amount of data that could be collected, this procedure relaxed the informants. Furthermore, the interviews were carried out in informal settings, mostly in their own house, in Sonia de Smith’s house, or in the yard of the church, which helped create a relaxed environment. The interviewees were not paid for their efforts as their participation was based on their interest in contributing to the collection of knowledge on the past of the community;21 in the end, this means that the community expects to be informed about the outcome of this research. The recorded interviews yielded a total of 12 hours of speech data mostly in Spanish, and a limited amount in English and Guarani. In addition, the three one-hour radio broadcasting series by Anne Whitehead on William Lane, Nueva Australia, and the descendants in Cosme provide additional recordings on the speech of one first- and four second-generation settlers (the first 105 years old, the latter in their eighties). The recordings were not analyzed from a linguistic perspective, as this would exceed the scope of this study, yet they certainly will lend themselves for future analyses.
3.2.5 Written documents Even though several individuals stated that books and other documents had been burnt in their family, there was still a considerable number of written documents to be collected. In general, the community members were welcoming and shared these documents with me. The former
20 As is a common experience during fieldwork, the recording device was stolen on one occasion before the recordings could be downloaded. I had the chance to talk to these informants again. 21 I am aware that financial compensation may have increased the number of participants; given the financial issues already present in the village, however, I preferred to rely on a voluntary participation. 68 priest of the village, James Feehan,22 kept a larger collection of letters by Ricardo L. Smith, one of the founders of Nueva Londres. This collection consists of 59 letters that Smith either received from senders, or sent to addressees, within and outside the country. While some of the letters are Smith’s original letters that were returned to him, most of his letters are truthful transcripts of the original letters that he produced for his archives. In addition, Ardyne Kennedy keeps a large collection of letters, books, and other objects of her family on her ranch outside of Nueva Londres, and she kindly allowed me to spend a couple of days in her house to read through these documents and take pictures of them. These written documents are a similarly rich source of both sociohistorical as well as linguistic data, yet for the present project they were mainly used for the former purpose.
Picture 2: Ardyne Kennedy in her family museum where she keeps the family documents
22 James Feehan left Paraguay in 2014. It is unknown what he did with the collection of written documents. 69
Picture 3: A letter by Iona Kennedy (1924) as an example of the documents used for this project
One of the most outstanding documents, however, is the Connelly document that is part of the James Feehan collection. Henry Connelly was one of the pioneers at New Australia. He joined the community right at the start and was one of the Queensland “bushmen,” who first arrived at the settlement site and helped clearing the land (Souter 1991: 138). In 1924, he wrote a 17,000-word report, in which he describes his personal as well as communal experiences in and with New Australia, including details on the specific meetings held in the course of the establishment and division of the colony. According to what Connelly writes in the first paragraph, he had been encouraged to write this document, and even though he explicitly addresses an interlocutor by “you”, it is not clear for whom this text was written:
Mr Williams, who some 18 years ago, resided on this colony for a few years as a schoolmaster, has since wrote his history, “How Socialism Failed”, which was naturally incomplete and not without some errors. You have asked me to tell you my tale for the purposes of compiling a c[o]m[p]lete history of this movement. Any two people looking at the same object from different angles may form different opinions, for we can only see things as they appear to us. But w[h]atever error I may have fell into, in giving personal opinions, altho, they are co[n]clusions arrived at after mature consideration, the opinions are but my own, others may differ with me, But the facts herein stated are true. [sic]
70 These lines suggest that the content of the document was written with a specific purpose, the provision of a testimony. Also, later in the text he affirms that
I believe that most people come to t[h]eir senses just before death. … To me it is unpardonable offence for anyone but most especially for one of some public note to contort the truth, to treat truths and falsehoods as implements to be used at discretion, but of no moral importance. I writing this history have been ca[re]ful not to let personal feelings of bias to any way influence me. (Connelly 1924: 18)
Given that this document was written over 20 years after the main events it describes, it seems likely that political or economic interests did not guide the author anymore. The content of the document provides us with a vivid picture of what the initial phase of New Australia may have been like. It begins with comments on the time before they embarked on the Royal Tar, then describes the challenges of the construction of New Australia. The largest body of the text, however, explains in detail which actors were decisive in the development of the community and what decisions were taken. However, these lines also suggest that there are certain shortcomings that must be taken into consideration. First and foremost, it is important to state that this manuscript is not preserved in its original form. The original document was part of a collection of texts held by Ricardo L. Smith in Nueva Londres. As it was prone to be lost due to the unfortunate climatic conditions, Ricardo L. Smith transcribed the original document faithfully in the 1950s with his typewriter. However, even though it does contain a number of typographical mistakes, it seems justified to use this document as a reliable source on the English used by the settlers in New Australia: first, given that Ricardo L. Smith transcribed his own letters faithfully to keep a copy for himself, he seems more than qualified to transcribe another person’s document in its original wording. Secondly, the document is full of typographical errors, such as irregular use of third-person singular –s, which were not usually made by the transcriber himself, whose written English was nearly impeccable. Thus, the Connelly document provides an additional and hitherto unknown testimony on the experiences of New Australians and their language. However, similar to the recorded speech data, these written documents have not been analyzed as linguistic data so far. Their contribution to this project is principally to provide knowledge of the social history and language use among the settlers and their descendants in so far as this is possible to be inferred. A profound study of these documents as sources of linguistic data will certainly be envisaged in a future project.
71 3.2.6 The questionnaires As seen in chapter two, most of the research on English in Latin America has worked with questionnaires. In order to collect data that are comparable to former studies, and in order to answer the research question concerning the current role of English among the fifth generation of descendants, a questionnaire was designed (cf. Schleef 2014; Dörnyei 2010). It was double-checked by colleagues in Zurich as well as Sonia de Smith to ensure it would provide the necessary data and was intelligible for the participants. The questionnaire was entirely in Spanish (it was safe to assume that most of the informants were literate in this language); it provided information about my project and my contact details, as well as stated that data would be treated anonymously. 80 questionnaires were sent to Paraguay via post in November 2014. Sonia de Smith received and personally distributed the questionnaires among the younger population among whom she has a large network of personal contacts as a result of her profession. I asked her not to help participants or to give them an idea of what the aim of the study was in order to avoid an effect on the answers. She chose the participants on the basis of their age by going to their houses and asking if they were willing to fill in a questionnaire. Most of the informants selected were thus 15- to 30-year-old and residents of either the village of Nueva Londres or any other hamlet or farm in the district, i.e. Caraxi and Leon Cue. This personal distribution was more efficient, since the participants could only be found in this way. Sonia de Smith used her personal network as a point of departure and did not discriminate between descendants and non-descendants of the original settlers. She sent 71 the questionnaires back in February 2015 and was compensated for her efforts, yet only minimally since she considered this an act of friendship. The questionnaires consist of four thematic blocks. The first collected sociolinguistic data on the informants, their age, gender, last names, and level of education. The second block collected data on the linguistic practices of the informants, i.e. what language or languages they know and what languages they speak with whom (i.e. in which domains). I expected most of the informants to focus on Spanish, Jopara, and Guarani, which could be ticked, and the option of adding another language was given. This had the goal of seeing whether the linguistic practices observed in the community would also hold for the younger generations that spend less time in the village, as most of them studied or worked in Coronel Oviedo. These questions were also expected to distract the respondents from the following block, which asked for the respondents’ interests in acquiring an additional language. It asked for the general interest in learning a foreign language, and if yes, which one this would be. It then inquired if, and if yes, which, efforts had been made to learn this language. The respondents
72 could tick a number of answers and add other options that they deemed more accurate. The last block then aimed at finding out whether the informant had any ancestral relationship with that language. This is of course problematic since most Paraguayans are of mixed ancestry and descend partially or entirely from foreigners. The self-reporting of these answers, however, was expected to cast light on the informants’ awareness of, and/or self-ascription to, a certain national or ethnic identity. The most important caveat to be taken into consideration was the fact that the informants had varying educational and social backgrounds. For respondents of a low educational background, the questionnaires could have been too long or too difficult to fill out, which I expected would reduce their willingness to participate. Furthermore, a Likert Scale as proposed by Gardner (2010) and usually applied in studies of motivation and ethnolinguistic vitality (e.g. Landry and Allard 1994: 30) seemed difficult to apply since I had to expect certain informants to have difficulties with the questionnaire in general. Thus, instead of following a Likert scale on which respondents would have classified their language use according to different degrees of intensity or frequency, they simply responded whether a language was used at all in a certain domain. The same applies for the motivation to learn a foreign language: neither the degree of the desire nor the concrete measures taken to learn a language were asked for; rather, the question was whether any desire was present or any measure had been taken at all. This of course blurs the results further; it is my view, however, the most efficient and only practicable way of gathering data in such a heterogeneous community, where the levels of literacy and social background diverge considerably. The questionnaire can be found in the Appendix. It is important to stress that these questionnaires are not meant to provide a full picture of language attitudes present in this particular community. Rather, their goal is to find a trend among the younger descendants, who are today fully integrated into Paraguayan society and have little memories of their forefathers. Their attitudes towards the original heritage of the community, which happens to be the most powerful language on an international level, shed light on the value of English in this particular setting, which has so far never been studied in the context of the sociolinguistics of English. This trend is then compared to findings from other locales in Latin America (cf. Friedrich & Berns 2003) and forms the basis for further research.
73 3.3 Summing up: exploring New Australia Research in rural Paraguay and on New Australia in particular presents a number of challenges for a researcher. On the one hand, there is a body of literature on the community that is only reliable to a certain extent. On the other, the community itself is very reluctant to cooperate in any kind of research project and is thus difficult to approach. These conditions had to be considered in order to carry out research in this community and demanded a data- driven approach that took these limitations into consideration. At the same time, these challenges may help explain why so little sociolinguistic research has generally been carried out in rural Latin America, particularly in the field of English linguistics. Such a data-driven approach requires a considerable amount of flexibility from the researcher and his or her team as well as a healthy portion of courage to enter the community. However, the need to understand this unique case of language shift begged for a more detailed description of the social and sociolinguistic history of New Australia. The present study is thus purely sociolinguistic in nature and relies on ethnographic data collected during eight weeks of fieldwork, the questionnaires, and a continuous contact with the community between February 2011 and February 2015. As seen in the previous chapter, most sociolinguistic research carried out in Paraguay and Latin America has mainly relied on questionnaires. The ethnographic approach to this community is thus a novel one in the context of the study of language use and shift in Latin America, especially with regard to English. However, questionnaires still form part of this study in order to allow comparative studies in the future. It is hence based on a heterogeneous collection of data that is common in ethnographic research and relies on the following set of data:
1) 30 personal interviews, most of which were partially recorded, complemented by informal conversations that I had with the informants on other occasions; 2) field notes, i.e. the observations made during the time I lived in the village; 3) 72 documents – mainly personal letters or reports – kept by the Kennedy family and James Feehan; 4) the literature produced on New Australia so far (yet certain caveats must be considered); 5) 71 questionnaires (67 of which are valid) on language use distributed among 15- to 30-year-old descendants between December 2014 and February 2015.
74 This research project is thus an attempt at simultaneously shedding light on the fate of English in New Australia as well as on exploring the possibilities and challenges of sociolinguistic research in rural Latin America.
75
4 New Australia’s Social History
As outlined in Chapter 2, the origin of the Anglo-Paraguayan community lies in the still ongoing colonial expansion of the British Empire in the late nineteenth century and New Australia was to become ‘the colony of a colony’. However, even though the incorporation of Paraguay into the British Empire seems to have been one of leader William Lane’s final goals (Souter 1991: 169), the principal reason why over 600 Anglophone immigrants settled in Paraguay were the social and economic inequalities in Australia, above all the uprising of the agricultural workers in Northern Queensland. For this reason, this historical account begins in Australia before turning to nineteenth-century Paraguay and the foundation of New Australia in 1893. It will then present the history of the New Australian community, which, with the exception of Cosme, has never been described before. To keep the different epochs apart, I will refer to the original project and settlement community as New Australia, a designation that is only valid until the community’s division. Afterwards, I will refer to the district of the original New Australia settlement, which today includes the villages of Nueva Londres, Caraxi, Santa Catalina, Leon Cue, Loma Rugua, Capillitas, among others, as Nueva Australia. For reasons of simplicity, I will refer to Colonia Cosme as Cosme.
4.1 The inception of New Australia Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Australia nearly came to the brink of a civil war (Souter 1991: 6). In 1890, the Australian Labour Federation launched a general strike demanding the nationalization of private property in Australia. Early in 1891, the pastoralists, shearers, and other agricultural workers in Queensland refused to sign a pastoralists’ agreement and demanded “freedom of contract,” that is, to work and charge as individuals (Souter 1991: 4–5). One of the most prominent leaders of this movement was William Lane, the editor of the Labour-owned journal The Worker. He used this journal as an outlet to openly criticize the political system in Australia as in “I take it that Tyranny itself has no claim upon us, and that no tyrannical class has any claim upon us either. … The Queensland Government denies to the Queensland people the right of self-government, and is thus as much a tyranny as is the Russian Government” (cited in Souter 1991: 10). After a number of strikes, riots, and arrests, most Queensland camps were full of unemployed shearers. In 1892,
76 a severe drought hit Australia. These happenings further contributed to the economic depression in 1893 (Souter 1991: 13). Against this background, Lane’s idea of a fairer society fell on fertile ground. Unionism and socialism appeared to be the response to improve the miserable conditions in which many Australians were living. If we take the stance of Geisner in Lane’s The Workingman’s Paradise (Miller 2007 [1892]) as representative of Lane’s own position, socialism was not simply seen as a political system but rather a general attitude towards life or “indeed a religion” (Miller 2007: 8): apart from the political “State socialism” there is the more ideological and desirable “Anarchical Socialism” (Miller 2007: 127). The intellectual socialist Geisner explains that “[t]he Anarchist ideal is the highest and noblest of all human ideals. … Anarchical Communism, that is men working as mates and sharing with one another of their own free will, is the highest conceivable form of Socialism in industry” (Miller 2007: 129). A bushman in Lane’s book defines socialism and mateship as follows:
…mates is them wot’s got one pus. If I go to a shed with Jack an’ we’re mates an’ I earn forty quid and Jack gets sick an’ only earns ten or five or mebbe nothin’ at all we puts the whole lot in one pus … If Jack’s got the pus an I want half-a-crown, I says to Jack, says I, “Jack, gimme the pus.” (Miller 2007: 130)
The final goal of socialism in Lane’s view was to “destroy the system which makes it necessary for you to work for the profit of another man, and keeps you idle when he can’t get profit out of you. The whole wage system must be utterly done away with” (Miller 2007: 125–126). It is important to notice that both the spread of socialist ideas as well as the improvement of society as a whole was meant to take place “by the help of education which is becoming general, by the help of art and of science, and even of this vile press that is the incarnation of all the villainies of the present system!” (Miller 2007: 126). This ideological take on the world, added to Lane’s actual literary and journalistic productivity, suggests that Lane himself was both highly educated and a convinced socialist. In other words, Lane’s socialism was not simply a political system but an attitude towards life and the ideal functioning of a civilized society similar to religious convictions. This means that, in the eyes of the leader, New Australia was indeed a sort of a religious movement. Given the support from numerous groups, above all the unionists in Queensland, Lane decided to put his ideas into practice and give his project a try. Part of his primary inspiration was taken from Icaria, a North American Utopian community started in 1848 in Texas and then transplanted to Illinois before it was dispersed towards the end of the century (Souter 1991: 16–17). Also the Topolobampo community in northwestern Mexico was an example for
77 Lane’s socialist society, especially with regards to the independent system of credits that the community used instead of money (Souter 1991: 21). He began the fund rising by “hurriedly” writing his novel The Workingman’s Paradise, the belated publication of which he explicitly lamented (Miller 2007: 7). But who was William Lane? Souter (1991: 11) describes him as “a small, rather delicate- looking man with a heavy, drooping moustache and clear blue eyes that surveyed the world intently through gold-rimmed spectacles. His right foot was deformed, and he used a walking- stick.” He was born at Bristol in 1861 as the son of an Irish father, a landscape gardener inclined to alcohol, and an English mother. His hard-working mother died when he was fourteen, an experience which is said to have “instilled in him a chivalrous respect for women” (Livermore 1950: 291). He won a scholarship to Oxford and afterwards left for Canada and the United States. He quickly started to work as a printer’s devil and became a successful newspaper reporter in Detroit, where he was involved with the Noble Order of Knights of Labor,23 which determined his convictions of “the essential unity of capital and labour” (Kellett 1997: 2). In 1884, he married Anne McQuire, a colleague of his who had grown up in the United States. The following year, they sailed back to England together with their newborn daughter, and in June 1885, they left Europe for Australia. William’s brother John, who had promised to join him should he ever found his utopian socialist colony, accompanied them (Souter 1991: 17–18; Kellett 1997: 2). In Australia, Lane first worked as a freelance contributor to several newspapers and soon began to edit the weekly The Boomerang. He launched the Labour-owned The Worker in Brisbane in 1890 (Livermore 1950: 291). Lane maintained that socialism was the harmonious coexistence of capital and labor,24 yet it is important to note that his socialism had little to do with economic issues but rather with sentiments. In his endeavor, he saw himself as part of a century-long noble tradition (Kellett 1997: 3–8). Lane was known for his outspokenness in favor of what he considered to be a better world, which may have been the reason for him being called “Mephistopheles” (Souter 1991: 11). Mr. Findlay, a British observer set in Buenos Aires who documented and supported the New Australian movement in Paraguay, described Lane as follows:
23 This union was founded in 1869 and, though short-lived, became very influential with a membership of over 750,000. Its principal goal was to “establish cooperative institutions productive and distributive” disregarding a person’s ethnic background, gender, or education (Kellett 1997: 2). 24 Lane also reviewed literature that dealt with social differences or theoretical issues such as Karl Marx. From the latter he differed partially as Lane rejected the subjugation of capital by labor (Kellett 1997: 7). 78 His manner is cold. … [H]e talks very slowly and dogmatically. In fact there is something academic in his whole appearance. He impressed me as being extremely honest and conscientious, and as being possessed of an iron will; but also as being remarkably deficient in the tact and human sympathy so necessary in a leader of men. (cited in Souter 1991: 94)
However, Connelly (1924: 24) as one of his mates in New Australia remarks that Lane “was not fit by nature to lead, nor had he ever associated it or understood the class of men who joined this movement. He should have remained behind in Australia.” In any case, Lane was a highly educated and ideologically motivated leader.
4.1.1 The recruitment of the settlers The prospectus of the association advertised the object of the New Australia movement as follows:
To put into practice upon a voluntary basis and under the most favorable conditions available that form of industrial association which will secure social justice for all. [Every member was] to agree, when arrangements for settlement are complete, to subscribe to the common fund of the Association all he possesses, except personal effects, and to migrate to the land selected by the Association, there to devote all his energies to the success of the Settlement, and to showing the world that, under fair conditions, even workers can live a life worth living. (Livermore 1950: 293)
The rules said that the community would save the capital necessary to cover all expenses for sanitary and educational establishments and distribute the rest among all male and female members equally, which seems in line with Lane’s take on the equality of women and men. Furthermore, freedom of thought, religion, speech, and leisure were declared inviolable. However, this constitution was not valid before the settlement community had been set up, which gave Lane full power as the movement’s chairman in the beginning. In Lane’s view, loyalty and straightness were the most important attributes of New Australia settlers (Souter 1991: 31) for he expected all participants to meet the rules of teetotalism until the community had gained a foothold (Livermore 1950: 293–294; Souter 1991: 24). In a nutshell, the constitution held that “in a very short time any bushman can have a wife, a home and happiness, if he only has grit enough to make an effort and to trust those who will trust him. There is no humbug about the New Australia; it is a straight move by straight men” (Livermore 1950: 294). In addition to this ideology of cooperation and mutual support, Lane also seemed to pursue certain ideals regarding the relationship between men and women. Even though Lane
79 did seem to hold that “Man without Woman is incomplete,” he advocated equality of genders. Also, true love between man and woman should be based on respect and affection rather than on “feverish, degrading Lust” (Miller 2007: 140). The feelings between Nellie and Ned, the main characters of The Workingman’s Paradise, are described as love and admiration even though the two opt against being together. In the words of Geisner, the final goal of men and women should be that “Humanity must progress. One reform is the Reorganisation of Industry. The other is the Recognition of Woman’s Equality” (Miller 2007: 141). Membership in the association was hence not based on social class or gender, but explicitly denied to
any not knowing English so as to understand and be understood; any person of colour, including any married to persons of colour, any living together otherwise than in lawful marriage; any of questionable reputation; any objectionable by reason of past disloyalty to the Labour movement or of such other actions as are clearly opposed to the common good. (Souter 1991: 24)
The command of English was thus an indispensible precondition to become a member of New Australia. In addition, it was crucial to respect the color line, i.e. the adherence to racial purity as a primordial attitude, and no persons of non-European descent were accepted. 25 The admiration of phenotypical features commonly associated with Anglo-Saxon culture is also made explicit in Lane’s novel. Nellie, the most unanimously admired female character, is described as “pale” and “standing erect” as well as having “the soft attractiveness of the shapely forehead, dashed beneath by straight eyebrows, and of the pronounced cheekbones that crossed the symmetry of a Saxon face” (Miller 2007: 22). These clear and harmonious features suggest racial superiority due to both her individual beauty as well as the perfection of a superior race. Accordingly, most male characters, above all Ned, the deeply admired bushman from Queensland, are presented as “a burly man of unmistakably bush appearance, … sandy complexion, broad features and light-coloured eyes that did not look one full in the face” (Miller 2007: 215). These racist concerns, along with his strive for a higher form of human society, thus indicated that Lane had an Evolutionist approach to the world. This entailed that in terms of social organization, the community of New Australia was expected to become socially isolated with endogamy as the principal rule of marriage. The conditions for an isolated Sprachinsel (see section 2.2.2) to emerge thus seemed ideal.
25 The anti-Chinese campaign, launched by the newspaper The Boomerang and in which Lane was engaged, featured articles by William Lane such as the following: “Sunday night in China-town, in the hideous plague- spot that is spreading like a canker over the old Frog’s Hollow district, and that will yet rot our whole society if it be not cut remorselessly out!” (Souter 1991: 20). 80 In the end, the settlers consisted of two main groups, the larger group of the so-called bush workers from New South Wales and Queensland. For Lane, those bushmen were “the flower of Australia.” They are “patient, courageous and fearless,” “rough looking” but still “simple in [their] heart,” “honest, thoughtful, sober”; they can be as “frank as a child” and as “tender as a woman,” and have an “instinctive prompting to share with the weak” (Kellett 1997: 11).26 A smaller group consisted of white-collar workers, such as journalists, nurses, and tradespeople, who were mainly from Adelaide, Albury, and Tasmania (Souter 1991: 26). This shows that even though Lane aimed at building up a society free from social stratification, he was aware of the need for a wide range of different skills in New Australia. Given that being a speaker of English had been a precondition to participate in this project, none of the settlers spoke a language other than English natively. Those known to have had some knowledge of Spanish who acted as interpreters were Alfred Walker, the inspector of the location who had lived in Buenos Aires before settling in Paraguay, and Thomas Westwood. William Saunders from California also knew some Spanish (Souter 1991: 33). The fact that Lane admired the bushmen and reproduced their dialect nearly phonetically in his novel suggests that he did not have concerns regarding the variety of English spoken by the settlers. The pursued racial superiority seemed ensured by Anglo-Saxon ancestry and the corresponding native language irrespective of the social variety. With regards to the financial well-being of New Australia, communal ownership of the entire capital as well as equal distribution of the surplus was the economic basis of New Australia. Most importantly, all members were given equal rights, and the only gender-related difference was that women were not expected to contribute the minimal £60 to the association’s pool.27 Lane himself is said to have put over £1000 into the Association, and he seemed to have said to a friend that “[i]t brings tears to my eyes to see how my bushmen trust me, how they hand me over their hard-earned money without a doubt or a question … I would rather die than betray such trust” (Souter 1991: 30). Connelly (1924: 1) states that “it was generally understood that we had with us £10,000, – naturally it was a big disapointment to learn later that we were pennyless [sic].” In fact, Connelly (1924: 25) claims at the end of his report that “if [Lane] did [put this amount of money], well I never saw him, you may take that with a pinch of salt.”
26 These definitions given by Kellet (1997) were mainly taken from Lane’s (1892) novel A Workingman’s Paradise (Miller 2007). 27 However, Henry Connelly (1924: 1) admitted in his manuscript that “I having more money than sense decided to enjoy myself for a month or two before leaving. But as you know we did not get away until the middle of July. I had 7 months injoyment [sic].” 81 The aforementioned female members had generally a special position within New Australia. Given that many settlers were young bushmen without wives or families, there was a demographic imbalance between men and women. In Tasmania, a place known for its disproportionately high percentage of unmarried women, the New Australia Association promoted the project as follows:
But as our bachelors will be as fine a body of men as ever came together in any part of the world – strong and straight and manly with the manliness which town life destroys – and as there will be neither fear of want, or any financial difficulty to impede honest love and honourable marriage, the single girls who go will be less than human if one or other do not win their hearts and make them loving wives and happy mothers. (Souter 1991: 25)
This paragraph suggests that women were expected to live in “honourable marriage” as “loving wives and happy mothers.” I shall return to the role of the women in New Australia below. Thus, Lane aimed at attacking Australian capitalism by showing the world that socialism was the highest form of human civilization. He founded the New Australian Cooperation SA in 1891 where all members should have a common goal and work together to achieve higher standards of life and social equality (Kellet 1997: 8–11).
4.1.2 New Australia – where to? For this project to be successful, however, it was essential to find the ideal place. Lane first examined Australia and New Zealand, yet no territory was available for such a project there. In January 1889, he wrote to the editor of the Maryborough Alert newspaper about his interest in South America’s vastness and added: “We must go high, I think, to get the true Aryan climate” (Souter 1991: 21). Lane therefore sent Alfred Walker, the former president of the Australian Labour Association and manager of The Boomerang, to Argentina to check the possibilities with the Argentine government (Souter 1991: 22–24). Three agents traveled to Buenos Aires to see the options offered by Argentina, a country that was, as seen in chapter 2, relatively popular among British settlers. Alfred Walker, who had already lived as a tradesman in Buenos Aires in 1892, William Saunders, and Charles Leck had the mission of finding an appropriate piece of land. They visited different sites in Patagonia by the foothills of the Andes and also passed through Chubut, the Welsh colony in Patagonia. Arthur Tozer, another proficient Spanish speaker, accompanied their trips. However, none of these locations
82 convinced the inspectors, because communication was too difficult, resources too scarce, or the climate too harsh (Souter 1991: 33–34). They had to look for a place elsewhere. Paraguay, by contrast, was presented as some sort of Arcadia. The Paraguayan Consul in London reported that his country was a “fine country for agriculturists and industrious people with small capital” (cited in Souter 1991: 62). Given their aim of setting up an independent community, Saunders and Leck considered the lack of a local market and job opportunities to be irrelevant (Souter 1991: 43). Rather, they wanted it to have either a railroad or a river connection to the port of Buenos Aires, thus ensuring that “the distance to London by water [was] only 26 days from Asunción, much nearer than any part of Australasia” (cited in Souter 1991: 44). Moreover, the land was described as fertile, and starvation or a lack of prosperity within 18 months would only happen due to “sheer laziness’” (cited in Livermore 1950: 295). Leck also reported that “there are no Indians within fifty or sixty leagues of our land, and they are as harmless as sucking calves” (cited in Livermore 1950: 295). Thus, according to the Association’s prospectus, Paraguay was “not a disturbed country. Its constitution has remained unchanged since 1870, there is universal suffrage, religious liberty and an elected Congress and President. It does not have revolutions” (Livermore 1950: 294–295). In fact, as the following section will show, this picture was not entirely true. However, from their Australian perspective, and in consideration of their need for an affordable and independent yet accessible piece of land, Paraguay did represent, in a way, the Promised Land.
4.1.3 Leaving Old Australia Given the efficient advertisement of the beauty of the land and life quality in Paraguay, the Association soon had over 600 members. The goal was to settle 1,200 families within six years (Souter 1991: 45). However, many Australian newspapers defamed Paraguay and mocked the New Australia project, such as the Bulletin, for instance, which “disapproved of ‘white upstanding Australians’ settling among ‘dusky Dagoes’.” Lane engaged in these public debates and advocated such an enterprise with lines as the following:
We have free land, fertile land, watered, timbered. We have a migration that weeds out the coward-hearts who would hang like millstones round our neck. We have isolation from a society whose seductions would perforce draw our thoughts to it when every thought of ours was most needed to organize and to build. (Lane, cited in Souter 1991: 59)
In fact, Lane responded to this provocation by publishing that the average size of the male members of the first batch of settlers was five feet eight and a quarter inches (Souter 1991: 83 57). The Sydney Bulletin, however, rather lamented the loss of such an outstanding group of settlers by saying that
[t]he New Australian contingent contains the best material for such an experiment the world could furnish, perhaps. The work that lies in front of them … is just the sort they have been used to. There are few town-dwellers among the first batch, and the majority of those who are now rolling their swags in Queensland and South Australia with a view to the second are of the bush. They have been trained in the tasks of settlement. Tanksinkers, shearers, bush-carpenters, station-hands, with artizans [sic] used to the rough-and-tumble life of Australia will not be easily knocked out. (cited in Livermore 1950: 298)
These quotes, which all focus in some way on the physical properties of the participants and on selecting only the apt ones, illustrate that the entire project clearly had an ideological basis that sought to reach the peak not only of human civilization – communism – but also of biological fitness and purity in a Darwinist sense. This again corroborates the idea of superiority of New Australians as opposed to the local population. I will return to these attitudes towards racial superiority in chapter five. On July 16, 1893, the Royal Tar, which the Association had purchased for the shipment of the settlers, was ready to leave the port of Sydney. After medical inspection, 220 settlers were admitted to embark,28 80 men, 40 women, and 100 children (Souter 1991: 65). The voyage with the Royal Tar lasted 57 days and gave them enough time to gather regularly and discuss the further procedure. Tasks and jobs were assigned and committees set up to take care of the community’s education and civil register. Among these, they formed a “literary union” with the aim of ensuring the “mutual assistance, encouragement, and criticism of voluntary literary work” (Souter 1991: 70), which suggests that literary practices and education were considered important in line with the aforementioned aim of writing articles as an output of the community. After six weeks on sea around Cape Horn, the Royal Tar reached Montevideo. Even if the subscription to the association required that all members be socialists and mates, ideas began to diverge considerably on board (cf. Wilding 1984). Once in Montevideo, Lane left the ship and some of the young men disregarded the rule of temperance and left the ship to come back “merry” in their own and “roaring drunk” in Mrs. Lane’s view (Souter 1991: 74). The Uruguayan press commented on this group as “an offspring of the English people … composed of healthy, strong and active men, and women of singular comeliness
28 In fact, the numbers of embarked migrants vary: Livermore (1950: 299) holds that 254 first-batchers arrived in Paraguay. 84 and beauty” (Souter 1991: 74). However, these diverging views soon induced Lane to send a cable to Sydney in which he reiterated that “it is imperative that migration be confined to unquestionably earnest members” (Souter 1991: 74).
4.2 Paraguay – the Promised Land?
Map 4: South American borders in 1892 (source: www.lib.utexas.edu/maps)
The conquest of Paraguay began in 1537 when the Spaniards sought to reach the Inca Empire (or, even better, accidentally El Dorado) from the Atlantic Ocean via the River Plate. In those times, most of the indigenous population of the Paraguayan territory consisted of hunter- gatherer communities. Given that most of these communities were at war amongst each other, indigenous leaders would cooperate with the Spaniards and exchange goods, such as food and women, with hatchets, hooks, and other ironware. During the first century of colonization, only 1,000 to 1,200 Europeans found their way to the Paraguayan territory at the edge of the Spanish Empire (Zajícová 2009: 24). Melià (2011: 426, my translation) depicts the first settlers in Paraguay as follows:
85
What did being Spanish in Paraguay mean at the time? Spain was not a homogeneous national unity, but the men arriving on the expeditions during the 16th century had certain features and attitudes in common. Three can be pointed out: religiously, they were Christian Catholics; they were governed by an economy of the accumulation of goods, in which booty and looting of the local wealth was the normal practice; and they spoke the Castilian language.
When the conquerors realized that there was no mineral wealth in the region, the colonial administration implemented the system of encomiendas to work the land: both indigenous people and plots of land were distributed among the colonizers, who, in turn, were obliged to provide their workers with basic Christian education. At the same time, the lack of mineral wealth stopped the influx of new settlers from Spain (Durán Estragó 2011: 65–73). As a result, the European men soon took indigenous wives, a practice that initiated the profound cultural and racial mixture of the Paraguayan population. Spanish was still largely unknown in this area, and the missionary establishments gave rise to Jesuit Guarani, a leveled variety of Guarani due to dialect and language contact (Zajícová 2009: 24–26). This situation remained largely unchanged until the eighteenth century. The majority of the indigenous population lived in poverty subjected to labor exploitation as encomendados and were passed around among these encomiendas (Maeder 2011: 122–125). Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the cities of Asuncion and Villarrica grew, and new immigrants from Europe, above all Spain, Portugal, France, and Ireland arrived. They quickly established their businesses and trading companies and inserted themselves into the local elite, thus contributing to the urban development of Paraguayan cities (Caballero Campos 2011: 142– 144). In those times, Paraguay was still subject to the Spanish Crown and belonged to the viceroyalty of the River Plate governed in Buenos Aires. Paraguay became officially independent from Spain in 1811. After a short period of political rivalries, Paraguay’s first dictatorship was established: Dr. Francia was designated the Supreme Dictator of the Republic in 1814, and the Perpetual Dictator of the Republic in 1816. A well-equipped army ensured Francia’s absolute power, whose only goal was to keep up Paraguay’s sovereignty. Paraguay remained in isolation, both economically and socially, until Francia died in 1840 (Areces 2011: 161–172). His isolationist policies were the fundament of a nearly Guarani-monolingual Paraguayan population in the nineteenth century (Zajícová 2009: 31). After Francia, Carlos Antonio López seized power, and ensuring Paraguay’s sovereignty by means of a strong army and state was also on his agenda. To reach these goals, López developed Paraguay’s infrastructure by initiating the construction of the
86 first railway29 and a number of roads and bridges to connect the country. He also considerably increased the yields of Paraguay’s farmlands by, for instance, building large irrigation systems. Whereas cotton, tobacco, yerba mate, and fruit left the country toward the Atlantic Ocean in Buenos Aires, foreign materials such as British textiles and porcelain were taken to Paraguay for Asuncion’s slowly growing aristocracy consisting of a number of local and foreign families (Areces 2011: 173–177). At the same time, López planned the Hispanicization of the Paraguayan population and introduced compulsory education for the male population (Zajícová 2009: 33). López’ son Francisco Solano López, who had toured Europe to win new investors for the Paraguayan industry, was elected president when his father died in 1842. He maintained the same political direction until the breakout of the war against the Triple Alliance of Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay in 1865 (Areces 2011: 178– 185) when Paraguay invaded Matto Grosso in order to finally determine its borders with Brazil. The Triple Alliance War became the most devastating war ever carried out in the region. It decimated Paraguay’s population and territory and destroyed large parts of its cultural treasures and archives (Areces 2011: 190–194), and even though its sovereignty was unquestioned thereafter, Paraguay’s borders were not definitely determined before the end of the Chaco War in 1935. The use of Guarani as a secret code in these wars, however, strengthened its use and lifted it to a symbol of national identity, and as a result of the war and the victory, Guarani became a literary as well as journalistic language (Zajícová 2009: 34– 35). The twentieth century became a memorable one for Paraguay. The first half of the century was still a period of political instability, and the country was again hit by wars, first the Chaco War against Bolivia between 1932 and 1935, and the short but atrocious civil war that killed nearly 50,000 Paraguayans in 1947. In 1954, Alfredo Stroessner overthrew the government and became Latin America’s longest-serving president. The stability of his government was provided by an effective system of repression, institutionalized corruption, a nationalist ideology, and the support of the United States. Stroessner established the Colorado party as a repressive institution as all public employees, including teachers, were forced to become members (Lambert & Nickson 2013: 235). He persecuted all types of possible conspiracy, which caused an environment of distrust throughout the nation as any neighbor was enabled, and in fact obliged, to detect any form of conspiracy against the government’s policies. As will be described below, this political hostility also profoundly affected the descendants of New Australia.
29 It was completed in 1909 when the train reached Encarnacion at the Argentine border (441 kilometers). 87 4.2.1 The English-speaking community in nineteenth-century Paraguay Lane’s utopians were of course not the first Anglophones to arrive in Paraguay. Similar to other countries in the region, such as Argentina or Brazil, Paraguay also hosted British subjects. In fact, Irish and English Jesuits had been involved in the exploration of Paraguay since the sixteenth century (Plà 1976: 3). However, the number of British residents in Paraguay was low until the mid-nineteenth century and about 100 foreigners were registered. Around 1850, however, Solano López’ government recognized the importance of bringing Paraguay’s industry, military force, and health system up to date, which originated the Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation between England and Paraguay in 1853. Subsequently, the number of foreign experts coming to Paraguay rose quickly. Given that England was the leading nation in technology, the British community was the largest national group in Paraguay. Approximately 200 experts and technicians moved to Paraguay with their families. They mostly worked in the national Arsenal, the Railroad Company, the erection of important buildings in the capital, or in the improvement of the national health system (Plà 1976: 5–9). In 1854, for example, the Scotsman William Whytehead became Paraguay’s Chief State Engineer after working in the United States and Brazil (Plà 1976: 23). Among other functions, he oversaw the English naval architect Thomas Norman Smith, who directed Asuncion’s shipyard as “shipbuilder in the Service of the State,” and who in turn launched the vessels designed by Whytehead and run by English engineers (Plà 1976: 40–41). The first overseer of Paraguay’s Arsenal was also an Englishman, Frederick Garton, soon to be followed by Alexander Grant in 1858. Their principal draftsmen and shipbuilders were all English technicians (Plà 1976: 46–47). Even the search for, and exploitation of, Paraguay’s relatively limited mineral resources was guided by English mining engineers such as Charles Twite (Plà 1976: 93). Furthermore, as in other South American countries, British specialists directed the construction of the Paraguayan railway. The works were initiated in 1856 with the goal of connecting Paraguay to the international market. Four English engineers were involved in the establishment of the first railroad between Asuncion and Villarrica as well as the construction of the first Paraguayan railway wagons. The superintendent was, unsurprisingly, William Whytehead. The railway was inaugurated on June 23, and the engineers were exclusively English (Plà 1976: 49–50, 107–108). As we will see, also many of the seceders from New Australia found a job in the Railroad Company in Sapucai or Villarrica at the turn of the twentieth century (Souter 1991).
88 Finally, the British also helped develop Paraguay’s medical service. The relatively high annual wages, residential privileges, as well as the allocation of personal horses made these jobs attractive for Englishmen. The first specialists to arrive were a doctor and a pharmacist, and soon three more doctors joined them. The most outstanding figure was William Stewart from Perthshire, who stayed for a total of over 50 years and engaged in the development of the National Health Service nearly from scratch. Stewart became the head of the Army Medical Service and established the first School of Medicine in the country, where local aspirants were instructed. However, despite this important contribution of local doctors to the Paraguayan health system, more doctors arrived from abroad, many of whom were English (Plà 1976: 54–58). One of their main duties was the vaccination of the population against smallpox and the fight against other endemic diseases, such as scarlet fever, dysentery, or typhus, which were particularly virulent among the single men in the army and decimated Paraguay’s military force shortly before the war broke out in the early 1860s. In addition to his responsibilities for the army and the hospital of Asuncion, which included the School of Medicine and Surgery, Dr. Stewart also attended to the Presidential family and most Anglophone residents (Plà 1976: 113–116). Finally, Dr. Stewart was also the one to examine the Australians aboard the Royal Tar upon their arrival in the port of Asunción in 1893 (Souter 1991: 78). Even if most of the British professionals collaborated with the local workforce, the English-speaking community was distinguishable from other groups in Paraguay. Given their privileged social and financial standing, they all belonged to Paraguay’s upper class and had their own social practices and traditions. For example, President López’ consort Eliza Lynch was herself a British subject and often invited her compatriots to dinner parties or soirées, where they enjoyed local delicacies or played whist and chess. Whytehead, who joined these parties, also invited the British and North American elite to his hacienda where a British butler served sherry, whisky, brandy, and beer (Plà 1976: 76–80). These gatherings had the aim of establishing one’s own social standing and satisfying the collective the need to overcome the nostalgia for things British (Plà 1976: 185). The women had little contact with locals and only gathered among themselves in exclusive coffee parties. In addition, instead of connecting with the local community, the British in Paraguay were oriented towards the Anglo-Argentine community, where they visited friends or made medical check-ups or treatments. Whytehead, for instance, spent a couple of months in Argentina to recover from a nervous disease in 1863 (Plà 1976: 91). In some cases, the tropical climate or the temptation of caña (sugarcane liquor) affected their health or limited their efficiency. In consequence, the
89 British community’s glamorous way of life was openly criticized in the local press and may not have been very popular among the local population (Plà 1976: 104–106, 126–127). Given this relative isolation of the exclusive circle of English-speaking individuals in Paraguay, it seems reasonable to assume that the Anglophone community did not integrate into the local society. The British community nevertheless left its mark on Paraguayan society. Apart from the skills brought to Paraguay by the specialists, Paraguayan trainees also went to England to learn more about their respective areas of specialization (Plà 1976: 102). It is highly likely that these returnees, as well as other locals who were in contact with the British community expanded the range of British culture and the English language within Paraguay. With regards to lifestyle, Plà (1976: 187–189) explains that many luxuries like textiles, fireplaces with chimneys, sewing machines, and curtains were introduced by the British, and textiles, especially cotton cloth, drinks, and glass were imported from Britain on a large scale (Warren 1985: 221–222). Finally, they introduced society dances and other social events, one of which is the Macedonian Ball that continues to be held every year in Asuncion. In sum, it is likely that the Anglophone community of Paraguay was a highly visible and distinguishable community that influenced Paraguayan society without considerable intercultural contact. In 1865, however, the attractiveness of Paraguay as an employer of British specialists was abruptly interrupted with the outbreak of the Triple Alliance War. There were 59 English professionals officially residing in Paraguay in 1865, 47 of whom were engineers. The number of their wives, children, and domestic employees remains unknown (Plà 1976: 134). However, the war decimated this number; for example, 30 men, seven women, and 18 children of British citizenship were captured by the Brazilians in 1869 (Plà 1976: 159), and at least 33 Englishmen were buried in Paraguay (Plà 1976: 162). Considering the important contribution of Englishmen to Paraguayan history and this substantial loss during the war, it seems evident that Lane’s English-speaking settlers may have been a welcome addition in 1893. Given the fact that their subordinates and trainees were mostly Spanish- and Guarani- speaking, most of these British specialists became relatively fluent in Spanish and even Guarani (Plà 1976: 183). Whytehead, for instance, spoke Spanish fluently (Plà 1976: 22). The only specialist lacking competence in either Spanish or Guarani that is explicitly mentioned to have faced communicative struggles is the mining engineer Charles Twite (Plà 1976: 93). In accordance with the predominance of the local languages at the workplaces, the Hispanicization of English last names was common since the very early days and,
90 interestingly enough, established as a common practice. Spalding was Hispanicized to Espaldón, Emery became Imvrie, Whytehead turned into Guaite, Stewart into Estobarte, (Plà 1976: 3, 9) or Gibson into Guidson (Plà 1976: 129). Still, the high number of British colleagues and the fact that many New Australians found jobs in the local British community (Souter 1991) suggest that the English language must have been heard frequently in professional Paraguayan contexts.
4.2.2 Paraguay in the 1890s Given that William Lane was looking for an isolated place where his socialist idea could be put into practice without interference from the surrounding society, Paraguay seemed to await the settlers with perfect conditions. Paraguay at the time was still relatively underexplored. For example, only a few roads or railroads connected Paraguay’s largest settlements and villages, and most of the rivers were too shallow to be navigated throughout the year (Warren 1985: 10). More importantly, Paraguay was still in a phase of reconstruction after the war against the Triple Alliance had decimated the Paraguayan population. Brezzo (2011: 200) estimates that the Paraguayan population amounted to half a million prior to the war, and Warren (1985: 15) believes that the most reliable source is a count of approximately 400,000 individuals.30 This number was almost halved in the course of the war: the first post-war census in 1872 yielded 232,000 Paraguayans mostly living in Eastern Paraguay. In addition, there was a remarkable disproportion between men and women: given the great losses of young soldiers, the 1879 census recorded 230,000 women and 116,000 men, which implies that there were twice as many women than men living in Paraguay. Asuncion and Villarrica, the country’s largest cities, counted 18,000 and 13,000 inhabitants, respectively, whereas the remaining 300,000 inhabitants were mainly spread over smaller settlements and rural areas (Warren 1985: 16–17), above all the southeastern part of the country. In other words, Paraguay’s post-war population mainly consisted of women, children, and elderly people living in rural areas of eastern Paraguay where New Australia was planned to be set up. Paraguay’s situation was deplorable. After the eradication of most of Paraguay’s work force, the Paraguayan post-war economy remained in a state of inertia. The national production was paralyzed, and in 1894 the agricultural production was still half of that of 1863. Manufactured as well as agricultural goods had to be imported via Buenos Aires, and
30 The British consul Cecil Gosling complained about the complete lack of reliable sources and any kind of statistical data during that period around 1900 (Warren 1985: 215).
91 while smart tradesmen enriched themselves by selling imported goods at exorbitant prices, poor people from rural areas moved to the cities in search of work opportunities. This led to a considerable increase in social injustice, pauperism, and delinquency. The country’s economy still depended on the same products, mainly manioc, maize, tobacco, and yerba mate, yet severe droughts repeatedly caused agricultural losses. The State’s only income came from taxes on exportation, but due to the inefficiency of the administration and the military, there was too much contraband. Therefore, the government started to sell its lands to a number of foreign colonies, such as Nueva Germania and Lane’s Nueva Australia (Lane’s project was in fact offered land for free). Since Paraguayans themselves did not have the means to acquire such lands, the Paraguayan lands were sold to foreign owners – mainly Argentines – and soon, few owners held large pieces of lands (Brezzo 2011: 200–206). Furthermore, even if the Convención Nacional Constituyente in 1870 recognized the right of universal suffrage and established Paraguay as a Republic, the country was close to a state of anarchy. Part of the lack of economic growth was attributed to the vagrancy of the “primitive race” (Warren 1985: 279), i.e. the rural population, which was often exploited like slaves, treated with disdain and said to be useless and lazy (Warren 1985: 183). To rebuild Paraguay as rapidly as possible, the new neoliberal government hence relied on exogenous factors, such as the influx of foreign capital and work force. The new government sought to stimulate European immigration anew by offering tax relief and land at low prices to immigrant communities. Even though the large immigration waves did not arrive, it was common to think that to “invigorate” Indian blood with European blood was the recipe to increase the country’s productivity (Warren 1985: 241–244). British investors based in Argentine and overseas, however, wanted to get their share in the transportation business and invested in tramways and the Paraguay Central Railway. Especially Villarrica had many British residents (Warren 1985: 22–24). In 1890, the British capital investments in Paraguay were the largest of the country; apart from transportation, there were financial institutions with considerable British capital (Warren 1985: 181), and many Anglo-Argentine investors dominated the Paraguayan economy. When the country was exploited more intensely after 1900, British investors tried to get their share in public lighting of cities or in search of gold and other minerals. The other pillars of the Paraguayan economy were agriculture (tobacco, yerba mate, oranges, coffee, cotton), cattle raising, and timber. Almost the entire industry was based on the extraction of resources and the cottage industry, the latter mainly sustained by women (Warren 1985: 207).
92 The last decade of the nineteenth century, however, was particularly hard because of several droughts and their consequences (Warren 1985: 194–197). These challenges, added to the instability of the government and the numerous changes it had experienced since the Triple Alliance War, had the consequence of Paraguay being relatively unattractive for immigrants. The numbers of British arrivals increased slowly and only due to the intense construction works of the Central Railway: in 1887, 168 British citizens had been registered in Paraguay (74 percent of whom were male), in 1892 there were 360 British residents, and in 1900, there were 430 (Warren 1985: 250). William Lane expected these conditions of underdevelopment and administrative support to help avoid overregulation or societal influences and guarantee a maximum of social independence with excellent starting conditions for New Australia. In addition, the profound cultural and linguistic gap between the European-descendant and local population seemed to facilitate the racial segregation between his settlers and Paraguayans.
4.2.3 The sociolinguistic situation at the time of arrival After the Triple Alliance War, the Paraguayan government pursued the goal of enhancing the assimilation of immigrants and the local society. It banned Guarani from all legal and official communication and established Spanish as the only official language (Warren 1985: 248). The vast majority of the Paraguayan people during the nineteenth century, however, spoke Guarani (Melià 2011: 439). This fact is corroborated in Russinovich Solé’s (1996: 94) sociolinguistic survey, which reveals that at the beginning of the twentieth century, Paraguay was not a bilingual but rather a Guarani monolingual country, especially in rural areas where most of the population lived. The war against the Triple Alliance had additionally fostered its use since the fact that Paraguay’s male population had almost been eradicated during the war implied that women – often monolingual speakers of Guarani – were in charge of rebuilding the nation, not only economically, but also linguistically (Melià 2011: 439–440). We can therefore assume that the Australian settlers encountered their environment nearly exclusively Guarani-speaking. Learning Guarani, however, may not have been the only challenge the Anglophone settlers encountered in Paraguay. There was another group of English settlers that arrived in 1873 for the Lincolnshire Farmers project, yet most of them left after only a few months. According to Warren (1985: 246), these immigrants did not feel welcome, and among their complaints was the difficult integration into Paraguayan society, such as “[n]either intermarriage nor acquisition of the Guaraní language seems to temper the reserve that
93 characterizes Paraguayans in their relationships with outsiders” (Warren 1985: 246). Many of these colonies were said to have failed because of “a lack of a real knowledge of the Spanish language and of the national susceptibilities and prejudices, and a half disguised contempt for a partially coloured race” (Paraguayan newspaper, cited in Warren 1985: 246–247). The cultural and sociolinguistic environment was thus certainly a challenge to those who aimed at becoming a part of the local society. Apart from Spanish and Guarani, there were a number of foreign languages spoken in Paraguay at the time the settlers arrived. The Italians and the Spanish formed the largest groups, each of which consisting of over 8,000 residents, followed by 800 each from France and Brazil, and approximately 500 from Portugal and 500 from Germany (Warren 1985: 16). As seen above, the English-speaking community was also relatively sizeable and socially influential. However, any language other than Guarani or Spanish may only have been spoken among the upper classes of Asuncion and Villarrica. The settlers themselves knew neither Spanish nor Guarani. Connelly (1924: 4) remarks that his “knowledge of Spanish was limited to almost cero [sic]”, and his (Connelly 1924: 3) anecdotes report the same about other participants’ Spanish, such as for instance Danny Connell’s:
Denny asked our guid what you said for water in Spanish, when told it was agua he repeted the word several times, then marched off, when he came back he said, that‘s a dam fine word they understood it all right, but he continued these people dont understand English, but listen to that ruster he is crowing in English. [sic]
Their lack of competence in the local languages is likely to have fostered the settlers’ contact with other English-speaking residents, especially those in Villarrica.
4.3 New Australia The first batch of settlers arrived in Asuncion on Friday, September 22, 1893. In contrast to the uproar provoked by their departure from Sydney harbor, and much to the disappointment of some of the settlers, no crowd awaited the Australians’ arrival. Nevertheless, the President of Paraguay himself attended the happening, as well as nearly the entire English-speaking population of the city – fewer in number than the arriving group. One important person was Dr Stewart, who went aboard the Royal Tar to examine some of the sick passengers (Souter 1991: 78). Dr Stewart later informed the Consul in Buenos Aires “that Her Britannic Majesty’s Consul has been completely ignored” (Stewart, cited in Souter 1991: 78), which suggests that Lane and his followers were determined to depend only on themselves and not
94 on any official authority. He (Stewart, cited in Souter 1991: 79, original emphasis) went on that “as a matter of personal opinion I may state that they should succeed in forming a prosperous colony but I doubt their being able to carry out the fad of such complete isolation from their neighbours as I hear they wish to maintain.” However, it is important to add Dr Stewart’s (cited in Souter 1991: 79) observation on the settlers’ aptitude: “They are a superior class to the ordinary stock of European immigrants coming to this part of the world.” This supports the assumption that this particular group of immigrants seemed more determined and prepared to establish an independent colony, or Sprachinsel as seen in chapter two, than most other immigrant groups of the late nineteenth century in South America.
4.3.1 Setting up New Australia After spending the day in Asuncion, the settlers took the railway to Villarrica, which had an elevated number of British residents as outlined previously. Most of the Australians spent a number of nights in the houses of the British residents of Villarrica before the first pioneers sought their way on foot through the bush to the location that was meant to become New Australia. The following excerpt from Connelly’s (1924: 2) report narrates an anecdote on how the bushmen experienced this adventure:
The s[c]enary is good to look at from the railway. But not so pleasant when humping blue. For at the foot of each p[ie]ce of rising ground there is an est[e]ro (swamp) not like anything in Australia, but composed of large tussocks of grass, with a mus [?] trench between. Tuyu Bicue (big swamp) which we had to cross is a dandy. Our cook Fred Bilby a big heavy man, trying to le[a]p from one tussock to another missed his footing and came into the mud with his swag on top of him. We were all somewhat heavy lo[a]ded having brought our bedding tents food axes and such like. Jack Black a strong wi[tt]y young fellow went back to his help saying get on my back Fred, which he did, but they both fell into the mud. They laughed like schoolboys.
The main body of settlers arrived a little later on twenty wooden bullock-drawn carts called carretas. Once they had chosen the ideal site, which was known among locals as Puesto de las Ovejas ‘the Sheep Station,’ the laborious erection of the settlement began. The official foundation ceremony took place on October 11, and the Paraguayan Minister for Colonization as well as President López himself welcomed the community warmly – translated from Spanish into English by the President’s secretary – and promised protection and support. After a solemn ceremony, López and Lane flew the Paraguayan flag together (Souter 1991: 82–84; Livermore 1950: 301).
95 This was the time the settlers learned that, in contrast to what they had been told, there were indigenous communities living on their estate. With the help of an interpreter, Lane tried to find a peaceful way of sending them away (Souter 1991: 81). The local press quickly took up this issue and defamed the settlers’ intentions and their prioritized treatment by the government. On the one hand, the newspapers were worried about the future of the several hundreds indigenous inhabitants of the land, and on the other, they mocked the selfish behavior of foreign settlers. The El Centinela, for example, wrote: “Let the Australian Gringos come! Let the entire world come to cultivate our soil and sell sweet potatoes! But do not let them come asking for justice when they have need of it, for consideration when they deserve it, or for public freedom, because these things are not produced by the soil” (cited and translated in Souter 1991: 81). However, this issue was perhaps blown out of proportion; also Connelly (1924: 2) manuscript only mentions that “[d]issatisfaction was expressed because there were four or five natives living in the vicin[i]ty.” Whatever the case, New Australia was not uninhabited at the time of arrival. In ten-hour-shifts, interrupted only by short smoking breaks, the settlers first built the cookhouse (which they called the galley), the huts of mud walls and thatched roofs, and the vegetable garden. They planted manioc, sweet potatoes, beans, and melons – except for the potatoes, all crops did well. They found all the necessary resources nearby, such as timber and grass for the fences and houses, clay for the bricks, and oranges, limes, peaches, figs, and guavas (Souter 1991: 83; Connelly 1924: 24). Reid (1925: 241) explained in the early twentieth century that “it requires capital and, as a rule, operations on a large scale rather than individual effort to combat primitive nature [in tropical South America],” yet within the first three months, they cleared forty acres of land, half of which were destined to 2,500 grazing heads of cattle, and built twenty thatched cottages, a butcher’s shop, a smithy, and a school (Souter 1991: 85). Each pioneer was assigned a special task according to his skills. Henry Connelly (1924: 3), for instance, was
put to work in the gard[e]n, but shortly after there being a shortage of bullock drivers I had to go bull punching, we had bought bullocks from dif[f]erent places which gave a lot of trouble as we had not yet had a paddock we were constantly loosing them. I did my work in the day and for 6 weeks herded the bullocks until midnight, then yarded them.
This procedure of assigning specialized tasks allowed the community to establish the basic settlement by the end of 1893.
96 4.3.2 Life at New Australia New Australia was erected in apparently no time at all. In spite of the departure of eight members in early December (Livermore 1950: 303), the first Christmas Eve at New Australia was a cheerful event. Connelly (1924: 6–7) relates that they had visitors from nearby Ajos (today Coronel Oviedo):
Christmas 1893 we made a big thing of it, and a number of promin[e]nt [P]araguayans were invited, among them the Juez [judge] of Ajos, also his sister and a young woman school teacher of Ajos, both very pl[e]as[a]nt girls and they could sing nicely. But they could not understand the kissing under mis[t]letoes, but then Mr. Lane explained the origin of this custom they both soon forgot themselves and strolled under it.
There was no need to worry about their existence. In contrast to what many a newspaper said, the settlers always had enough to eat. The rather scarce products were milk, sugar, and rice, and they lacked butter, jam, and cheese (Souter 1991: 136). Nevertheless, Connelly (1924: 25) states that even if wheat flour was rare, they produced “passable bread” with maize or manioc. Also, they always had enough vegetables and beef, and the children regularly ate their maize porridge: “[o]ur food was not the best, but we had plenty.” Moreover, they had a brass band that practiced in the evenings (Connelly 1924: 23), and in March 1894, the first cricket match ever played in Paraguay took place, in which New Australians faced the British residents of Villarrica (Souter 1991: 105).31 Thus, life at New Australia seemed nearly as British as many other British colonies throughout the world. These achievements notwithstanding, life in the colony was not easy. The burning sun and the high temperatures were close to unbearable for the Anglo-Saxon immigrants. Reid (1925: 240) stresses that “[t]ropical rains […] play no minor part in causing sickness of the South American tropical laborer, because when clothing becomes wet, it is not changed but dries on the body,” which results in a relatively high mortality. In line with this, Connelly (1924: 3) describes that at work they were “soping wet wi[t]h perspiration and you could hear the slop slop as they walked, their boots being full of sweat” [sic], a result of which was that their feet were attacked by jiggers (Souter 1991: 150). While these bugs were quickly removed with a knife by the neighboring local population, medical care was limited: the Birks took care of emergencies, such as a girl who had put her finger into a sugarcane crusher, or the malaise caused by the heat, the food, or the mosquitoes, which were “as den[s]e as a fog”
31 Sadly, William Lane’s son Charles died of the strike of a cricket ball when he was seven (Souter 1991: 129). 97 (Connelly 1924: 4). For more serious health issues, however, they had to take the trip of several days to get to Villarrica and see Dr. Bottrell (Souter 1991: 136; Connelly 1924: 4). Connelly (1924: 3) describes how difficult it was for some of the members to help with the work, while some seemed to be willingly lazy:
But there were some who would not work, other again who could not. But there was [n]o complaints against thos[e] who were willing to try. … A number of people can scarcely be [h]eld respons[i]ble for the vulgar[i]ty of the few. There were the Birks family and a son in law. A more respectable family it would be hart to find. But their previous training had unfitted them for a r[o]ugh labourious life. On once occasion we were grubbing up trees, and one of that family was with us, he certainly was not much use with an axe, but he was doing his best.
Life on the colony itself must thus have been quite difficult. Connelly (1924: 21), while complaining about the lack of voluntary help, mentions the deplorable state of the muddy roads in New Australia, which were “for wheel traffic almost impassible.” Finally, the loosely grazing cattle often got lost or stolen, and also tools disappeared (Souter 1991: 139). Connelly (1924: 20) describes the quarrels among the settlers and accusations of cattle and horse theft as well as murder. In addition to these challenging conditions of the Paraguayan post-war era, it is important to stress that the 1890s experienced one of the most devastating droughts ever experienced in Paraguay. The British Consul in Paraguay, W. J. Holmes, describes the conditions in which Paraguayans lived as follows:
There has been no improvement in the trade and commerce of this consular district during the year 1897. On the contrary, a succession of bad seasons and other misfortunes seriously interfered with trade and caused an almost general failure of crops. A cold and almost rainless winter was followed by an exceptionally hot and almost rainless summer. Wells and springs were dried up – in many places are dry still – and the crops, when they did not fail entirely, gave but a scanty yield. To add to the distress brought about by unpropitious seasons, large swarms of locusts made their appearance about the middle of September, first at Villa del Pilar and afterward in other parts of the country. … The agricultural classes – who at the best of times lead more or less hand-to-mouth existence – having in consequence of these visitations little or no produce to sell and, indeed, barely enough to live on, were without money to purchase either seed for sowing of other necessaries. Country traders and shopkeepers consequently were unable to dispose of their stocks, and the wholesale merchants in Asunción, in their turn, were not only obliged to put up with reduced sales, but could not obtain payment of the sums due to them by their country customers. (Holmes, cited in Warren 1985: 14)
98 Another difficulty described by Connelly (1924: 4) are the troubles they had with the wild animals: “[t]he monkeys were trubblesom eating sugar cane and maize, so they shot a number of them.” Similarly, the cattle and domestic animals seemed to challenge the colonizers:
Conditions are so different to Australia. Here we have small plains without a tree, inclosed more or less by monties32 the scrub is so dence that a horseman cant get thrugh it, the cattle we bought had never been yarded in their lives, and if you tried to drive them, they would go straight for the scrub. Our men had not lurnt to use the lasso, consequently there was no end of trubble. Here the blowflys are very bad, any sore on an animal will always get maggoty, and most of the young calvs get maggots on the nable and sometimes on the mouth, so that they require constant watching. It is only by the use of the lasso that wild cattle can be looked after. Our stockmen would not use. After a lot of descussions proposials and counter proposials, we decided to sell all the wild ones. [sic]
The quarrels among New Australians, however, seemed to be a greater challenge than nature alone. John Sibbald, for instance, complained that the community was too small to achieve the necessary anonymity that would make life less complicated (Souter 1991: 137). Connelly (1924: 6) provides us with an example of such a quarrel when he recalls that tools and cutlery disappeared in great numbers to either be kept privately or exchanged for other goods with the locals. Also Rev. Hastings (cited in Livermore 1950: 306), who visited New Australia in 1894, told Mr. Findlay that “he was shocked to see the condition of some respectable families whom he had known well in Australia in very comfortable circumstances. […] It is all the fault of Lane; […] he is autocratic, ignorant of administration and utterly incompetent for the post he holds.” In other words, Findlay claimed that one of the principal causes for the troubles among the community members was the leader himself (a claim also supported by Wilding 1984). On board the Royal Tar his ability of leadership had been questioned on several occasions as he held on to his rules and ideals, while he refrained from sanctioning misbehavior. One of the major problems was miscommunication. For example, Lane was obliged to register the Association as a company, the Sociedad Co-operativa Colonizadora Nueva Australia, in order to establish New Australia as the owner of its land and goods. Yet instead of informing the members himself, they learned this from the local press. Souter (1991: 88) adds to this that the community’s limited knowledge of Spanish further stirred up uncertainties with the
32 Montie stems from Spanish monte ‘bush, scrub’ (itself an extension of monte ‘mountain’). 99 authorities and the community. This confusion then brought about a number of inexplicable actions by Lane, and discontent increased (Souter 1991: 88–89). Lane’s leadership was thus one of the most important issues between the settlers. Findlay (cited in Souter: 94) stated that “[t]o him the articles of association and agreements signed are as the Code of the Medes and Persians, and any infringement thereof must be summarily dealt with. He does not admit such things as extenuating circumstances. A man is either ‘straight,’ or he is not ‘straight,’ and in the latter case out he should go.” Findlay’s (cited in Souter 1991: 96) closing comment illustrates Lane’s commitment to his convictions:
I thanked him, and in taking leave said that, though we differed on many subjects, I saw no reason why our private relations should not be friendly. William Lane replied most gratuitously, I think, that as long as we differed so much on such grave subjects as the binding nature of a pledge deliberately taken, little sympathy could exist between us. … I only repeat this little incident to show how likely such a man is to make enemies, and how little he appears to try to avoid doing so.
During his arguments with Mr. Findlay, Lane inquired about the British Legation’s right to interfere. As the issue of British nationality came up, Lane replied that there was “little cause to be enthusiastically loyal” to the British flag and that New Australians would eventually opt for the Paraguayan nationality (Souter 1991: 94). This indicates how determined Lane was to carry out his project at any cost, and it suggests that the colony’s relationship with British authorities must have been difficult. As a result, the community was split into the “Royalists” and the “Rebels”, i.e. those who stood by William Lane and those who did not. The Royalists questioned neither the leader nor his procedure, and some of them, such as Arthur Tozer, defended the rules even violently. The Rebels, by contrast, disregarded the laws and sought contact with the surrounding population and the urban elite. As already experienced in Montevideo, the main problem was that the Rebels evidently infringed the rule of temperance as they joined gatherings in nearby towns and drank wine or caña, the Paraguayan sugarcane liquor. However, this contact also included the bartering of goods, tools, and, apparently, women. Alf Walker wrote to Walter Head, the Association’s secretary in Sydney, for instance, that “some of our members were stealing tools etc. and exchanging for liquor, … [and] one man had promised a native that if he would get him a native woman he could have one of our girls” (cited in Souter 1991: 87). Native women attracted the single men settlers undoubtedly. And Tom Westwood, one of the Rebels’ leaders, wrote in his diary on the 29th of October 1893 that he “[p]aid our old friend Gaspar Vanetez a visit. His wife made cigars and rolled the leaf on her naked thigh” (cited in
100 Souter 1991: 86). Thus, the friction among New Australians certainly challenged community life. As a consequence, eighty-one persons withdrew from New Australia in December 1893 and the idea of dividing the community cropped up (Souter 1991: 90). Mr. Findlay, the Second Secretary at the British Legation in Buenos Aires, visited New Australia to document the problems and mediate between the parties. He asked President González to find a practicable solution for the seceders, and as Paraguay had an interest in keeping the Australian settlers (and receiving more of them, of course), González offered the seceders land at Colonia González (Livermore 1950: 304). Mr. Findlay (cited in Souter 1991: 93) observed that most of the seceders were “very respectable people […] mostly artisans and townspeople and only a small minority agriculturalists.” This indicates that the imbalance between bushmen and educated middle-class settlers at New Australia was increasing. Finally, it is important to mention the importance of religion in William Lane’s take on socialism and the world in general. His writings very often referred to God as his “guide” (Souter 1991: 101), and Gilbert Casey apparently spent several hours trying to convince Lane that “forcing the idea of God upon the people” was a problematic approach (cited in Souter 1991: 106). Also James Murdoch, a classics scholar who arrived from Japan to take charge of education at New Australia, immediately left Paraguay and returned to Tokyo once he heard that Lane “consulted God about the affairs of the community” (Souter 1991: 101). Thus, Lane’s take on utopia included religion, yet this had only become clear to most of the settlers after the project had been initiated. For instance, Connelly (1924: 2) holds that while “[t]he Pilgrim fathers took their God with them we came without a god or a religion to strengthen us, vainly believing that each was God enough unto himself. Trust in brotherly love cried William. But let me tell you that in the masses there is no such t[h]ing.” This is likely to have fostered distrust and animosity toward the leader Lane. On December 31, 1893, the Royal Tar left Adelaide with 199 settlers 33 (132 men, nineteen wives, and the rest children). They traveled to Paraguay in spite of a telegram that had arrived in Australia indicating that eight – instead of 81 – persons had left the colony. The reason why one important figure was missing is unknown, but if the Paraguayan government had changed the number in order to avoid too many withdrawals in Australia, its goal was achieved. Three quarters of the second batchers were bushmen, laborers, farmers, or stockmen, that is, people of little formal education (Souter 1991: 97–98; Livermore 1950: 306). The most prominent passenger was Gilbert Casey from Ireland. Casey was himself very
33 Again here, there are divergent numbers provided by different authors: Livermore (1950: 306) states that the second batch left with 225 settlers. 101 much committed to socialism and social equality, yet he disagreed with Lane on several points and oftentimes seriously challenged him. For example, on March 30, 1894, Casey tried to convince Lane, over eight hours, to accept a board of management instead of his sole leadership, yet Lane was not willing to concede (Souter 1991: 106). Even one of Lane’s most faithful followers, Alf Walker, who had been the third to sign up for New Australia after the Lanes, was disillusioned and wrote to Australia that “it had been a hard pill for me to swallow seeing nearly all my chums – mates in reality – going away, perhaps never to meet again. […] [Lane’s] reasons for severing connection with us […] to me were insufficient” (cited in Souter 1991: 109). To make things worse, the arrival of the second batch of settlers aggravated the discord among New Australians, as the increasing number of settlers and the occupation of their large piece of land asked for the distribution of the settlers over the entire territory. According to Connelly (1924: 7), however, the scattering of the community was also useful to keep friction as low as possible. The expansion to Loma Rugua, for instance, was decided because “[i]t was nearer to the railway, and experience had taught us that too many herded together did not lead to harmony.” In other words, a quicker connection to the railway, the occupation of their extensive land, as well as the avoidance of friction, seemed to be the three most important reasons why the New Australians did not stay in one single settlement. The following map shows the distribution of New Australia and Cosme in the area of Coronel Oviedo (district of former Ajos):
Map 5: Map of the Asuncion–Ciudad del Este–Encarnacion triangle with New Australia in the district of Ajos (today Coronel Ovideo) and Cosme to the south of Caazapá (Whitehead 1997: 198).
102
4.3.3 The division of New Australia As discordance grew, it became clear that New Australia would not continue as a united community. In early 1894, 403 new settlers arrived at New Australia, yet almost a hundred withdrew shortly thereafter and moved on to Corrientes in Argentina, from where they either joined the Anglo-Argentine community or returned to Australia or England (Souter 1991: 107, 114–115). In fact, the Premier of New South Wales promised in 1894 to bring back those willing to return at whatever cost “as persons are still trying to persuade people to go to a country the language of whose inhabitants they do not speak and whose habits and mode of living they cannot put up with” (Sir George Dibbs, cited in Souter 1991: 115). This suggests that the Australian government still tried to prevent its settlers from leaving. However, when the first seceders applied for support, Dibbs was out of office, and his successor had a different approach to helping New Australians. Also the rather conservative British community in Buenos Aires was not willing to support socialist Australians who had gotten lost in Paraguay (Souter 1991: 115–116; Livermore 1950: 312). However, we also know of one eighteen-year-old man, who returned to Australia via Argentina, Chile, Germany, and England on a route of no less than 30,000 miles, and who told the Evening News upon his return that “he did not regret the loss of his £60, as he had had whips of fun for his money” (Souter 1991: 117). As mentioned earlier, one of the principal reasons to leave New Australia was Lane’s totalitarian take on the world and leadership. However, another important issue was the money. Different parties upheld distinct viewpoints as to how the Association’s money had been, and should have been, spent. In fact, a considerable part of Connelly’s (1924) report and an entire chapter of Souter’s (1991) book entitled Where did the money go? are dedicated to financial issues, which suggests that the debates on the economic success or failure of New Australia was of principal interest.34 When the hostility between the two parties came to its peak, 63 settlers decided to follow Lane and start another settlement in a new place called Colonia Cosme at 170kms to the South of New Australia (Souter 1991: 110). A third party of approximately 60 settlers, who decided to join neither the Rebels in New Australia nor the Royalists in Cosme, resettled at Colonia González (Souter 1991: 114), where they stayed until September 1894 and then left for Buenos Aires (Livermore 1950: 308).
34 The main controversial issue was the Royal Tar itself with a value of approximately £1,700, which generated more income by transporting coal and timber. Lane sold it and distributed most of the proceeds among those in whose debt he stood (Souter 1991: 129). 103 4.3.4 Nueva Australia Once the division was completed, the Association was dissolved and Nueva Australia came into being. 217 settlers were living in Nueva Australia35 (Souter 1991: 113). Casey traveled to Australia and England and returned with new funds and 51 new settlers (Souter 1991: 122, 130). Additional arrivals were the Kennedys and the Bates from Britain, the Shepersons from the United States, and the McCreens from Australia (Souter 1991: 215). Due to this increase in settler numbers, New Australia soon required more space, especially because their cattle were free and herded with the lasso. Thus, the colony was expanded over a vaster piece of land by incorporating Loma Rugua, Las Ovejas, La Novia and Los Amigos. This did not only make communication considerably more difficult, it also produced a demographic and economic imbalance. Connelly (1924: 9) explains that
Loma Rugua was the principal gran[a]ry consequently the new settlements got most of their supplies from there, which caused some grumbling. As the Loma people felt that they were carrying more than their share of the work. They were mostly single men as the bulk of their married people had gone to Las Ovejas. They produced in proportion to numbers about twice as much as the rest. Gradually je[lous]y and party wrangling caused dissension, and eventually it became Loma Rugua against the rest.
The Association was dissolved in 1896 and each party is said to have received 45 hectares of land from the government. There were, however, rumors as to how much there was to be divided among the settlers. Connelly (1924: 11) holds that once the Association was disintegrated, the capital was distributed among the settlers in equal shares. He describes that there were 88 heads of family, and thus they built 88 bundles of animals and other valuables.36 Afterwards, every member received a ticket numbered from one to 88 and was then given the corresponding bundle of capital. However, Connelly (1924: 11) also adds that
[t]here were a few who had a nest egg, that is they had not thrown in their all, they were enabled to purchas[e] cattle and have had no difficulty clim[b]ing the ladder som[e]what. Others, a part of their time at their trad[e] or storekeeping, with spare time farming, have succeeded in getting well out of the reach of want, some are decently well of. As for me I worked 2 years in the Argentine and saved some money, I have now nothing to complain of excepting my [en]vironments, which are far from that which produce the best. We are also handicap[p]ed by living so far apart, as I believe if we had a debating club, it would help the young people to
35 Among those who stayed were the O’Donnells, the Jacobsons, the Joneses, Henry Connelly, the Butterworths, Thomases, Gormans, Gilbert Casey, Kyffin Birks, Allen Whitehorn, Ted Murray, J. Walsh and J. Scott, the Syd McCreens and the Kings (Souter 1991: 144). 36 According to Souter (1991: 143), there were 78 members who had the right to claim their share. 104 becom[e] thinking beings and play their part better in the world. The education in Paraguay seems to be of [sma]ll value, perhaps none at all.
Hence, even though the procedure seemed fair, the actual value of the goods, above all the quality of the land, differed. Additional problems emerged with the foundation of the junta. Connelly (1924: 12) recalls that
[a]fter the liquidation, for a [t]ime we lived in pea[c]e. Each man being a law unto himself. But peace was not destined to last. Gilbert Casey, with his unquenchable thirst for improvement, must have a Junta. … On August 6th 1899 the first formal Junta was formed with Casey Pres[i]dent and by the end of the year a storm was brewing. Up to then there was no reason why this should not be a British Colony. Since; Imposs[i]ble.
According to Connelly (1924: 12–17), the colonizers organized themselves as a junta after the dissolution of the Association. Its first president was Gilbert Casey, followed by James Kennedy in 1901. The goal of the junta was “to deal with all matters, not purely colony affairs.” However, there seemed to be considerable disagreement on the use and abuse of such a Junta, and even if the Administrator held that the junta was the only way to “guard against treachery,” Connelly (1924: 17) claimed that “[t]o my dull mind, if there was any tr[e]achery, Kennedy’s proposals were just such as would make successful conspiracy poss[i]ble.” Connelly was worried about being outnumbered by the Paraguayans, who would elect Gilbert Casey their president and then “bring us all under Paraguayan control.” After polemical discussions, the idea of the Junta was buried in 1917 (Connelly 1924: 18), which seems likely to have contributed to the disintegration of Nueva Australia. Nevertheless, James Kennedy went on as the Administrator of Nueva Australia until 1926 before Lionel Stanley took over for ten years. In 1936, Juan Kennedy, James Kennedy’s son, became the junta’s president (Souter 1991: 242). In 1908, 86 adults and 75 children lived in the colony. In spite of a number of deaths, such as a murdered child, the community flourished. By then, the Bishop of Buenos Aires had sent an Anglican clergyman to Nueva Australia to take care of the schooling. He seemed to enjoy his life at Nueva Australia as he wrote that he particularly liked the “delightfully friendly and refreshing, though weird and primitive” dances. However, the Bishop also criticized that the men wore lethal weapons and spurs even when there was no need for them. Nevertheless, even the British Consul, Cecil Gosling, wrote in 1908 that the community was progressing on the basis of cattle and horse raising, the cultivation of maize, sweet potatoes, sugar cane, fruit, yerba mate, and timber (Souter 1991: 215–217). Thus, while the general
105 tone and lifestyle may have toughened somewhat, Nueva Australia as an immigrant community was a success. Living conditions must nonetheless have been relatively harsh at Nueva Australia. The temperatures, the hard agricultural work, and the privations of comfort and their usual nutrition were not easy to bear. Also the Paraguayan wildlife, above all mosquitoes and other parasites, was a challenge. Their problem with jiggers increased, and the stench of their feet and boots, which the indigenous people were exposed to when they cured the colonizers’ feet, gave them a local nickname: gringo py ne ‘gringo stinky foot.’ Also Connelly (1924: 23–24) recalls that there were complaints by the boot makers who refused to repair dirty boots. Apart from work, there was little social activity at Nueva Australia. George Napier Birks complained about the melancholic and “empty” Sundays that lacked a routine of social and religious events: “no hymns, no sermon, no best clothes, no white tablecloth, no afternoon tea, and only the waking horn in place of church bells” (Souter 1991: 133). Thus, even though Nueva Australia had regular junta meetings and a brass band (Connelly 1924: 23–24), their native language was likely to be confined to the limited space of the family while they had to learn Guarani to communicate with their employees. Those who did not fancy a life in Paraguay usually settled in Argentina. In fact, the frequent exchange of letters documents that Anglo-Paraguayans and Anglo-Argentines were in touch. Some moved on to Africa or other British colonies. Connelly himself spent two years in Argentina and returned to Nueva Australia in 1900. In the meantime, the Kennedys had arrived from England. James Kennedy had eight sons, four of whom had been born in England and four on the colony. Kennedy became the colony’s administrator and held that position for more than two decades, and according to Connelly (1924: 19), he was much appreciated by the Paraguayan government and other influential people in Asuncion. There were also other important additions to the colony. The Cadogans arrived in 1899 from Sydney. Rose Cadogan had been a well-known lecturer committed to socialism and the emancipation of women, and soon after their arrival she gave birth to León. They lived at Nueva Australia until 1904 and then moved on to Ytaity and Villarrica (Cadogan 1998). Mrs Cadogan turned into a much sought-after nurse in the district, though she did not appear to have a cure for her homesickness for Australia (Souter 1991: 229–231). Three of their four sons returned to Australia, all of whom died within the following couple of years, yet their eldest son León was to become one of the most prominent Paraguayan anthropologists of the twentieth century. As an English–Spanish–Guarani–some French–some German polyglot, he began to explore, describe, and translate the culture and mythology of
106 the Mbyá Guarani indigenous people (Cadogan 1998). He lived with his Paraguayan wife in Villarrica where his children were born. Today, his youngest son Rogelio is in charge of the Fundación León Cadogan, which is committed to keeping the legacy of this great Australo- Paraguayan pioneer alive. One of the most important arrivals was, however, the Smith couple in 1912. They were to become one of the most influential families in the district together with the Kennedys. Nevertheless, the number of new settlers arriving in Nueva Australia decreased rapidly. This may above all have been due to the bad news that reached Australia. Connelly (1924: 23), for example, reports that he himself broadcasted an open letter in Australia “w[a]rning them that we were sinking to the level of our [e]nvironments.” Juan Kennedy told Souter (1991: 236) in 1965 that the British culture ceased to exist in Nueva Australia in 1923 when a revolution hit the country. After these events, many settlers left the country and the Church of England schoolteacher was withdrawn never to be replaced. By the end of 1923, when Henry Connelly (1924: 16) was writing his report, there were 750 Paraguayans living on their land plus approximately 27 “European” and European-Paraguayan families. He also explains how Gilbert Casey was “naturalized” first (Connelly 1924: 16). Hence, even if nostalgia for Australia or Britain continued to exist, Paraguay became the home of most of the second- and third-generation Anglo-Paraguayans. According to personal letters, some second-generation descendants, such as the Kennedys, worked in Sapucai as maids in British households or in the Chaco region administering British-owned cattle ranches. Three Kennedy sons went to World War I as British soldiers, and a number of community descendants fought for Paraguay against Bolivia in the Chaco War between 1932 and 1935. At least five of them died (Souter 1991: 240); Douglas Kennedy was captured and spent some time in prison. He was in close contact with his family and sent letters to his family. He died in Bolivia in 1935 and his body was never taken to Paraguay. In 1942, second-generation Juan Kennedy and Ricardo L. Smith founded Nueva Londres ‘New London.’37 In these times, most inhabitants of the district lived on ranches scattered over the vast land, and they founded the village in the location where they used to meet by oxen cart on their way to Villarrica (or from there to Asuncion by train) to purchase merchandise. The foundation of Nueva Londres changed the life conditions in Nueva Australia considerably as it re-centralized the activities in one locale. Furthermore, the
37 In accordance with the district’s name of Nueva Australia, they in fact proposed the name New Canberra, yet their request for permission was never answered (Souter 1991: 244). Padre Santiago’s explanation for the missing answer was the lasting Australian resentment toward the New Australia movement, which, in the light of their frequent disagreements, seems plausible. 107 comisión pro escuela managed the establishment of a registered school, and a comisión pro templo was in charge of building a church as the colony did not have any type of temple or chapel. Padre Santiago stated in 2013 that this was due to the fact that the socialist principles had been the only guideline to follow and “religion was out.” When he arrived in 1967, the church was still unfinished and religion was not a common experience in Nueva Londres. In spite of not having a religious edifice to gather and celebrate, Nueva Londres was still considerably more organized than most other rural villages in Paraguay. It consisted of a central square and a number of shops as well as the administration office of the district. Most of these houses are still there today and belong to the descendants of the original owners. Children from all over the district came to Nueva Londres to attend school. Some of them recall that no fences used to divide the properties in those days; the rigid fencing today came along with the selling and new acquisition of land in the area: while some families invested their money in purchasing more lands, others lived from selling parts of their 45 hectares they had started off with. In the mid-twentieth century, the village itself had approximately 300 inhabitants (Souter 1991: 244). The Irish priest Padre Santiago joined the community in 1967. He finished the erection of the church and affiliated it to the Paraguayan Catholic church. In those times, afternoon teas (not the typical Paraguayan mate or terere) and pastry were part of the village’s everyday life, and the typical Christmas pudding was prepared at least once a year. Despite its lack of religious affiliation, Christmas was the most important time of the year, and on every 25th of December the wealthier families invited all the children for a generous lunch and distributed candies and presents among them (a tradition that is kept up until today). The community’s favorite pastimes were cricket and football. English and Guarani were the community’s principal languages as also many Paraguayan wives spoke English with their husbands and in- laws. In addition to the rather British-influenced structure of the village, the Grevillea trees and squash introduced as seeds distinguished Nueva Londres from other rural towns in Paraguay. Until the 1980s, however, the village was difficult to access; Padre Santiago recalled having crossed flooded swamps in water as deep as his hip and the journey to Asuncion would often take up to three weeks. Juan Kennedy, Ricardo L. Smith, and Padre Santiago were the only ones with a motorized vehicle, yet rains would quickly render the mud road impassable. Similarly, the village had no electricity. These conditions changed quickly during Stroessner’s regime. Ricardo L. Smith belonged to the Colorado party, and it is a widely accepted fact that Stroessner was a close friend of the Smith clan and visited the village
108 frequently. Their friendship even led to a change in the name of the village, which was renamed Hugo Stroessner, the name of Stroessner’s father, for a short period of time, yet the community decided to return to its original name after the putsch in 1989. This friendship, as many a political connection in Paraguay, resulted in the construction of the asphalted road to the national highway and the installment of electricity in the 1980s. However, given that the two parties of the Liberales38 and Colorado were represented and their neoliberal ideology clashed with the original socialist view in Nueva Londres, a number of people, above all the Caseys, some of whom were tortured in prison, lived in constant fear of being reported to the police for their socialist viewpoint. This has further disrupted the community.
4.3.5 Cosme Although most of the capital had been left at Nueva Australia, the 62 Royalists who followed Lane owned an amount of £345 from family donations and the Association in Sydney (Souter 1991: 111).39 With that money, they bought land at 20 kilometers to the south of Caazapá, cattle, and tools, and on June 27, 1894, they established Colonia Cosme (Souter 1991: 113). The defining features of the Cosme community were, according to the members themselves, being English-speaking Whites committed to “the principles of Life-Marriage, the Colour Line, Teetotalism, and Communism” (Souter 1991: 170). During the first three weeks, they erected ten thatched houses, a thatched dining-room, the vegetable garden, and organized the cultural and political life of the colony. In order to ensure that participation in community life be based on ideological convictions rather than economic interests, the new constitution was less binding than before and withdrawal claims were dealt with immediately. The teaching in the colony’s school was taken over by John Lane, though four out of seven pupils were his own children. Lane’s daughter Cosma was the first child to be born in Cosme on August 25, 1894. The community had its own newspaper, the Cosme Evening Notes, which were read out aloud in the evenings in the dining-room. In the beginning, the Cosme Evening Notes mainly reported on the initial scarcity of food and other struggles, and the most frequent news stemmed from the hunting department providing details about their experiences in the Paraguayan monte (Souter 1991: 151–153). In addition, the Cosme Evening Notes also documented Cosme’s social life. Both men and women had a band, yet the proportion of 38 male and ten female dancing partners rather obliged the women
38 While the Smith belonged to the Colorado party, the Kennedys belonged to the Liberales. 39 Rumor has it that William Wood sr., among others, arrived in Cosme in 1894 with a belt full of sovereigns from the sale of the Royal Tar (Souter 1991: 128). Connelly (1924: 8) says that “[t]heir land was paid for, so I am told, with money received from Australia.” 109 to partake in the dancing instead of the playing. Apart from music, poetry and literature were also among Cosme’s principal social activities, and they regularly gathered at the “Spanish only table” to improve their Spanish instructed by Arthur Tozer. The results of these lessons were creative, as this example of what the settlers themselves labeled as “pig Spanish” (cited in Souter 1991: 156, my tentative translation) illustrates:
Maria hado un lambo poco Mary had a little lamb Con vestido as blanco as papel With dress as white as paper Y todos partes que Maria va And everywhere that Mary goes El lambo vaed ciertamente tambien. The lamb was sure to go, too.
This adventurous Spanish translation of the poem Mary had a little lamb suggests that the settlers in Cosme had a relatively distant relationship with the Spanish language. They applied a number of common morphological rules, such as the past participle suffix –ado added to English had in hado ‘had,’ or the frequent masculine ending –o added to lamb, instead of Spanish cordero. Also, the use of poco ‘bit, few’ with the meaning of ‘little,’ which is equivalent in English but not in Spanish, in which pequeño or chico is ‘little,’ suggests that the settlers learned Spanish systematically from books and not necessarily in interaction with Spanish speakers. Their Spanish was probably rather poor. Thanks to this efficient and disciplined procedure, by the end of 1896, the British Embassy at Buenos Aires declared Cosme
without a doubt one of the most, if not the most, orderly and best conducted colony in Paraguay. … The Englishman, as a rule, is the worst [colonist]. He does not work so hard as the other foreigners. He cannot adapt himself to his surroundings with the same facility as an Italian or German, and he lacks their patience. … The founders of the Cosme colony form a notable exception to this rule. These men are nearly all of them Australians, and teetotalers without exception. (cited in Souter 1991: 171)
In spite of this unity and the considerable number of births during the first few months, the demographic development of Cosme was not very promising. A number of pioneers disappeared without a word already during the move from Nueva Australia to Cosme and reappeared ten months later in Queensland (Souter 1991: 112). Others left out of disillusionment, “unsuitableness for a communal life,” or the lack of female company on the colony (Souter 1991: 166). In May 1896, Cosme had a population of 95, that is, 30 married and 19 unmarried men, sixteen married and three unmarried women, and twenty-seven children (Souter 1991: 170).
110 After the news of New Australia’s division, new settlers were not so easily found. Several hundred members, who were waiting in Australia to board the Royal Tar on its next voyage, withdrew. Therefore, Lane sent his wife Anne to Australia and England to recruit more – above all female – members, but her success was modest (Souter 1991: 109). Not even the official recognition of Cosme as a colony in 1896 by the Paraguayan government, which ensured government support concerning the construction of a road and the establishment of a post office (which allowed the exchange of letters as it sent them to, and received them from, Asuncion, Argentina, South Africa, and Australia, Souter 1991: 247), made Cosme more attractive for settlers (Souter 1991: 158). One of the most outstanding additions to the Cosme population was the arrival of Mary Cameron (later to become Dame Mary Gilmore). Cameron arrived on January 2, 1896, when she was 30 years old with the goal of taking charge of the school and its twelve pupils. Cameron’s (cited in Souter 1991: 163) ambitious curriculum was remarkable, and apart from English grammar, literature, and history, it also included more practical skills, such as first aid, papermaking, Spanish, and sewing. With regards to Natural Science, it is noteworthy to mention that “stages of development of peoples” was part of Mrs. Cameron’s study plan, especially “that breaking natural law, which always exists but only slowly becomes apparent to man as he evolves, is sin, and that obedience to it is righteousness” (cited in Souter 1991: 164). She used readers in English and Spanish from Queensland and Argentina. By June 1896, only 16 families lived in Cosme and needed new members. William Lane and Arthur Tozer left for England and gave a number of public lectures in London, Birmingham, Portsmouth, and other cities, yet hardly any new settlers were recruited. In spite of the considerable improvement of living conditions as well as the overcoming of privations, Cosme was rather unattractive for newcomers, and many of the new arrivals did not stay for more than a couple of months. In addition, the community life was distressed by a number of quarrels, which were caused above all, as Mary Cameron was convinced, by dissension among the women (Souter 1991: 176–180). Most of the leavers stayed in Paraguay. Maggie Dow, for example, got married to Ted Murray at Nueva Australia and moved back to the former socialist colony. Larry Petrie settled in Villarrica as general watchman at the railway station (Souter 1991: 181), and Sapucai with its station of the Paraguayan Central Railway was another destination that received a large number of disillusioned colonists. Mr. and Mrs. Hall, by contrast, went directly to Buenos Aires due to her severe illness, and after her death Mr. Hall stayed on an estancia in Argentina as a shearer and shepherd, where he worked together with other seceders from Cosme. Also Mary Cameron and William Gilmore
111 followed them after the birth of their son William. While Mary spent a couple of months in Villarrica, William Gilmore went directly to that same Argentine estancia to earn their fares to Australia. Finally, on August 1, 1899 William and Anne Lane also left Cosme with their four children and settled in Auckland, where Lane took charge of the New Zealand Herald (Souter 1991: 185–187). In 1899, the utopian dream was officially declared to have failed (Souter 1991: 183). Nevertheless, the social life of Cosme did not die with the departure of some of its pioneers. Christmas was celebrated with a children’s tea party, the community library had 1,200 books, plays were performed, and a Science Circle went on with regular gatherings to discuss relevant issues, such as, for instance, Evolution. They also paid Nueva Australia a visit from time to time (Souter 1991: 188). The Cosme Evening Notes wrote about the struggles at Nueva Australia: “N.A. wheat a total failure – rust and blizzard; many N.A. folks are bootless; big push from Loma Rugua went to a San José fiesta and got drunk; police complaint lodged … young Alf Holden gone insane, with little hope of recovery.” These comments suggest what can be inferred from their former experiences: the relationship between Nueva Australia and Cosme, i.e. between loyalists and rebels, was rather distant. The people from Cosme somewhat looked down on the former Rebels, and not even the cricket challenges from New Australia were accepted (Souter 1991: 168–169). Nevertheless, individual visits were still possible as Connelly (1924: 8) states: “Their people visited us sometimes and we returned the visits. They worked very hard and pulled together and I don[’]t know to this day why they did not succeed better.” They also kept in touch with the English-speaking population in Villarrica and Sapucay. After William Lane’s departure, his brother John took charge of the colony. With this change in leadership, there were also changes in ideology and intentions. Communism and “communal perfection” was no longer the final goal but rather “communal survival” (Souter 1991: 196–197), and one of the most important changes was that they started to hire Paraguayan workers as the Rebels had done at Nueva Australia from early on. The justification was that this was the only way of preventing the settlers from “sink[ing] to the level of the savage and dig our potatoes with sticks, bruise our corn with stones, cover our bodies with skins and dwell in mud huts” (John Lane, cited in Souter 1991: 196). By 1901 the population had shrunk to 84, which induced John Lane to recruit more settlers from Australia, as “Australians averagely form much better colonizing material than people fresh from Britain” (John Lane, cited in Souter 1991: 197). After 16 months, John Lane returned to Cosme, and only 21 persons followed his call, yet none of them stayed on
112 the colony (Souter 1991: 200–204). With the fading interest in New Australia, also the original ideology seemed to fade. Ernest de Guinney (cited in Souter 1991: 206), for instance, had a noteworthy picture of the colony when he arrived and was quite disappointed no to find what he described as his “vague and quite misguided ideas about [Cosme] being some sort of cowboy establishment and of my possibly darting around on a broncho [sic, bronco ‘untamed horse’] with a large bandana handkerchief around my neck.” However, De Guinney (cited in Souter 1991: 205) also complained about the “sexual immorality” in the community with a number of examples of single men meeting native women. In opposition to this, the Scotsman Billy Titilah was expulsed for having sold shoes that he had produced in his leisure time with materials that belonged to the community property. He left for Villarrica (Souter 1991: 206). In 1903, Cosme’s population dropped from 97 to 70 (Souter 1991: 205), and in November 1904, William Lane’s two younger brothers John and Ernest left Cosme and went to Buenos Aires and from there back to Australia. After that, newcomers were actively discouraged from coming because the remaining settlers had begun a waiting game to distribute the property among as few co-owners as possible. And even if the individual members of the community lived a life of hard work and privations, the community as an entity was relatively wealthy.40 In 1908, the colony properties were distributed to individual ownership among nine men, five wives, and 21 children. Those who felt confident enough to face the matter in Spanish took a Paraguayan lawyer, the others hired a bilingual agent, who happened to be Gilbert Casey from Nueva Australia (Souter 1991: 214). The remaining adults were Leonard Apthorpe and his wife, Alf Davey and his wife, William Dick, William Laurence and his wife, Rod McLeod and his wife, Allan McLeod, Jim Sime, Dave Stevenson, and Willliam and Lillian Wood (Souter 1991: 211–213). Those who were still there mostly stayed in Paraguay, such as William Wood (cited in Souter 1991: 238), who wrote in 1931 that “I don’t think any of us will leave Paraguay now. … For myself I recognize that I am too old to go to Australia and make a fresh start, and the young people are getting married one by one after another and settling down”. In spite of these changes, the village itself was as orderly as a village in the Paraguayan monte could possibly have been. According to Souter, there was a central plaza ‘square’ planted with sugar cane, and the main roads were edged with orange and peach trees. Every house had its own garden (yet, the 180 allotments that constituted the village were never used), and as there was no drainage system, water had to be collected from one of the
40 Cosme had three square leagues (13,900 acres), and each of the remaining parties received a house lot of 15 hectares (37 acres) and a parcel of at least 200 hectares. The cattle, horses, and tools were distributed together with the land (Souter 1991: 213). 113 village’s four wells. The village was surrounded by monte on three sides, from where wild cats often reduced the number of poultry at night (Souter 1991: 184, 196). One of the greatest losses to the community was the fire that destroyed a great part of the community library in May 1904 (Souter 1991: 209). According to second-generation descendants, the children enjoyed their childhood in Cosme. They spent their time free in the forest. When World War I broke out, the young men joined the Army and fought for Britain at Gallipolli, and most of them returned to Paraguay. This generation, however, started to move away from Cosme. Many of them found jobs in Villarrica, Asuncion, Argentina, or beyond (Whitehead 1997). The third generation that was born in Cosme left to get higher education elsewhere and often stayed with relatives in Villarrica or Asuncion. Today, only nine families are left in Cosme. The English last names that remain are Wood and Titilah, yet only Patricio Wood, who lived in Australia several years, still speaks English. A number of buildings point at the community’s past, such as the chapel and the cemetery, and the village has electricity and is proud of its school that teaches courses from first to sixth grade. The road, however, is not asphalted and the rain frequently cuts the connection to Caazapá. The descendants living in Asuncion rarely visit the village today.
4.4 A word on the failure of New Australia Despite the large number of preserved documents, there is no conclusive opinion on the reasons why the utopian project failed. Even though Lane’s ideological view on socialism is not an integral part of this study, a word on socialism and the failure of New Australia may still be due at the end of a chapter that brought new data to our knowledge on the history of New Australia. In the end, it is important to keep in mind that socialist ideas are not only at the root of New Australia itself but also of its division and further development. As explained above, Lane’s idea of socialism was on the one hand related to an economic and political model and on the other to an ideological take on the world in which individuals cooperate on the basis of mateship. In his eyes, socialism was the highest form of human society according to Evolutionary principles of superior species, races, and societies. His decision to leave ‘Old’ Australia was thus rather a step toward a better world than an escape from a bad one (Kellett 1997). Even though, theoretically, the ‘real’ communists left New Australia together with William Lane to go to Cosme, a number of them remained on the original colony. Connelly declares himself to be inclined toward communism: “I write from a communistic spirit, for I
114 have still a leaning that way (1924: 20–21)”. However, he goes on to say that he is “not blind to the fact that it is impracticable. But is that a sufficient excuse why men and women should not live up to the best that is in them.” And he adds that the principal problem was that no voluntary work was done to maintain the colony in a decent state. However, perhaps Lane’s socialist ideas were incompatible with the social and racial division that he envisaged. To establish a socialist community based on equality that excludes its vicinity due to principles of racial and social superiority seems in itself a contradiction. Socialism may have been perceived differently among the settlers, and as socialists, New Australians may have been interested in sharing with others, which is why they started to barter and exchange goods. Gilbert Casey, for example, soon began to get in contact with the local population and was the first to marry a Paraguayan and take on Paraguayan nationality. As others followed, the boundaries between the settlers and the locals became blurred. In Cosme, the separatist ideology was largely upheld, and the community continued to be closely-knit, endocentric, and endogamous until the first members abandoned the community. With regard to the remainders of the socialist spirit among the descendants, it may be of relevance to notice that I came across two families that still subscribe to socialist ideals today. Among those who kept up the socialist spirit were the Cadogans from Australia and the Caseys from Ireland. Both John Cadogan as well as Gilbert Casey were active members of the junta and often stood in for the concerns of the local indigenous population (Connelly 1924: 12). Connelly (1924: 16) reports in 1924 that “Gilbert Casey, the one time anarchist, is now a respectable member of society, altho[u]gh 70 years of age he still possesses much of the same mental vigor as of old. But he is now a supporter of law and order.” This may have been partially due to the fact that Casey was appointed “comesario (head of police) on a colony some distance from here” (Connelly 1924: 16). Until today, the Caseys, poor, marginalized, and persecuted during the Stroessner dictatorship, still proudly keep up the communist spirit of their forefather. Most of the descendants of John Cadogan,41 by contrast, have left and today live in the United States or Australia; his youngest grandson in Asuncion ensures that the legacy of his father León Cadogan is transmitted to the next generations. Nevertheless, these attitudes are largely hidden, and the most visible political parties represented in Nueva Londres now are the two principal neoliberalist parties in Paraguay to which many community members belong. Socialism and political ideologies have thus continued to play an important role within the community.
41 There are approximately 200 direct descendants of León Cadogan scattered throughout the world. 115 Hence, it may be accurate to cite Connelly (1924: 24) again as he hesitates to blame communism for the failure of New Australia. He stresses the fact that even though the community went through hard times and many moments of disagreement, communistic life did have its positive sides: he remembers the much-appreciated mateship among the pioneers when they cleared the land and prepared the garden “side by side,” and that they “were not all bad. There were men and women among us who did try to help other[s] and they were often those who had the least education” (Connelly 1924: 22). He concludes his insightful report by saying that “Our fa[i]lure is no charge agai[ns]t communism. The very fact that we settled where we did proves [t]hat we were not a thin[k]ing body of men. […] Communism can not attract us, we are its unlike, we [a]re not fit for a social order superior to ourselves.” Thus, socialism itself may not be the only culprit of the failure of New Australia. In addition, we should not forget that New Australia did not only rely on socialist ideals but also the adherence to teetotalism and the prohibition of interethnic contacts, let alone sexual relationships with local people. This may have caused further friction. As seen above, polygyny was commonplace in Paraguay since colonial times and especially after the Triple Alliance War, and it is a widely held view among the local population that promiscuity was and continues to be common among the male settlers and their descendants.42 Indeed, certain community members had several wives (one of the Smith sons, for instance, had two parallel families and a total of 18 children),43 a fact that is openly frowned upon. If this practice was known outside the community – which is likely to be the case given the separation from Lane’s loyalists – then this behavior may at least partially explain the lack of support from other British and Australian communities and government representatives: in Latin America, race and nationalism are closely connected, and any behavior that leads to a loss of cultural or racial purity, such as interethnic relationships is disapproved of (cf. Wade 2007: 383–384). Thus, Lane’s rigid ideas concerning not only socialism but also teetotalism and interethnic relationships may have clashed with other, divergent views, which in the end resulted in the division of the community and the exclusion of New Australia from the British colonial empire. Furthermore, and in relation to the issue of divergent ideas on marriage and concubinage, Connelly (1924) proposes another reason to be at the root of the internal discord that the
42 One female informant told me that she was advised by her family not to get married to a descendant of the settlers in order to avoid sexual “distress.” 43 This practice was also observed among the rural clergy, who were said to live in “open concubinage” (Warren 1985: 295). Furthermore, it is generally believed that a significant part of the district’s population today descends from the settlers, i.e. also persons who are not officially acknowledged to have an Anglo-Saxon father. The most frequently adduced argument here is the rather high number of people with light-colored eyes living in the district. 116 literature may have neglected to a certain extent. Connelly (1924) claims that one of the principal reasons why New Australia failed was the behavior of the women. Since the very beginning of the New Australia Association, the role of women had been a special one. Similar to his idea of overcoming class differences, Lane considered putting women on an equal footing with men to be essential for achieving his goals of a higher and more just society: in Lane’s vision, women were “not enemies but mates” (Scates 1990: 46; Kellett 1997: 12). Lane’s view of a better world included free choice of work as well as marriage, and marriage would finally cease to be based on necessity but love (Scates 1990: 53). Thus, women ranked equally with men as members of the Association, which meant that they had a voice and vote just as men did. Yet, women were not required to pay to the Association’s fund as the male members were (Souter 1991: 23), which, of course, aimed to attract more female members. However, it is a fact that only a small number of single women joined New Australia, and as Scates (1990: 54) rightly stressed, “[m]any women followed their husbands to Paraguay without appreciating what communism entailed.” According to Connelly’s (1924: 23) testimony, however, women only had equal vote in New Australia during the time of the Association, and some men held that “they would just be as contented without it.” So they lost their right to vote, and apparently there were no “wishes for it” either. Connelly gives an example of women voting on how long men should work every day, and it was the women who decided on eight-hour shifts instead of ten hours, thus inhibiting the smoking break men appreciated to have during work. However, he does not hesitate to state that “[y]et wit[h]out their company, life would have been just unbearable. Women like the best of men appeals [sic] to us most not by the great and heroic acts o[n] which the historian loves to dwell but by those thousand and one kindly actions which alone makes life livable.” Connelly comments extensively on the difficulties women faced in Paraguay. For example, he describes how the mothers complained about the conditions as “imagin[e] the women and children coming for their meals in the rain and mud. Mrs. Posp said this is a perpetual picnic (Connelly 1924: 2)”. Eric Birk’s mother also struggled considerably with the local wildlife that attacked her children: “This flea-like pest […] attacks the toes and feet where it quickly burrows into the flesh, there to lay eggs. If not meticulously removed each night with a lance, festering sores and ulcers form.” The children had to “line up every night for jigger parade” (Whitehead 1997: 234). On the basis of my own experience with small children in rural Paraguay, where the health of children can be difficult to ensure even today, I consider it to be highly likely that women faced the challenges of everyday life much more
117 intensely than men. In other words, living conditions and the women’s struggles with their children’s health may have contributed to further divide the community. Nonetheless, many of the problems were, in Connelly’s view, also caused by the women’s lack of interest in collaboration: “the women watched each other like cats, each to see that the other got no more than her share, and had it not been that […] the storekeeper had lots of tact, […] there would have been more than one unsisterlike s[cene], as […] he was constantly accused of fav[o]ring some one.” With regards to the women’s position in the community, Connelly (1924: 22–23) holds that
[s]he had got equality, but that did to help her to get out of the grove which her sex compelled her to follow, a kind of obscurity. Look at her impatially compaided to men, she is half a child, is it then any wonder, seeing that the spirits of a number of well meaning men broke down, that the conditions proved to[o] trying for her. She is more individualistic than men but not so pronounced. A woman will work 12 hours a day in her own house or out of it, she is not afraid of work, but like a child, to get the best out of her, she must find pleasure in doing it, for her own family. It is so also with men, but it must be more or less voluntary. Don[’]t try compulsion. I think the best women are the worst communists. … My impression is you may draw up rules and regulations to govern wome[n]. give her freedom and equality. Such rules and regulations are only scraps of pa[p]er, she will make no open protest, but just do as she likes, and if men waites on her and treats her as a doll, she will not hav[e] the slightes[t] objection to just doing the looking one.
This statement is based on a primordialist view of women being determined by their sex, which is similar to the essentialist description of the indigenous population discussed earlier, and suggests that the settlers were biased not only towards the locals but also towards each other. Other British citizens may have judged New Australians on the basis of such an approach as well, which, again, adds to our understanding of why they seemed to be excluded from the local British community in the region. Connelly (1924: 4) also recalls that after a night in the bush trying to get two sick children to the pediatrician in Villarrica, the women complained about being abandoned by Connelly himself, which suggests discussions and quarrels on the basis of the distribution of tasks: “they had been walking about the whole time worried by mosquito[e]s, the fire was as I had left it, the[y] could easily have made a smoke, but I suppose they th[o]ught that was my job.” Thus, in Connelly’s (1924: 4) eyes, women were one of the principal reasons why New Australia failed. “The very nature of women combats socialism methodically, no argument can move her from an attitude of tacit rebellion, she will bend to the popular will, but never break. She obeys [s]eemingly and by that very dumb obedience prove [sic] her eternal
118 hostility to the spirit of equality or the betterment of social conditions or higher thought sufficient to break a man’s spirits who means well to a cause.” In fact, Connelly was not the only one to observe the challenges the women faced in New Australia. Mary Cameron wrote in a letter from Cosme that women addressed each other only as “Mrs. This” and “Mrs. That” instead of using their Christian names as was common among the men (Souter 1991: 190). The Paraguayan correspondent of the Review of the River Plate reported that “[s]ome husbands told me that while perfectly contented with their day’s work they were positively afraid to face the nocturnal music in their connubial tents” (cited in Souter 1991: 86). John Sibbald (cited in Souter 1991: 137) explicitly complained about the “neighbouresses”, and Mr Birks (cited in Souter 1991: 37) labeled one of the women as “one of the nastiest women here, busybody, gossiping, scandal-loving, loud voiced, foul mouthed, ignorant, spiteful, deceitful and ever so much more, and her husband is an ignorant brute.” And 63-year-old Mrs. Birks, who had returned to Australia, persuaded her son of leaving Paraguay and settling in Buenos Aires as she saw “the effect city life had” upon many a young woman (Souter 1991: 218). This preoccupation and nostalgia was put into words most eloquently by Mrs. Rose Cadogan (cited in Souter 1991: 231), who despite her excellent integration into Paraguayan society as a district nurse, wrote the following poem entitled “Australia” for the Brisbane Worker in 1915:
I have wandered from my own land And deeply drunk from Pleasure’s stream; I’ve seen strange sights on foreign strand, Where life passed like a summer dream. Tho’ noble streams and lovely sights Enchained my senses for a while, Not all the thousand fond delights My love from thee could e’ver beguile, Australia. I am longing for my own land; I’m sighing for it’s peaceful shore, ‘Neath its blue gums again to stand, And scent the wattle blooms once more.
One of the strongest statements about the lack of cooperation on behalf of the women was given by Arthur Tozer, who wrote the following lines about his experiences with women:
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Until I came to New Australia I had a good opinion of women in general but there I had my eyes opened. With a few exceptions they are all extremely selfish, scandalmongers, liars & growlers. Not content with that they would influence their husbands in every way possible & always for the bad, always doing their utmost to cause trouble by lying about their neighbours & interfering in matters which have nothing to do with them. Those we take with us are young & have a sort of training from their husbands who have advanced ideas & train up a wife in the way she should go, but we wouldn’t have one of the old hags we leave behind us even if her husband was perfection itself. One of these snarling, lying, backbiting, inquisitive, selfish, ugly old scarecrows can do more harm than a dozen badly minded men. (Tozer, cited in Whitehead 1997: 216)
Tozer’s take on the need to “train up” a woman “the way she should go” suggests that there was a disagreement on how the roles of the individual community members should be defined. Overall, this statement reiterates that the relationship between men and women was a challenge. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that women faced particular challenges in New Australia, and that divergent ideas and uneven commitment were at the root of the divide from early on. Mary Cameron if fact succinctly concludes in one of her numerous letters to her husband in Patagonia that women should be taken into consideration much more when planning a project similar to New Australia: “I have come to the conclusion that for a colony to do any good it is almost of more consequence for the women to be of good moral fibre and get on together than for the men” (cited in Souter 1991: 189). This observation, added to the issues brought about by the settlers’ interests in Paraguayan women, may be one of the principal problems that stirred discord, yet it has hardly been mentioned as such in the literature. Given that women, or rather mothers, are usually the primary transmitter of languages (cf. Schreier 2014), their role in the community should thus not be neglected when studying processes of language transmission and shift.
4.5 New Australia in retrospect After looking closer at its history, it is safe to say that New Australia was a significant experiment and major operation for all the persons involved. It was the only colony Australia ever had and thus caused great uproar in the beginning. Yet despite the meticulous planning of the leader William Lane, the original socialist ideals could not be upheld once in Paraguay, and the project failed in the long run. However, we have seen that the simple fact that New Australia failed does not mean that no efforts were made. In fact, the personal, financial, and cultural price of partaking in this project was considerable for all New Australians. Most of
120 the settlers suffered hardships and privations in order to get through and contribute to the success of the colony, and their heritage is still visible today. Even though New Australia did not manage to achieve its original goal of showing the world that capitalism was outdated, it has still shown that survival is an extremely local experience – be it the survival of people, the survival of culture, or the survival of languages. As Mufwene (2008: 250) puts it,
people react adaptively to changes in their socioeconomic ecologies. Some of these involve giving up their language, and sometimes their cultures, for those of the prevailing group while also maintaining their identities through the ways they adapt the new languages and cultures to their communicative needs.
The next chapter will therefore seek to come to terms with what happened to the English language in the New Australian setting on the local level. For what follows in Chapter 5, it is useful to define the generations of New Australians that I will refer to. On the basis of what was outlined throughout this chapter, it seems accurate to consider all those settlers who faced the challenges of the immigration process and the lack of knowledge of the local languages, i.e. those who immigrated as adults, as belonging to the first generation. Their children, who were to my knowledge never older than twelve when they arrived – most of them were born in Paraguay – are considered second- generation settlers as they grew up in a multilingual environment irrespective of their place of birth and were thus more likely to have acquired the local languages to a certain degree. The following generations are distributed along a scale of thirty years for reasons of simplicity and because the large number of offspring of most of the settlers entailed that one generation often covered a considerable time span with siblings who can be decades apart. Thus, today the youngest community members are mostly fifth- (and some sixth-) generation descendants:
Generation 1 born before 1890 (i.e. outside Paraguay) Generation 2 born between 1890 and 1920 (either in Paraguay or abroad) Generation 3 born between 1920 and 1950 Generation 4 born between 1950 and 1980 Generation 5 born after 1980 Table 4: Five generations of New Autralians
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5 Language Shift in New Australia
In the previous chapter, the social history of the New Australia movement and its descendant communities was outlined. The focus of the present chapter lies on the English language and its role over the past 120 years. I will start by analyzing its ethnolinguistic vitality based on the conceptual framework presented in Chapter 2. The second part of this chapter looks at the importance of the English language among the younger generations of the community in today’s society. Given that English had been a precondition to participate in William Lane’s settlement project, there is no doubt that it was the community’s main language during the first two decades. In fact, the varieties of English spoken by the settlers were often commented on, and Lane himself was said to have a “Yankee twang” after his years in the United States (Livermore 1950: 291; Souter 1991: 18). Connelly was a Queensland bushman (Souter 1991: 138), and his (1924) document shows that even if some of the settlers came from a relatively low educational background with limited written skills, all settlers were native speakers of English. Connelly’s frequent use of overgeneralized third-person –s as in I loves them (Connelly 1924: 22), which is consistent with its use in direct speech quotations in Lane’s novel (see section 4.1), and his reported dialogues and anecdotes add further evidence to English being present in New Australia in different social varieties. Ricardo L. Smith’s and other community members’ written correspondence further attest to this. For example, Smith stayed in touch with the German Julian Franck, who had been born on the colony44 and left it as a fluent speaker of English, Spanish, and German as a result of his childhood spent in the community (and he later became the chief for Latin America at Mercedes Benz in Stuttgart). Thus, it is clear that during the first half of the twentieth century, English was still spoken and transmitted natively in Nueva Australia. The Irish Padre Santiago, who lived in Nueva Londres between 1967 and 2013, stated that until the late twentieth century, there were enough competent speakers of English in the village for him to regularly have a conversation in his mother tongue. However, its use decreased gradually. In July 2011, I interviewed a third-generation 1939- born Kennedy descendant from Nueva Londres, who affirmed that in her childhood she had
44 A number of letters by Julian Franck are part of the James Feehan collection. 122 spoken English and Spanish at home and Guarani with her peers. When I tried to find out how much of her native English was left, our conversation was as follows:
(6) DP: ¿Todo era en inglés? IK: Spoon, knife, y… tenedor no me acuerdo. [spun] [nai] DP: Fork. IK: Sí. Y después veal, chick, egg, eh, hen. [laughs] [bil] [ i] [e ] [hen] DP: Ah, la hen, claro, la gallina. IK: Guinea… [ ini]
The fact that she was only able to remember individual lexical items with a highly Spanish- and also Guarani-influenced pronunciation (i.e. omission of final consonants and replacement of v by b) shows that her competence in her L1 is at best vestigial. Iris Kennedy was not able to have a conversation in English despite her claim that English had been her L1. Iris Kennedy is in fact not the only native speaker of English that has suffered language attrition. Among most of the Kennedy and Smith descendants of her generation, the same type of attrition could be observed. Only one speaker, the 1926-born Ricardo Smith, was still happy to have a conversation with me in English. When I arrived on his ranch for the first time, he welcomed me warmly asking do you want a candy?, took me around, and showed me his property in a mixture of English and Spanish that was easily intelligible for a speaker of both languages. When I visited him again, we first spoke about the surrounding communities:
(7) DP: Are there two [German colonies]? RK: Yes. [nods] Sí. DP: And do they still speak German there? RK: They speak Eng… German. Oh, there’s a lot of Paraguayans. Very few ya. When they came… [looks for words] DP: So, they don’t speak German anymore? RK: No, no. DP: It’s like in Nueva Londres then? RK: Sí, the same. [nods] You came very early. DP: Yeah, we came early. We left at five o’clock. RK: Have you had breakfast?
123 DP: Yeah, we had on our way, we had some chipa.45 RK: You like chipa? They brought chipa. I give you.
He understood English very well and was able to respond in English, yet he used a large number of Spanish items, such as sí ‘yes’ and ya ‘by now.’ In fact, language shift and death usually starts with the replacement of certain items by material from the dominant language (Thomason 2001: 228), as the loss of lexical items in the mother tongue often begins after a few years of exposure to other languages already (cf. Olshtain and Brazilay 1991). When this process occurs on the community level, a language is lost (cf. Haugen 1989). These two third- generation descendants were competent in English during their childhood and have lost their L1 as they grew older thus suffering a normal process of language attrition. On the community level, English has disappeared completely. I only documented four English lexical items that are still in use, and all of them refer to the pastry produced by third- and fourth- generation descendants:
Cake [kei] (< Gua. final consonant omission) Brownie [ b awni] Biscuit [ biski] (< Gua. final consonant omission) Scone [eh kom, kom] (< Sp. prothetic e– before word-initial s– + plosive; the labialization of word-final –n can also be observed in Spanish words, such as bjem instead of bjen)
The pronunciation of these words has changed considerably as they are today realized according to the Paraguayan Spanish phonology, which is highly influenced by Guarani. It is similarly interesting to observe how English last names have been altered over the course of the twentieth century. With the noticeable exception of McCreen, the remaining English last names are now pronounced in Spanish based on their spelling. This process is particularly surprising in view of the fact that English names used to be readily Hispanicized in Paraguay (see section 4.2.1), and also personal names were often translated into Spanish, such as Albert referred to as Don Alberto in Nueva Australia.46 Especially the names held by persons who live in more peripheral villages of the district, such as Caraxi, are pronounced according to the spelling and realized in Spanish and Guarani phonology. This suggests that the original
45 A typical Paraguayan cornmeal roll. 46 The Cosme community similarly translated names into their Spanish counterparts, such as Don Guillermo instead of William or Don Carlos instead of Charles (Souter 1991: 156). 124 pronunciation of these family names were not commonly known by the community, and perhaps not even by their holders.
Kennedy [ keneði] Smith [e mi] Bates [ bate] McCreen [ma k im] Murray [mu rai] Adams [ aða ] Drakeford [ d akefo , raifo] Casey [ka sei] Cadogan [ka ðoa ] Jones [ hone, jone] Stanley [e tanlei] Butterworth [ bute wo ] Shepperson [ epe so ]
The variants raifo ‘Drakeford’ and jone ‘Jones’ are explicitly mentioned when individuals are asked for the origin of their last names. This suggests that the original pronunciation of these names is still known to their holders, yet on the community level the original form is unknown. These names further illustrate that English as a heritage language has ceased to exist in the community’s repertoire. In what follows, I will explain how this shift took place and what is left of the community’s heritage language and culture.
5.1 Language shift in New Australia: the vitality of native English in Paraguay On the basis of the models on language minority communities explained in Chapter 2, Giles et al.’s (1977) conceptual framework seems most useful to determine the vitality of New Australia and its heritage language vis-à-vis Spanish and Guarani. The reason for this is twofold: on the one hand, it was elaborated before the digital era and the rapid growth of international communication via virtual channels began, which corresponds to the conditions in which English coexisted with Guarani and Spanish in the community. On the other, this framework is appropriate because it does not rely on a quantitative but on a qualitative and descriptive approach, which is in line with the overall methodological approach of this 125 project. Thus, I will describe how the position of English and its speakers changed in the course of the twentieth century with regard to its institutionalization, the demographic development of its speech community, and its social status. The section on social status focuses on the role of the language in the community, language attitudes, and identity construction, which in the interviews was mainly approached on the basis of family names, designations for groups of people, and nationalities. This shall help come to terms with the development of the status and functions of languages in New Australia in general.
5.1.1 Language institutionalization in Nueva Australia According to Giles et al. (1977: 315–318), the categories that define a language’s institutional support are education, government services, industry, religion, culture, and mass media. Given the sociolinguistic conditions in the Anglo-Paraguayan setting in which English was the immigrant language, Spanish the country’s official language, and Guarani the language of the neighboring rural people and employees, it is evident that English was used in a limited number of domains only. In rural Paraguay, which includes Nueva Australia and Cosme, mass media and government services operated in Spanish, yet mass media did not reach the communities before electricity was installed in the 1980s, i.e. after the shift had already advanced. Chapter 4 showed that the New Australian community was aware of the need to institutionalize the English language to achieve its goal of preserving the British language and literary tradition (see section 4.1.1). William Lane’s language planning had anticipated this challenge and ensured that one of his settlers assumed the role of the teacher. The Scotsman James Murdoch, a former professor of Greek at the University of Aberdeen and Maryborough Grammar School in Brisbane, had originally been assigned to become New Australia’s schoolteacher (Souter 1991: 52, see section 4.3.2). However, the division of New Australia challenged this situation. In the following, I will discuss each community separately. In Nueva Australia, to begin with, English continued to be the only language used for administrative purposes. Connelly (1924) shows that the meetings of the Association, and after its dissolution also the meetings of the junta, were held in English, which means that until 1917 English was used for official purposes within Nueva Australia. The fact that the British consul and other officials attended these meetings, added to Connelly’s comments on Santos, a Paraguayan official that apparently “spoke English fluently” (Connelly 1924: 13), corroborate this. Spanish was likely to be required for all issues that involved the Paraguayan legal system, yet we have seen that Paraguayan officials, who visited the colony and did not
126 speak English themselves, hired interpreters. The most local administrative and institutional language in Nueva Australia was thus English. With regard to schooling, Connelly (1924) describes that Nueva Australia first had a British school during the first fifteen years. More precisely, it was the Church of England that assisted the colony in school-related matters. As the number of non-British pupils increased over the years, however, Britain’s representatives ceased to support the community’s school, and Nueva Australia in vain requested support and a British teacher from the British embassy in Asuncion. As a consequence, the school of Nueva Australia was integrated into the Paraguayan school system during the 1920s and assigned a “good German schoolmaster” to instruct the pupils (Connelly 1924: 22). 47 Spanish then became the only language of instruction for the pupils who predominantly spoke either English or Guarani. In fact, this union of English- and Guarani-speaking pupils seemed to cause a certain discontent among the settlers as the latter were said to hinder the former’s progress (Connelly 1924: 23). This may indeed have been the case if we apply the current situation48 to the past: two school teachers pointed out to me that it is difficult to teach the children in Spanish since their competence in this language is very limited at the time they start school. This situation is particularly pronounced in the school of Caraxi, but also in Nueva Londres the children only speak very little Spanish. The increasing number of Guarani-speaking children is thus likely to have presented a challenge to the local school, which explains the concerns raised by community members. The close contact between Guarani-speaking and Anglophone children from early on was the result of the settlers’ need for local hands. They could not manage their large properties alone and soon hired Paraguayan employees. The Paraguayan children then often played with the settlers’ offspring and went to school with them, which brought about the intense contact between English and Guarani at the beginning of the twentieth century. As stated by several informants, the Anglophone children in Nueva Australia were often English–Guarani bilinguals until they started school. Once in school, Spanish was added to their repertoires, which entailed that the community was trilingual, and each language was used in its particular context.
47 Connelly and Souter (1991: 236) disagree on this point. The latter holds that the revolution in 1921 induced the Bishop to withdraw the Church of England schoolteacher without substituting him afterwards. 48 According to Sonia de Smith, the distribution of languages in the schools of the district is generally as follows: 1st grade: 35 % Guarani – 65 % Spanish 2nd to 6th grade: 50 % Guarani – 50 % Spanish
127 However, English continued to be taught in Nueva Australia. A booklet from 1917 kept by the Kennedy family illustrates how the children learned mathematics in English from their parents and grandparents at home:
Picture 4: Alexander Kennedy’s 1917 mathematics booklet
Picture 4 shows a page of Alexander Kennedy’s mathematics booklet in which there are questions such as “[i]f 10 men can perform a piece of work in 24 days, how many men will perform another piece of work 7 times as great in one fifth of the time?” Such a task shows that efforts were made to teach the children written English in addition to basic math skills, which was certainly important for the family business. Apart from home schooling, English was also established as the family language. Written correspondence among the Kennedys, above all the letters sent by Malcolm and Iona Kennedy, who lived in Concepcion and Sapucay, respectively, attest to this. Iona (8) wrote in a letter to her mother in 1924 that
(8) Kennedy, Gen 2: [t]he Kents left for England last sunday we went down to the stacion to say goodbie, I think Mrs Butler was mizrable because she was’nt going too. […] Yesterday afternoon there was a football match down hear it
128 was the Caballero people against the Sapucay and the Caballero people won. There are some peachis here and we have them stewed and I eat some when I find ripe ones. There is going to be a tea party at the school tomorrow I think, and I might go too. […] I read your letters quite easy.
(9) McCreen, Gen 3: Did [your grandfather] speak Guarani? – He did but not very clearly. Only English. – So did he also have an accent when he spoke Spanish? – Yes, he had an accent until he died.
Examples (8) and (9) show that the first- and second-generation immigrants were clearly English dominant despite a certain influence from Spanish spelling on Iona’s writing (e.g. stacion instead of station, or a rather phonetic spelling of peachis ‘peaches’). Given this successful establishment of English as the home language, many third-generation descendants recall that their Paraguayan grandmothers and mothers were able to understand and speak English, a fact that was confirmed by Padre Santiago. He recalls that some Paraguayan wives spoke English with their husbands and in-laws.
(10) Kennedy, Gen3: When we were children we spoke English at home. Dad, my uncle Nigel who lived nearby… They tried to find a teacher to teach us English, but they couldn’t find any. There was no qualified person. Those were different times. But at home we spoke English. And my mother learned to speak English more or less. Like all Paraguayans that learn English, her pronunciation was noticeable, for example, that she wasn’t… [looks for words] – A native speaker? – Yes! […] When my grandmother died I was nine years old. Until that age I remember it was obligatory to speak [English] because my grandmother was crazy about her language.
As the quote above shows and the descendants born in the 1930s and 1940s confirm, most Paraguayan wives of the first-generation settlers learned English in communication with their husbands and other settlers. English was hence one of the principal home languages in Nueva Australia, and home schooling was common. Efforts to establish English in the community were thus made on several levels.
129 These efforts notwithstanding, the community lacked written materials in English. There was no body of texts that could have constituted a basis for reading activities or any educational purpose, especially since William Lane had taken most of the community’s library inventory to Cosme. Apart from a small number of privately owned books, the only reading materials in English were bundles of magazines that, according to private letters, Ricardo L. Smith received from England between the 1950s to 1970s. Until 2015, Spanish has almost always been the language of schooling in Nueva Australia.49 Descendants born in the 1930s and 1940s confirm that they still mainly spoke English at home, and that home schooling was common. However, this was only common for the inhabitants of the village of Nueva Londres and its nearest surroundings. Those who lived further away did not have a chance to learn enough English anymore, and even Spanish was only marginally learned. In general, the settlers living on more remote ranches had fewer opportunities to speak English, and Spanish seemed to be completely absent from their repertoire. Example (11) was given by a resident of the more rural village of Caraxi, and it indicates that some second-generation settlers did not have much competence in a language other than Guarani.
(11) Jones, Gen 3: [My grandfather] spoke poor Guarani. Everybody laughed when they spoke Guarani. – And Spanish? – Spanish… more or less. – And your father spoke Spanish? – No, he practically only spoke Guarani [and some English].
Church services, which also constitute an important part of the institutionalization of a language, were provided in English in the beginning. As Nueva Australia lost the support of the embassy and the priest ceased to visit the community in 1923, the search for an Anglican priest, whose intended role would have been to establish English as the language of religion, was similarly unsuccessful. The community first remained without religious affiliation until it joined the Catholic Church after the foundation of Nueva Londres in 1942 (see section 4.3.4). Halley Kennedy (born in 1937) remembered that she had not been “allowed to be baptized” until her grandmother died and that she had often been teased by her Paraguayan friends.
49 Between 1994 and 2000, after Paraguay introduced the option of instructing pupils in their first language, Guarani was the language of primary instruction in Nueva Australia. This was abolished after six years only because the parents preferred their children to go to a Spanish-speaking school in order to ensure they learned Spanish at all. 130 (12) Kennedy, Gen3: And the kids commented on you speaking English? – No. But they criticized us because the people here are Paraguayan and they’re baptized. And we weren’t. When grandmother died we asked our dad for permission to get baptized.
Another descendant remembered that her grandfather did not go to Catholic services:
(13) McCreen, Gen 4: He didn’t come to church. He did have that belief in God and faith, but go to church? No. Only at home.
The Irish Catholic priest Padre Santiago confirmed this lack of religious affiliation and traditions in the community prior to his arrival, and afterwards it seemed too late to reintroduce English as the language of religious rituals. In fact, Padre Santiago quickly became fluent in Guarani instead. Until today, the traditional prayers in church are held in Spanish while the sermon is given in Guarani. To sum up, English continued to be Nueva Australia’s first and the community’s principal language in the beginning as it was used as a home language, in school, for home schooling, and the meetings of the junta. It was in close contact with Guarani at work and among the children, who quickly became bilingual. After the school ceased to impart lessons in English, the only language used in the school of Nueva Australia was Spanish. Thus, even though it was not used as a language of everyday communication, Spanish was indispensible not only in school but also for governmental services and local politics and was thus institutionalized from above. The lack of institutionalization of English in Nueva Australia as well as its competition with two other languages marginalized its use and disfavored its maintenance in the long run. In Cosme, by contrast, the community itself was able to provide institutional support thanks to the middle-class background of most of its members. Given that all adults were native speakers, and most of them well educated, English was transmitted as the language of the community as well as the families. The first teacher in Cosme’s school was Lane’s brother John. He began with seven pupils (Souter 1991: 151) and provided for the children’s education in English until Mary Cameron arrived in January 1896. She worked with the Queensland State school readers and readers in Spanish from Argentina, and among the subjects she taught her first twelve students were Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, English History and Geography, Natural Science, English, Spanish, Singing, and Sewing (Souter
131 1991: 163). As one of Whitehead’s (1997: 393) informants of the Wood clan recalls, he knew more about England than most of his fellow soldiers in World War I. This shows that the school centered on British issues with English as the language of instruction. Spanish was taught as a foreign language and probably rarely used in the immediate context. The fact that Cosme was self-sufficient further strengthened the position of English within the community. The local newspapers The Cosme Evening Notes and The Cosme Monthly, for example, which published local news for the Cosme community as well as for the general public in Australia, reinforced the importance of English in Cosme. Furthermore, the community was in contact with the English residents of Villarrica, such as Dr Bottrell (Souter 1991: 159), and the Bishop from the Falklands, to whose diocese Paraguay belonged, came to baptize the children born on the colony (Souter 1991: 204). The use of Spanish and Guarani was restricted to the communication with neighboring communities and the local authorities. During the first years, the colony did not work with Paraguayan laborers, which implied that there was no need to speak Guarani. As a result, even though the second generation was able to communicate in all three languages, they were still English-dominant (Whitehead 1997). A Wood descendant, who had been born on a British-owned ranch in the northern part of Paraguay and spent his childhood there, recalls that his father spoke all three languages fluently, yet not without an accent:
(14) Wood, Gen: Many cousins and young friends on the ranch, we were all together listening to the wonderful old stories. […] But he had a gringo accent when he used to speak in Spanish.
In short, Cosme’s orientation toward the local context and the English-speaking world isolated the community from its heteroglossic environment and contributed to successful language maintenance and transmission. The excellent institutionalization of English thus significantly raised its ethnolinguistic vitality. Thus, the data from the New Australian context indicate that institutional support is essential for language maintenance in minority communities surrounded by dominant languages. As immigrant communities and Sprachinseln are particularly prone to shift away from their ancestral language, the institutionalization of their language is crucial. For example, the Welsh in Patagonia (Williams 1991) or the Germans in Blumenau, Brazil (Zinkhahn Rhobodes 2012: 130), used their heritage language in school, thereby strengthening it over time. The imposition of Portuguese from above in 1983, however,
132 immediately marginalized German. New Australia showed that the community had successfully established its ancestral language in the beginning, yet only Cosme continued to use English for all purposes and in nearly all domains. This was partially the result of Cosme having a high number of educated members, whose aim was to keep up the homeland’s literary tradition. In Nueva Australia, English was institutionalized at first, yet once the community lost the support from British representatives, it did not have the resources to keep English in use.
5.1.2 The demographic development of Nueva Australia and Cosme Giles et al. (1977) stress that both absolute numbers and the relative and geographical distribution of the speech community’s population are decisive in determining a language’s ethnolinguistic vitality. Yet, precise numbers of Nueva Australia’s or Cosme’s demographic development are not available. A qualitative rather than a quantitative approach nevertheless sheds light on how the two communities changed over time. As pointed out earlier, Lane’s original idea had been to settle at least 1,200 families in Paraguay and to include New Australia in the British Empire. The division of the community and the departure of a first group of disillusioned settlers after a couple of months only was, in fact, the most far-reaching demographic incident in the development of New Australia. It is comparable to Schneider’s (2007) “Event X” in reverse in that it marks the incident that initiated the disintegration of the community and thus made the emergence of a new postcolonial variety of English impossible. Even though less than 80 settlers stayed in Nueva Australia after the divide, it never had a shortage of inhabitants. Most of the original settlers who did not leave with Lane stayed in Nueva Australia and made use of their substantial capital consisting of cattle, land, and community-owned machinery. Given the prosperity of the community, new members continued to arrive, such as the Smith and the Kennedy families from England and the Cadogans from Australia. In 1908, Nueva Australia had 161 Anglophone members (Souter 1991: 215), and in 1923, there were approximately 750 Paraguayans and approximately 27 “European” and European-Paraguayan families living in Nueva Australia (Connelly 1924: 16). Given their high social standing on large properties and with direct connections to the Paraguayan upper class in Villarrica and the nearby city of Coronel Oviedo, the life of many the settlers in Nueva Australia was probably relatively comfortable (cf. Souter 1991). In addition, many families in New Australia had large numbers of offspring, and the third generation was particularly numerous. James Kennedy and Sarah Swindle had seven sons and one daughter, and Gilbert Casey had six sons and one daughter. Also second-generation
133 Ricardo L. Smith had four sons and over forty-two grandchildren (one of his sons had two wives simultaneously). In consequence, the 45 hectares that the original settlers had received in the beginning had to be distributed among a large number of descendants, which was often not enough as the following statement illustrates:
(15) Bates, Gen 3: But there are too many [Bates]. [They procreated] too much. […] 200 kilometers to the North of Paraguay, there are Bates and we are related. […] 300 kilometers to Ciudad del Este, there are Bates and we are related. […] Because we are now… Perhaps my grandfather had a lot of land. But he had five families, five siblings. And they shared it all. And among those five nobody bought any more. Like my father, for example, he sold instead of buying. And then we were tight. My father died and the remaining inheritance was small. We are seventeen siblings.
This rapid growth pushed the families out of the colony and made them settle over an even more extensive territory. Many descendants left the colony to find their own piece of land or a job elsewhere. Malcolm Kennedy, for example, accepted a job on a British-owned cattle ranch in the Chaco region, yet according to his letters, he did not seem to be particularly happy on his job. Iona Kennedy lived in Sapucay and sent letters home from there. The loosened ties among community members hindered the daily use and natural transmission of their heritage language. This loose structure of the community is seen by many as the driving factor in the shift from English to Guarani (for example, by Padre Santiago and also Livermore, 1950: 309). Likewise, Connelly (1924: 14) argues that the spread of the ranches over a vast piece of land from early on was the main problem. He noticed that
[t]he conditions were made worse for us as we had not settled near each other, but had spre[a]d all over the land as it would be more suitable for cattle. The incoming natives were allowed to settle almost where they liked, picking the most suitable sites. This brought a close contact and as is almost the case the higher race sinks to the lower.
Thus, the community continued to disperse and to intermingle with the local population, and the network between them became less dense (cf. Milroy 1987). This process continued unchanged until Nueva Londres was founded in 1942 and approximately 300 inhabitants
134 settled in the village (Souter 1991: 244). This event relocated many inhabitants in a centralized location and gave them the opportunity to start a business in the village. Yet, the dispersion had already progressed. However, there is another reason that must be taken into account here. It is important that most of the first settlers were bachelors; very few came as couples, with or without children. This disproportion, added to the fact that the Paraguayan post-war population consisted of an overwhelming proportion of women, resulted in a large number of mixed marriages. Apart from the sheer number, it seems to be a determinant that also a high proportion of the second- and third-generation descendants were men. The large part of male settlers and descendants then produced a high number of bi- and trilingual families since only few English-speaking women lived in Nueva Australia. In consequence, even though many wives did learn English to a certain extent, most families in Nueva Australia were bilingual. The fathers, who often were the only English-speaking person in the family, are said to have spent their days at work, while their primary language transmitters were their Guarani- or Spanish-speaking mothers and their siblings (cf. Schreier 2014). The children in Nueva Australia were thus exposed to three languages at once. This certainly hindered the transmission of English additionally. Accordingly, Martyn (cited in Souter 1991: 237, original italics) responded in 1924 to the offer of repatriation that he was
afraid it’s too late. Speaking of New Australia nearly all the second generation have gone Native i.e. married native Paraguayan women, or ought to be, and quite a few of the third generation cannot speak the language of their fathers. As for us oldtimers we are set in the ways of the country – 30 years is a long time.
Also Connelly (1924: 24) foresaw that “the time will come soon when we must go, and with us [t]he last vestige of what this colony ought to have been. The last inward and outward sign of being an English speaking community; for we cannot look forward to new arrivals for fresh vigor.” There were no new speakers that arrived to strengthen the use of English, as is the case among Latinos in the United States, for example (see Chapter 2). In other words, the third generation was too numerous and the setting too heteroglossic to offer enough opportunities to speak English regularly. Given these demographic changes and the fragmentation of the community on a large territory, Nueva Australia could not be considered a closely-knit community of practice anymore, in which the use and acquisition of English were part of the community’s experience and practices (cf. Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992; Wenger 1998; Milroy 1987). The lack of socialization in a common language impeded the formation of a “communicative memory,” which would have strengthened the collective self-
135 image of the community (cf. Assmann 1995). Rather, no such sense of unity appears to have existed. In short, the first and second generations used English on a daily basis, yet the second generation was bi- and trilingual. The third generation had too little exposure to English and mainly grew up with Spanish and Guarani while English was only used in their early childhood. The process of shift thus occurred according to the general ‘rule of thumb’ (see section 2.2.1) over three generations. Table 5 illustrates the gradual shift from English to Guarani over the first three generations:
Language use in Nueva Australia Generation Home language Community language School language One (> 1893) English English English Two (1893–1920) English (and either English and Guarani English and Spanish Spanish or Guarani) Three (1921–1950) Guarani (English) Guarani Spanish Four (1951–1980) Guarani Guarani Spanish Five (1980–today) Guarani Guarani Spanish and Guarani Table 5: Overview of language use and shift in Nueva Australia
In Cosme, the situation was different. Even though the gender proportions were much more balanced here, the community quickly lost members. Many settlers left Cosme disillusioned by the lack of economic prosperity and the difficult living conditions. In 1898, Cosme’s total population of 96 consisted of 36 men, 23 women, and 37 children (Souter 1991: 182). The only increase was provided by a number of babies – especially girls – being born at Cosme. Lane’s efforts to recruit new members were unfruitful, and he himself withdrew in 1899 and settled in New Zealand. By 1903, Cosme had ninety-seven inhabitants (Souter 1991: 205), and in 1909, the socialist settlement project officially acknowledged its failure. The final wave of out-migration was initiated by the departure of young second- and third-generation descendants. Their native competence in an international language was an advantage on the job market and gave them the opportunity to find well-paid employment and progress economically. Similar to the Kennedy descendants, they found jobs in the British-run Railroad Company and other English-owned firms and families. A third-generation descendant, for example, spent her life mostly in Asuncion and the United States and worked for international companies, for example as a flight attendant in international airlines. She
136 remembered that when she was working as an interpreter at the American embassy she struggled at times because her English had shortcomings in certain domains (a so-called “truncated repertoire,” according to Blommaert, 2010: 103), which is not surprising given the restricted context in which she had acquired her first language. However, her native competence in English determined her life since it gave her access to well-paid jobs and thus to a lifestyle that the village life did not offer. In other words, the second- and third generation descendants left the community due to the opportunities that their heritage language offered. In 1966, the historian Gavin Souter documented approximately three hundred inhabitants in Cosme (1991: 296), and upon his departure, he facilitated the emigration of a number of community members to Australia upon their request. When I visited Cosme in 2011 and 2013, only nine families lived in the village and it seemed deserted. Apart from the Woods and the Titilahs, who do not speak English but Guarani, most of Cosme’s inhabitants no longer descend from Lane’s settlers. Along with the speakers, also the English language disappeared. English thus proved useful as the next generation’s professional capital and induced them to leave with the aim of moving upwards socially, i.e. it became their “mobile resource” (Blommaert 2010: 21) or “commodity” (Heller 2010). This underlines the extraordinariness of the New Australian case because English was the minority language, yet it triggered out- migration due to its instrumental value on the job market. Cosme is thus certainly akin to other English-speaking communities in Latin America, such as the Confederado community in Brazil, which was similarly abandoned by its inhabitants as they searched for “opportunities better suited to their capacity” (Jefferson 1937: 230) in the cities and beyond the national borders. Also young Anglo-Argentines got hired by British companies, and Cortés Conde (2007: 76) explains that this often happened thanks to their competence in English rather than their educational background. The abandonment of Cosme by its inhabitants due to their heritage language is thus not unique in the South American context. It certainly is unique, however, in that English as the minority language did not disappear in a regular case of shift that follows after the descendants integrate into the host society, but due to its instrumental value on the international job market. Thus, as the second and third generations physically abandoned Cosme, also the English language disappeared, and English can be said to have determined the fate of its speech community in that it determined the demographic development of its community. The shift was abrupt and came along with the wave of out-migration when the speakers abandoned the community. Table 6 gives an overview of the shift and illustrates that a break occurred between generations two and three:
137
Language use in Cosme Generation Home language Community language School language One (> 1893) English English English Two (1893–1920) English English (Guarani) English (Spanish) Three (1921–1950) Guarani Guarani Spanish Four (1951–1980) Guarani Guarani Spanish Five (1980–today) Guarani Guarani Spanish (Guarani) Table 6: Overview of language use and shift in Cosme
Given that today English is only existent in two out of nine remaining families and will have disappeared once the two last vestigial speakers pass away, the next section mainly focuses on Nueva Australia where the community continued intact and where a gradual shift occurred.
5.1.3 The shifting status of English and its speakers in Nueva Australia A speech community and its language have high status when the language is used in domains associated with power and social prestige, such as politics or business, or when the speakers belong to the economically dominant group (Giles et al. 1997: 310–312). In other words, in a society in which more than one variety coexist, such as in diglossic communities, the high variety H has higher social status. With regard to New Australia, there is little doubt that English was of high status since it was the language of the socially powerful group: the settlers were the owners of the land – regardless of the disputed presence of indigenous inhabitants at the time of their arrival – and they had the technical and financial means to work it and hire local workers. As employers and owners they were certainly powerful and their language was thus likely to be the H variety. In addition, the early meetings of the Association and the junta were held in English, and the use of English as a home and community language seems to have been frequent enough as for the local people to acquire basic communicative skills. Furthermore, the government was concerned with ensuring the community’s comfort (which was explicitly frowned upon by the local newspapers; see section 4.3.1). English was thus likely to be the language that was associated with power and high status in Nueva Australia in the early days. With regard to Spanish, sociolinguistic research has repeatedly shown that it has always been the language of the upper classes in Paraguay. In Nueva Australia, administrative issues with the government were carried out in this language, and it later became the language of the
138 meetings of the junta (Connelly 1924: 18). This suggests that high status was also attributed to Spanish. Guarani, by contrast continues to be the language of the poor (cf. Fasoli-Wörmann 2002; Russinovich Solé 1996; Rubin 1968; see section 2.1). These studies, added to the superior self-image adopted by Europeans outlined above, suggest that Guarani should be seen as the language of low social status in Nueva Australia. Yet, given the vitality of Guarani in the face of Spanish until today and the fact that the community shifted toward this language, it seems justified to ask whether the hierarchical distribution of languages in Nueva Australia challenges the claim that Guarani is the low-status language. To answer this question, a closer look at language attitudes and status and the construction of identity in today’s Nueva Australia is due. Generally speaking, “an attitude is an evaluative orientation to a social object of some sort” (Garrett 2010: 20). Attitudes are at once cognitive, i.e. they comprise beliefs, they are affective, since they involve emotions, and they are behavioral because they determine the way an individual acts. Attitudes are important factors in processes of language contact, maintenance, and shift, because they influence a person’s behavior regarding language choice, for instance. However, the three components are not always entirely consistent since individuals may act and think in ways that are incongruent (Garrett 2010: 23–24). Buckledee (2011: 12–13) argues that attitudes may be culturally determined and thus rather a collective experience than an individual one. Thus, attitudes towards languages and their speakers are rather learned than inherited, and they may form part of a community’s general system of values and categorization (Garrett 2010: 22). To explore the status of English surrounded by Guarani we need to look into the social status of the groups involved here, i.e. the foreign Australian settlers and the local indigenous community. The categorization of these two groups seems relatively straight-forward since each group can be assigned its own language and ethnic background: the foreign English- speaking settlers and the local Guarani-speaking indigenous population. In fact, it is a generally accepted assumption that language plays a fundamental role in processes of ethnic grouping since language is usually perceived as a “naturally co-occurring part of the essential blood, bones, or tears” of a person (Fishman 1989: 11) because “language would itself provide a marker of identity less easy to copy than shell jewellery – though still copyable” (Joseph 2004: 37). He (Joseph 2004: 13) argues that language and identity are “ultimately inseparable”, and that identity, particularly linguistic identity, is connected to both functions of language, representation and communication (Joseph 2004: 16). An evident case of such self-assignation on the basis of linguistic criteria was observed, for example, in the Blumenau
139 community in Brazil, where ethnic identity and language are closely connected since only speakers of German still consider themselves to be German (cf. Zinkhahn Rhobodes 2012). Dorien (1999: 31) adds to this that “language is the only [behavior] that actually carries extensive cultural content” and goes on to say that languages are often qualified by outsiders as “primitive,” which was certainly the view of the Anglophone settlers. Language thus seems to be a primordial feature that helps define the groups in this particular setting. However, it is important to consider that ethnic groups are no clear-cut categories to which members of one group are assigned by members of other groups. According to Brubaker (2004: 77), the relevant questions to ask are “about seeing the social world and interpreting social experience, not simply about classifying social actors, in ethnic terms.” He therefore proposes to work with the cognitive concept schema, which are “mental structures in which knowledge is represented” (Brubaker 2004: 75), and stereotypes, which are “cognitive structures that contain knowledge, beliefs, and expectations about social groups”50 (Brubaker 2004: 72). Ethnicity is thus not a simple fact or an object in the world but rather a view on the world and its inhabitants that is constructed by individuals. This approach is similar to Jenkins’ (1997), who argues that an understanding of ethnicity requires the analysis of social interaction. Research on ethnicity should therefore focus on events, actions, or utterances rather than the people themselves that are being classified (Brubaker 2004: 79). Ethnic categorization is thus socially constructed (i.e. representing the constructivist approach), yet the actors themselves often see it as primordially constructed. Fishman (1977) as one of the pioneers in the field of language and ethnicity uses the terms patrimony and paternity to refer to social and primordial constructions of ethnicity, respectively, and explains that “language is so often taken as a biological inheritance that its association with ethnic paternity is both frequent and powerful. It is ‘acquired with the mother’s milk’” (Fishman 1977: 19). He further explains that “[c]conceptual systems and cosmologies that emphasize the paternity to the exclusion of patrimony (or vice versa) break out of the fold of ethnicity per se and become either racial/caste systems, on the one hand, or achieved status systems, on the other” (Fishman 1977: 21). Even though most scholars acknowledge that it is not a person’s primary, primordial marker of identity, speakers themselves more often than not take language as an essential identity marker (Joseph 2004: 90). Furthermore, with regard to ethnic identities, Latin America seems to have a particularly “intense cultural sensitivity to slight degrees of racial difference (Joseph 2004: 196; see also Wade 2007 for the connection between race and national identities, Stephens 1999 for the amount of ethnic designations in
50 Stereotypes are no longer considered to be a cognitive deficiency in terms of false or prejudiced beliefs (cf. Brubaker 2004: 72). 140 Latin America, or Niño Murcia 2003, who claims that language is highly racialized in Peru; see section 2.3). García (1999: 230) in fact mentions language as a fundamental part of the Latin American identity since its varieties of Spanish distinguishes it from both Spain, the colonial power, and from economically, linguistically, and culturally powerful Anglophone North America. She further explains that mestizaje and transculturation, i.e. the fusion of ethnic groups, their cultures and languages, are the basis of Latin American identity. In what follows, I will thus consider both language and ethnic origin, because the two are closely connected, to see how ethnic differences were negotiated in Nueva Australia. The aim is to understand what the social status of the English language and its speakers was in this particular context, and how it evolved over time to offer a deeper understanding of the dynamics of language attitudes in Nueva Australia. Chapter 4 showed that the community’s initial goal had been to constitute an independent and superior society. The use of English (or rather the avoidance of Guarani) was hence expected to reinforce the distance between the immigrant community and its social and linguistic environment and thus contribute to the isolation of New Australia. The cultural and linguistic barrier may indeed have been daunting in the early days and was expected to help prevent the settlers from intermingling with the local population thus ensuring ‘racial purity’ in addition to economic independence (Souter 1991: 156). As was suggested in Chapter 4, the settlers saw the local population as inferior in line with Evolutionary Theory.51 Among New Australians, the “savage” was ignoble, or even “degraded,” rather than “noble” as suggested in nineteenth-century academic discourse (Scates 1997: 37). The perspective of Anglo-Saxons on the average Paraguayan may be represented most accurately by the British Consul in 1896:
[T]he Paraguayan peasant is not industrious and cannot be relied upon for regular and continuous work. Owing to the climate and to the natural fertility of the soil he need [sic] labour but little to supply his very simple wants. A little maize, mandioca, tobacco, and a few oranges are sufficient for him, and if he has a surplus large enough to buy clothing and some few other necessities he is quite content. Hitherto he has had no direct taxes to pay, and, therefore, has been under no compulsion to work. He is seldom thirfty [sic], and he will, it is said often gamble
51 In accordance with this approach, some of the settlers were in a dilemma regarding the consumption of monkey meat. Souter (1991: 111) mentions that the monkey stew, which for most tasted like chicken stew, remained untouched by women (persons who have eaten monkey meat affirm that it is somewhat reminiscent of a child). This may explain why the Cosme Evening Notes made a clear semantic distinction between “shooting a bird” and “murdering a monkey”. Also, the consumption of monkey meat was frequently subject to analysis, such as “Harry Taylor brought home two monkeys today. Their relatives devoured the corpses tonight,” or “‘[h]ow like my poor dear grandmother,’ sobbed Peter Pindar as the hunting department emptied its game bag last Friday on the galley floor.’” On another occasion, it reported that “monkey, whether it be the low class lemur or the most intelligent of the apes, is indeed a dish fit for a Cannib– I mean a king. Never shall a Cosme colonist be able to say that he owes nothing to his ancestors but the bare fact of his being. […] The hand, by the way, shares with the liver the honour of being tidbits of the animal” (Souter 1991: 152). 141 away in an hour what it has taken him a week to earn. His wife and daughter, on the other hand, are energetic and industrious, trudging daily many miles to market to sell the produce they carry on their heads or on the back of a single donkey. (quoted in Warren 1985: 196–197)
This description focuses on basic physical needs of Paraguayan people and their dependence on nature and presents them as animal-like. This leaves little room for doubts that the Paraguayan indigenous and mestizo population was considered inferior in Evolutionist terms. Souter (1991: 157) affirms that “the assumption that Anglo-Saxons were inherently superior to Hispano-Indians was as much a part of the colony’s creed as teetotalism, a principle which had also been made explicit in the New Australia articles of association, but was now an unwritten law.” In line with this Evolutionist approach to racial purity, Lane was deeply convinced of the eugenicist ideology and “totally opposed to sexual relations of any sort between different races” (Scates 1997: 42). The fact that he had chosen his settlers carefully and combined both intellectual white-collar individuals with his much-admired bushmen, whose average height had proudly been published (see section 4.1.3), corroborates that his idea of utopia did not only include a superior way of economic activity and mateship, but also the genetic improvement of what he considered to be the ideal race. For Henry Connelly, the intermingling with the local community, which is “at the bottom of the ladder,” was one of the principal reasons for New Australia’s and any other European settlement’s failure:
I believe there is a reason for all things. But in this case there are two. First and principle the tran[q]uil climate, (this country ought to have been called placido) secondly being situated in the centre of a cont[i]n[e]nt, the native has not had to fight against competition. There is nothing to put life into the people. […] In the right or wrong of actions, which often depends on circumstances. For instance, In Australia there are German colon[ie]s. It is not considered lowering for them if they adopt Australian habits, whereas if they has settled in, let us say Cylon, or among any other backward races, it would have been lowering. Because they would deter[ior]ate. And we having d[i]sregarded this rule, have lowered and deter[ior]ated. We had some grit, so some determination, some desire for liberty both in thought and action, But now we accept our [e]nvironments without resistance. We have not among us strong enough to take the lead and those new arrivals who remain they are bumped up against [e]nvironments not calculated to produce the best. For ages, the people, mostly half breeds have been contented to live on maize and mandioca, their close [clothes] of calico, boots unknow[n] until lately. […] Then there is something in this hot climate that dose not stimulate mental vigor. There are thousands of descendants of people from most parts of the globe in Paraguay, they all seem to come down to the Paraguayan mental level which is at the bottom of the ladder. Those attempting to account for our fa[i]lure, must not overlook the influence of our [e]nvir[on]ments. About 140 years ago, a number of Irish formed a colony in the Argentine, and their descendants are Irish still. Their climate and [e]nvironments did not so conspire against them, but with us one half of
142 the first generation are almost true Paraguayans. And I cannot help blaming this close intercourse with a lower race, which was forced upon us by an Junta52 composed of men foreign to our interest, for our moral and mental decay. […] I know it better now that living in such close contact with the natives could only mean our extinction as a British com[m]unity. […] Having the natives living alongside of them means cheap labor. (Connelly 1924: 14–15)
In other words, the rural Guarani-speaking population – commonly referred to as natives – was considered to be lazy and a hindrance to progress. This view was in fact not restricted to Paraguay because most European settlers considered the indigenous and local population of South America to be inefficient and lazy. As suggested by Reid (1925: 240) in the early twentieth century, the “tropical inertia,” i.e. the “prevailing lethargy – there is the same disinclination to manual toil – to any physical exertion,” was seen as a nature-given challenge to the success of European settlers in Latin America. Jefferson (1937: 230) reports in the same vain that the Brazilian population, to which the Confederados were assimilating, was “lazy, shiftless, and content to get along on little” and that “[t]he end comes when marriage occurs with Brazilians.” Connelly (1924: 17) even drew an analogy with India by saying that “I have said that we have lost prestige, it is always so where the whites have treated a col[ou]red race as equals. If the British in India treated the natives as equals, they too would have to go.” It is thus safe to say that most of the Anglo-Saxon settlers saw themselves as superior, and many of them strongly objected to interethnic relationships. The reluctance to intermingle with the local population was also represented in attitudes toward language mixing. Similar to most contact settings, language mixing soon became commonplace among trilingual children in Nueva Australia. Yet, this habit implied the mixing of three languages of different social statuses, and the parents discouraged their children from mixing English with other languages. In other words, the general tenor seemed to be that the English language should rather cease to be used than be mixed with inferior languages. This suggests that ideas of linguistic purity may have operated as a hindrance to language maintenance as they accelerated to a certain extent the shift away from English. The following statements show that the older generation in Nueva Australia disapproved of language mixing:
52 For the sake of completeness, I add the motives of the junta (consisting of the British consul and a number of colonizers) here: Connelly (1924: 13) reports that the junta granted the application for an allotment on which Paraguayans lived: “That they [the Junta] did it in defen[s]e of the Paraguayan is only a cam[o]uflage used to blur their real motives. The real motive was 1st opp[o]sition to the colony, 2nd to be look upon by the Paraguayans as their champion.” This suggests that the orientation of in-group members were shifting from the Anglo-Paraguayan community towards the local population. 143 (16) Kennedy, Gen 3: No English at school. Only… – So you lost your English when you went to school? – Yes. After that we didn’t [speak it anymore]. I spent a lot of time with don Ricardo, who spoke very well. But apart from that only at home. Outside we mixed it all, English, Spanish, Guarani. Everything mixed up. […] [Grandfather] may have mixed a little bit of Spanish and English. But just the necessary things. He didn’t want this, he didn’t like it.
(17) Kennedy, Gen 3: Father didn‘t like it when we went to school ... Because we spoke Guarani there and English and Spanish. ... He said ‘I don‘t like it like that [when you mix the languages].’ […] He didn’t mix the languages. Perhaps he mixed English a little bit with Spanish, but he didn’t like jopara.
This impression is supported by the following quote by a descendant from Cosme, where language mixing seemed to be similarly common but frowned upon:
(18) Wood, Gen 3 The kids learn, for instance,… they see a broom and… say ‘pasame el broom.’ That is, they mixed. […] We adopted this bad habit.
These examples illustrate the perceived hierarchy of languages in Nueva Australia: the use of English and Spanish in the same utterance seemed to be more acceptable than the combination of English and Guarani. Accordingly, many British-descendant families in which English was not, or could not be, spoken anymore, Spanish was the home language rather than Guarani, as in some of the Kennedy and Smith second- and third-generation homes. This is in line with Russinovich Solé’s (1996) observation that Guarani is still seen as less grammatical and inferior to Spanish. Indeed, the statements (19)–(21) by fourth-generation community members from Nueva Australia indicate that the English language and British ancestry are still associated with superiority in intelligence, and that language and intelligence are closely connected. It seems evident that among the settlers English and Spanish was of higher status than Guarani.
(19) Smith, Gen 4: [The main difference between descendants of British immigrants and other people is] that we are more intelligent.
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(20) Smith, Gen 4: Everybody spoke [English]. But the children didn’t. All the children now are donkeys.
(21) Jones, Gen 3: The descendants always stick out. In good and in bad things. […] They are hard workers, they work harder than others.
The assignation of English to the socially powerful domains and a higher level of intelligence by the settlers alone, however, does not define its status in this particular context. Note, for example, that statement (19) was made by a person who included himself in this group of donkeys, which suggests a certain indifference of the person towards his being a donkey as well. This indicates that the status of Guarani and English are in fact inverted. For a better understanding of the dynamics of status, it is important to see whether the English language was associated with higher social, economic, or racial status than Spanish or Guarani among all the groups involved. Ryan (1979) observes that even though the use of the high-status varieties may bring about certain advantages to its speakers, it is striking that many low-prestige varieties do persist. He claims that low-prestige varieties have persisted in many contact situations due to the loyalty, or in-group solidarity, among speakers of such varieties: solidarity and in-group belonging outweighs the social and financial advantages of high-prestige varieties (Ryan 1979: 152):
[I]f the people in a minority group feel as though their freedom to continue using their style of speech is threatened, they might exhibit reactance by using their distinctive speech. Furthermore, in reaction to the perceived threat, they would be likely to intensify their performance of the threatened behaviour by using the style more frequently and/or by increasing its distinctiveness from the ‘preferred’ style. […] Thus, […] language differences can serve two functions with respect to maintenance of group identity: the strengthening of ingroup unity as a symbolization of group differences; and an increase in outgroup distance as a type of restriction on intergroup communication. (Ryan 1979: 149)
In other words, speakers of low-prestige varieties (in this case Guarani) may wish to stress their similarities among each other and hence solidarity with other speakers of the same variety. In consequence, although a certain language may have high social status, speakers of the low-status variety do still not adopt, or accommodate to, H, which strengthens the solidarity among speakers of L and excludes speakers of H. This shows that language attitudes are in fact often covert, i.e. not evident from outside or not explicitly expressed,
145 since a variety may overtly be accepted as H, yet speakers of L in fact disapprove of it and even avoid it. In this particular context, where Guarani as L is particularly strong, it is hence important to ask whether also the local population considered the settlers as superior as suggested above. Even though it is difficult to understand the local population’s point of view from today’s perspective, we can rely on a couple of comments made by Gilberto Casey. His grandfather Gilbert Casey was said to be the most radical supporter of socialism related to ethnic equality, and he was known for supporting the interests of the local population. He was the first to get married to a Paraguayan woman and obtain Paraguayan nationality. In 1896, Casey became administrator of Nueva Australia (Souter 1991: 140). According to Connelly (1924: 12), he was one of the principal reasons why the quarrels did not stop after the division because “[a]fter the liqu[i]dation, for a [t]ime we lived in pea[c]e. Each man being a law unto himself. But peace was not destined to last. Gilbert Casey, with his unquenchable thirst for improvement, must have an Junta.” The problems had to do with the Paraguayan families that had been living on the seven leagues of land they owned in the beginning and were relocated in the course of the establishment of the settlements. Casey considered this relocation unfair, yet Connelly (1924: 12) believed that they “had always been quite too friendly with the natives.” Gilberto Casey, Gilbert Casey’s grandson, still lives on the land of his grandfather. He lives there with his son and four grandchildren, and the family is still passionately committed to their forefather’s socialist ideology. As a consequence, Gilberto Casey was persecuted and tortured in jail during the Stroessner dictatorship (probably betrayed by other inhabitants of the district who belonged to Stroessner’s party). Nevertheless, he and his son continue to adhere to the family ideology. The family’s property is separate from the village, and so is their point of view: Gilberto sr. and Gilberto jr. distance themselves explicitly from Nueva Londres and refer to its inhabitants as emikuera ‘the Smiths’ (the family name Smith plus the Guarani plural suffix –kuera). As they explain, this somewhat pejorative term has generally been employed to refer to the rich settlers living in the village since the early days. It represents the disruption of the village outlined in Chapter 3. Such designations are often significant in that they represent a stereotypical, i.e. a simplified, view on a group from the outside (cf. Brubaker 2004: 72; Edwards 2009: 36–37). The most frequently and still persisting designation that the locals use to refer to the settlers apart from emikuera, is gringo.53 Gringo [pronounced in Guarani with an initial bilabial
53 The same word was used in Cosme (Whitehead 1997: 440). 146 fricative ) is used throughout Spanish-speaking Latin America and generally refers to a foreign person of white skin and light eyes (cf. Stephens 1999: 229). In Nueva Australia, it is commonly combined with other predications in Guarani, such as the aforementioned gringo py ne ‘gringo stinky foot.’ This nickname was the result of the settlers looking for help among the local population when jiggers had entered their feet. When they took off their boots to get the jiggers removed, the smell of their feet seems to have been their characteristic trait. Along with this expression, a myriad of other denominations were created, most of which are not in use anymore,54 such as the following:
gringo py ne bota ‘gringo stinky foot [with] boots’
gringo kat ‘gringo stinky axilla’
gringo h ‘black gringo’ (a rather dark skinned person of foreign descent)
Similar to the descriptions of the “natives” by the settlers, which mainly focused on their basic needs and allegedly nature-given behavior, the indigenous population labeled the “gringos” on the basis of certain bodily traits. The scornful tone of these nicknames and their reference to unpleasant features suggest that the local population did not consider the settlers to be superior and that they were probably rather reserved toward them. In other words, while there is little doubt that the settlers were in a socially and financially more powerful position, there is evidence to assume that the indigenous population did not consider them to be superior. Thus, they were unlikely to accommodate to them. In the absence of testimonies we cannot come to a more conclusive picture of how the local population saw the settlers, yet the local newspaper statements and these designations suggest that there was no consensus about the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon race and language. English and Spanish seem to have been the languages associated with overt power and high status, yet Guarani may have been covertly prestigious as a marker of in-group solidarity. With regard to racial purity, section 4.1.1 showed that being white and respecting the “color-line” had been preconditions for participating in this settlement project. Yet, complexion as a marker of social status lost importance, and the Nueva Australia community seems to have given up its rigorous original attitude. This may, among other reasons, have
54 The reputation of their feet’s odor, however, seems to persist. I regularly observed men putting their feet into ashes after taking off their boots in order to avoid the scent. 147 been the result of simple necessity because intermarriage was the only way for most of the young bachelors to start a family. The following comment by Connelly (1924: 9) about Gilbert Casey shows that the command of English and skin color were closely linked, though not mutually inclusive: “whatever may be the complection of his children, they are educated and can speak English (tho their mother cant) which is more than I can say for a lot of others” [sic]. The loss of English in Nueva Australia was thus more lamented than the loss of racial purity. In accordance with this initial trend away from rigid racial ideas, the community later shifted more radically to socially constructed symbols of status and prestige. A showcase of the construction of prestige and symbols of status can be observed during the patron saint festivities at the end of every year. These festivities are offered either by the Kennedy family or by the Smith family, who pay for the location, the music equipment, and the bulls. In addition to bullfights, there is one event in which men and women present their skills as horsemen or horsewomen or as rodeo cowboys. Horsemanship is highly admired, and both men and women present their skills to the audience. The riders show how they control their horses in closed turnarounds and abrupt stops. The aim of these activities is to present one’s riding abilities in addition to one’s horse and ornate riding equipment. Among the most admired participants are thus not only the most skillful horsemen but also those who ride a horse of pure race equipped with silver reins and a saddle tied to a long, white fur that moves elegantly as the horse demonstrates its agility. Pictures 5 and 6 show a horsewoman and a horseman who were particularly admired during the patron saint festivities in December 2012:
Picture 5: A horsewoman during the patron saint festivities
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Picture 6: A horseman during the patron saint festivities
Picture 7 shows that children are instructed from early on in order to be able to participate in these events.
Picture 7: A father preparing his son for the event
Apart from these riding exhibitions, the most popular events are the bullfights. The organizing family hires several professional bullfighters (similar to a Spanish matador) and donates the bulls. The bullfighter tries to defeat a (minimum 500kgs) bull by tiring him and finally
149 pushing him to the floor in order to climb on top of him. Both the bullfighters as well as the bulls are highly admired, the former for their courage and fame, the latter for their physical strength and value. These events are thus a demonstration of the landowning families’ financial and social power. Picture 8 shows the team of the donating Kennedy ranch preparing a bull for a bullfight in 2012. Their corporate clothing Estancia Ña Sara (‘Lady Sarah [Swindley] Ranch’) represents the donating ranch:
Picture 8: The team of the Kennedy ranch gets the bull ready for his fight
In addition, the local politicians, who mainly belong to either the Smiths or the Kennedys, take advantage of the presence of a large audience to present themselves to the people. Picture 9 shows one of the third-generation Smith descendants greeting the crowd while the riders in the background wait for the event to begin:
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Picture 9: Harald Smith greeting the audience
Thus, these events corroborate that social status is no longer based on phenotypical or linguistic characteristics but on social practices, material properties, and individual skills. Horsemanship, the possession of cattle and riding equipment, as well as the involvement in local politics are more important to achieve higher social status and power than complexion or language. As languages are usually seen as part of the primordial, nature-given markers of group belonging, it is safe to say that the construction of status in Nueva Australia shifted from inherited features to class-related markers. This shift corresponds to processes described by Fishman (1977): Nueva Australia used to be defined on racial grounds during the first generation, yet the community has now become status-oriented, that is, symbols of prestige are now acquired rather than inherited. Principal symbols of prestige are houses and general living conditions, land and property, cattle, and political power. Furthermore, as the boundaries between languages and their range within the community have become blurred, also ethnic boundaries have lost importance. In addition to this shift in issues of prestige and status, it is striking that the speakers do not really seem to attach importance to linguistic issues. In everyday conversations, for example, speakers’ linguistic choices rather seem to be determined by their aim of communicating and expressing in-group solidarity rather than social status or prestige. In fact, the widespread use of Jopara, noticeably a mixed language, seems to suggest that linguistic and ethnic contact is not problematic and therefore generally accepted. The following quote shows that while parents and grandparents did make an effort to speak English, the children avoided the additional effort of learning it:
151 (22) McCreen, Gen 4: My grandfather spoke English with me. But I used to run away from him because I, it never interested me much. […] I personally don’t like it very much.
This person in fact explained that English was the only language her grandfather spoke properly since his Guarani and his Spanish were always deficient. As her grandfather spoke English with his grandchildren, they avoided him. Furthermore, there seems to have existed an image of English as a secret code. Several persons complained that the speakers of English used their language to exclude others.
(23) McCreen, Gen 4: My father and my grandfather spoke English together. There were surely things that they didn’t want us to understand.
The same reproach was expressed but the following person, who married into the Smith family and considered the use of English to be rude:
(24) de Smith, Gen 4: There are people, who don’t speak Spanish, and I speak to them in Guarani. And there are people who speak Spanish, so they should be spoken to in Spanish. It is important to adapt to the other person. […] The grandparents only spoke to each other in English. And we never understood what they said. It was a trick they used to […] to hide certain things they talked in their language.
The English language was thus later rather associated with exclusiveness and as an out-group marker – perhaps it was even considered to be hostile as Hungarian in Oberwart (cf. Gal 1979). This suggests that there was a break between the still English-speaking generation and the Guarani-speaking generation, i.e. generations two and three. Generation four rather identified with Guarani and Paraguay than with their Anglo-Saxon origin, because they did not seem to be too emotionally attached to it. To understand ethnic categorizations, it is now important to see how the descendants construct their ethnic identity today. As seen above, there is a close relationship between ethnic identity and language. Another important unifying factor is the common past. Ethnic identity is defined by Edwards (2009: 162) as the “allegiance to a group – large or small, socially dominant or subordinate – with which one has ancestral links. There is no necessity
152 for a continuation, over generations, of the same socialisation or cultural patterns, but some sense of a group boundary must persist.” This definition is useful for my purpose here as it stresses the importance of ancestry, that is, most group members share the idea of being descendants of the same forbears and of being distinct from the surrounding communities. Whereas generations two and three seemed to have an awareness of a common origin, which was particularly pronounced in Cosme where schooling focused on British matters, generation four did not seem to have the same feeling of belonging. Accordingly, today’s Nueva Australia seems to have lost its focus on the original place of origin – it has ceased to constitute a diaspora. According to Safran’s (1991: 83–84) definition, a diaspora is a transplanted group of persons who share the following six features: 1) as a group, they originate from a common center, yet in the present they are living in a peripheral region with regard to that center; 2) they retain an idea of a common homeland, which is often idealized; 3) they feel somewhat excluded from their host society; 4) they regard their homeland as an ideal location to which they wish to return; 5) they aim at maintaining the original culture in the homeland; and 6) they feel related to other groups that stem from the same homeland. Language is relevant in diaspora communities. It can, for instance, strengthen and legitimize the connection to the homeland thus making the return to the homeland possible (e.g. among the Greeks in Germany, cf. Landau 1996). On the other hand, the search for an ancestral language in order to establish a connection to the homeland, as is the case in Afro-Caribbean communities, can present a challenge to one’s identity (cf. Lehmann 1998). As has become clear so far is that in the early days, New Australia was indeed meant to constitute a diaspora: its focus lied on setting up a society still oriented toward the original Anglo-Saxon culture and homeland, i.e. Great Britain, to which it intended to return as a collective. Cosme hence constituted a clear diaspora community. In Nueva Australia, such a sense of belonging to a homeland does not appear to exist. In fact, none of the persons I talked to affirmed that they still felt attached to the origin of the forefathers. The following statements confirm this attitude:
(25) Smith, Gen 4: I only remember the greetings. But I don’t feel sorry about having lost the English language.
(26) Bates, Gen 3: We are all guarangos now, totally Paraguayan, without caring about anything.
153 This speaker uses the first person plural pronoun we, which suggests that he describes himself as a guarango. Guarango is a clearly pejorative term to designate a somewhat ignorant speaker of Guarani. This term was frequently mentioned among the descendants, and also a 1988-born Smith descendant labeled herself as guarango and immediately added that she did not attach any negative connotation to this designation. It is noteworthy that this term classifies a person on the basis of his or her language, associated with a rather dull mind, rather than on ethnic terms. The same holds for the rather derogatory term Indian that this person used with a positive attitude:
(27) Adams, Gen 3: We are Paraguayan Indians, we know how to fight!
(28) Jones, Gen 3: I would like to see England. […] But I feel very Paraguayan! I identify more as Paraguayan than the Paraguayans themselves. […] I feel very Paraguayan. I love this country because it gave me much and a wonderful family. […] We [descendants] all know each other. But that’s it. We don’t feel like compatriots. We are simply another Paraguayan like any other as well. We are all separated.
Comment (27) was in fact a reaction to my question about Paraguay having defeated Bolivia in the Chaco War; it is, however, significant in that the speaker does not seem to attach any negative connotation to the word Indian (he literally said somos indios paraguayos), i.e. he sees the Indian as strong and victorious, and he identifies with these virtues. The same impression of positive associations with a rather negative term (donkey) was suggested by statement (20) above. Example (28) further suggests that the descendants take pride in being Paraguayans and do thus not seem to be concerned about being part of the low-prestige group as opposed to speakers of Spanish or English. One descendant living in Asuncion replied as follows to my question about his origin:
(29) Cadogan, Gen 4: New Australia? I couldn’t care less!
This attitude is in line with the linguistic behavior of the community today: Guarani is used among neighbors, friends, and family members, as well as in church (where only the traditional prayers are in Spanish while the rest of the mass is in Guarani). It is used even in the presence of outsiders who do not know any Guarani when a switch to Spanish would
154 enable all interlocutors to understand. This indicates that the speakers simply opt for the language that is most accurate for the interlocutor and the one that expresses their belonging to the local community, rather than reflecting on language status, wince the use of the inappropriate code would represent a lack of linguistic allegiance towards the in-group. This is underscored by the fact that the use of English was perceived as a threat, or a purposeful act of exclusion. In Nueva Australia the aim of communicating in the most accurate language and in-group identity marking, rather than status-related concerns, appear to determine the use of languages. Such a linguistic behavior of language loyalty and in-group solidarity contradicts sociolinguistic research on language attitudes carried out in other areas of Paraguay. Russinovich Solé (1996: 103), on the basis of her analysis of urban language use, holds that “[l]anguage choice is not a matter of indifference” because speakers have an awareness of the status and appropriateness of Spanish and Guarani. However, given that she bases this claim on data collected in questionnaires and not on ethnographic data, we do not know to what extent this awareness also translates into the expected linguistic behavior, namely the choice of one language over another. In other words, does the awareness of H and L and their respective functions imply that the speakers will shift to the more appropriate language, e.g. to Spanish in the presence of speakers of Spanish, or does it mean that the speakers are aware of the more appropriate language but do still not switch to it (cf. the incongruity mentioned by Edwards 2010: 24)? We do not know whether the speakers in the Nueva Australia context do have the same attitude toward Spanish as H – yet they are likely to have it –, but what we observe is that they do not accommodate to speakers of Spanish unless they address them directly. The same holds for church services as well as the events evolving around the activities of the cattle and horsemen shows at the end of the year, in which loudspeakers are used to address the (both local and non-local) audience in Guarani. This strength of Guarani regardless of the presence of outsiders strongly suggests that linguistic accommodation towards outsiders does not occur in Nueva Australia. Given that this behavior diverges from other contact scenarios in which one language is marginalized, such as in Oberwart where Hungarian is disappearing due to the low status of L (cf. Gal 1979), this may help understand why Guarani is so strong in the face of Spanish and English in this particular context. In other words, the linguistic choices in Nueva Australia raise the question of whether the widely held idea of the Paraguayan diglossia does actually apply to the reality in rural Paraguay. While language choice determined by status may not be a matter of indifference in theory, a certain attitude of indifference toward the integration of outsiders and the overt
155 prestige of their language does seem to exist. In fact, it leads to the question of whether English and Spanish really were, and continue to be, the prestigious languages, or whether Guarani was, and still is, covertly more prestigious. As seen above, Ryan (1979) claims that non-standard or low-prestige varieties continue to be strong when in-group solidarity among their speakers is high. As described above, in Nueva Australia this solidarity seems to be particularly high since speakers of Guarani do not switch to Spanish in the presence of speakers without any competence in Guarani, which shows that their in-group solidarity, or language loyalty (see section 2.1) is high. It may thus be important to distinguish between overt and covert prestige of languages: English and Spanish may have overt prestige since they are ascribed to socially powerful domains and groups, yet Guarani is the language of covert prestige because it marks in-group belonging among the rural population. Concerning the shift from English to Guarani in Nueva Australia, it is likely that a similar behavior of linguistic exclusion may have forced the original settlers to learn Guarani. In any case, its covert prestige and the high in-group solidarity among its speakers are indicative of the ethnolinguistic vitality of Guarani in the face of other languages. The prediction of Guarani losing ground in the face of Spanish expressed by sociolinguistic research so far (cf. Rubin 1968; Fasoli-Wörmann 2002) may hence not be valid for all settings. Instead of Guarani being marginalized in the long run, the gap between the rural Guarani-speaking and the urban Spanish-speaking population may be growing wider. This does not reinforce the claim that Paraguay has a stable diglossia; rather, it suggests that Paraguay is in fact a country of two distinct linguistic groups that are not necessarily bilingual, similar to Cameroon or Finland, rather than a bilingual nation. The statement by the Cosme school teacher (see Chapter 2) may hence apply to Paraguay. Finally, power relations and ideologies can be illustrated by exploring the value of family names in Nueva Australia. Joseph (2004: 11–12) highlights the importance of personal names in research on linguistic identity for being the “primary meaning of identity” because it performs both a deictic function and a semantic function as the name is ideally meant to say something about its holder. Personal names in most Western societies include a first name and a family name; in the Spanish-speaking world, family names usually consist of two last names, the first being the paternal and the second the maternal one. This entails that by the third generation, the mother’s last name will have disappeared. In the case of English subjects in Paraguay, the first-generation settlers hand only one family name, as Sarah Swindle, while the following generations were given two, such as Nigel Kennedy Swindle. These names of
156 course stand out in the Paraguayan context as they are not Hispanicized (see section 4.2.1) and hence indicate that their holders stem from a family of foreigners. A foreign last name is thus a feature that is of relevance in this context. To begin with, an event experienced during fieldwork provides an example of how powerful certain families in Nueva Australia are. In July 2011, we visited a third-generation Smith descendant on his ranch at approximately 45 minutes from Nueva Londres. On our way back, we were stopped by the police and asked for my driver’s license, which, as I quickly realized, I did not have with me. The policemen insisted at first that this was highly problematic, yet Sonia de Smith calmly explained that we were just coming from Mr. Smith’s ranch and that she was married to one of his nephews. After a short consultation, the policemen allowed us to continue our journey. Sonia de Smith then explained that the political influence of Mr. Smith in this part of the district went as far as the financial support of the local police, which is why the mere mention of his name resolved our problem and allowed us to infringe the law. The importance of the Smiths and the Kennedys also becomes evident in their role as organizers of the patron saint’s festivities seen above. This illustrates that the Kennedy and the Smith families are not only well-known but also powerful throughout the district. Accordingly, to have either Smith or Kennedy as one’s family name may have a number of implications in a person’s everyday life. Elderly people as well as rather wealthy descendants of the powerful Smith and Kennedy clans seem to attach positive values to their family names. A Kennedy individual stated that it is useful for him to have this last name because the Kennedys have the reputation of being responsible, which enhances his political and professional career. Another fourth-generation Smith descendant said that he enjoys the fame of his family:
(30) Smith, Gen 4: [It’s] an advantage. […] The Smith have a very good reputation because they are all stock farmers and they work. They‘re responsible. … Wherever you go, you ask, they will know you. The Smith and Kennedy families.
And another elderly Kennedy descendant appreciates the respectful treatment she receives:
(31) Kennedy, Gen 3: Yes, they give you a preferential treatment!
157 Not all the reactions, however, are as positive as (30) and (31). Most of the informants mentioned that their English last names usually trigger questions regarding their origin. In fact, many persons expressed that they see their last name as a burden. One person of the fourth generation of Drakefords stated that she was looking forward to her grandchildren losing her last name as it does not only remind her of an unjust past between the settlers but also make her life considerably more complicated.55 This person lived in a rather rural part of the district in very simple living conditions and did not speak Spanish, which suggests that her last name or family have not given her many advantages. Another descendant, who is a direct descendant of the Smith clan but in a disrupted relationship with his relatives, explained that he suffered considerably due to his name when he was in the army.
(32) Smith, Gen 4: When I was in the army, they punished me too often for having an English name. Because these sargeants and whoever had to write down my name, when a letter was wrong they slapped me here. [points at his neck] […] And it is difficult to write Henry Harold Smith Kennedy. […] Too often they punished me in vain for that. For having an English name.
This person then opted against English first names for his children. Later, he claimed that he considers his last name a disadvantage in everyday life as well:
(33) Smith, Gen 4: The people think that we are millionaires [because of our name]. But this isn’t the case. We work for survival.
This answer is in line with many similar responses, among which many explicitly referred to the doctor:
(34) Bates, Gen 3: There we have a problem. If you go to a doctor, for example. And with your family name only! – They charge you more? – Yes, we suffer a lot!
(35) Adams, Gen 3: [When we go to see the doctor] they charge more than we can pay. So sometimes we say that our name is not Adams but Arias. When we are
55 Her reaction was so vehement that I did not dare ask any further questions concerning family names. 158 sick it is sometimes like that. It is hard to tell the doctors our real name.
It hence seems to be the case that the relationship between the family names and their holders shows a certain pattern. The following statement summarizes nicely the ambivalent feelings they have toward their last names.
(36) Adams, Gen 4: Sometimes it’s an advantage and sometimes it’s a disadvantage. Because for example the Smiths and the Kennedys have money, so if you tell someone ‘my family name is Adams’ they will give you credits more easily. They ask you ‘so you must be into cattle raising?’ because that’s how they know them. But it is also a disadvantage because the people want to take advantage of you and charge you more.
The image of Nueva Londres’ inhabitants toward Paraguayan society is thus one of financially accommodated and reliable businesspeople. A closer look at the social standing of the descendants and their attitudes towards their family names indicates that a positive attitude often correlates with a more comfortable financial situation of the family. In other words, those holders of English names who rather belong to the wealthy families seem to be prouder of their family heritage than those who live in more difficult conditions. This may, to a certain extent also be influenced by the experiences of political prosecution that certain families suffered during the Stroessner regime, while other families (above all the Kennedys and the Smith) were given a preferential treatment by the government. Similar to the perception of last names, also the nicknames have experienced certain changes. The fully integrated descendants of the colonizers are still labeled gringo today, and the predication that goes with it is still commonly negative. The tone, however, has changed from scornful to ironic as the following examples illustrate:
gringo sowe ‘poor gringo’
gringo ra’y ‘son of a gringo’
gringo pan dulce ‘sweet bread gringo’
159 gringo tuja výro ajuvuku mendahýi ‘old, dumb, long-necked gringo who wants to get married too often’
The first example refers to the Caseys, who never belonged to the rich families and were thus respected by the locals; it is thus a positive designation that indicates that this “gringo,” though of foreign descent, belongs to the in-group. Example two indicates a certain generational distance between the descendant and his or her gringo ancestor. The third example is in fact Spanish and refers to persons of foreign descent who produce or like the typical wheat-flour pastry. The fourth example is the (rather inaccurate) teasing nickname of a fourth-generation Smith descendant given to him by his Guarani-monolingual friends. These examples show that gringo is no longer an exclusively pejorative designation; rather, it is often used in a jocular way to refer to the descendants who are fully integrated in, and appreciated by, the local population. What is noteworthy is that the predication has changed from a purely external one, i.e. with reference to certain body parts, to socially determined attributes, such as behavior or social standing. This shows that the community is both linguistically and culturally more integrated today, and that a shift in the perception of the settlers from a rather hostile to an amicable one has occurred. In addition, it indicates that ethnic categorization has shifted from racial or physical orientations to a socially constructed one, which, according to Brubaker’s (2004) schema, rather focuses on social behavior and actions than established categories.
5.1.4 Shifting orders of indexicality in New Australia The functions and statuses of the three languages in contact are further understood by applying the analytic paradigm proposed by Blommaert (2010). Blommaert explains that power and social norms are organized on different layers in the sociolinguistic space. The lower layer is momentary, immediate, and contextualized, whereas the highest layer is timeless, translocal, and decontextualized. A number of layers are located between these two extremes, some closer to the local context, others further away from it. Each layer is oriented toward its own system of values. Every instance of communication in the sociolinguistic space is meant to represent a certain system of values, i.e. it is directed toward its own center of indexicality. Thus, language use is governed by the speaker’s intention of communicating successfully and at the same time conveying a certain image of herself according to the relevant center of indexicality (Blommaert 2010: 32–38). On the basis of this model, we understand that in every speech act the speakers address not only their interlocutor but also a
160 normative center, which may be located on a layer that is part of, or above, the immediate context of communication. With regard to immigrant communities, this means that speakers may orient themselves towards the norms located on different layers of the sociolinguistic space at once, such as the local immigrant community, the surrounding host society, or their homeland community with which they may wish to keep ties. In the sociolinguistic space of Nueva Australia, English, Guarani, and Spanish each belong to a different center of indexicality. Figure 5 illustrates that, at the time when New Australia was established, the most contextualized, immediate layer on the sociolinguistic scale was the English-speaking immigrant community. At the same time, the community also acted in pursuance with the rules of the British Empire, which belonged to the international space. The English language was hence indexical on both the very contextualized and on the highest, decontextualized layers. Guarani as the language of the people that lived in the immediate vicinity and often worked for the settlers was situated on the level above the most local one. Spanish was the language of the government and urban high society of Paraguay and its neighboring countries. It was therefore located on a third level between Guarani and the international English language.
English English
Spanish ‰ Spanish
Guarani Guarani
English Guarani
Figure 5: The shifting sociolinguistic space of the Anglo-Paraguayan community over the twentieth century.
Given the lack of support on the part of the British embassy and the absence of a local government, there was no higher moral authority to enforce social norms. Rather, as has been pointed out on several occasions, the social and moral norms diverged even within the community, which brought about the division of New Australia in the first place and later also to the dissolution of the unity of Nueva Australia. The importance of British values hence faded among the settlers while they enjoyed absolute freedom from social constraints. This contributed to the loosening of the ties among the original immigrant community described
161 above. In the course of the first half of the twentieth century, the settlers shifted toward the Paraguayan centers of indexicality. In Paraguay, Guarani and Spanish were the only important languages while English was only marginally present as a colonial language spoken in other regions of the world or as the language of technological progress. For Australians who had married Paraguayan women and were active in the local business community, Guarani became essential. Moreover, as the first- and second-generation settlers became engaged in local politics and hired local employees, they became dependent on the support of the Paraguayan population. Consequently, a possible view of Guarani as inferior did not prevent the settlers from needing and using it, and Guarani was much more important for survival and success than English. It hence moved to the most immediate and contextualized layer of the sociolinguistic space. Spanish remained one level above. The Cosme community similarly replaced English with Guarani on the lowest level. Nevertheless, to suppose that their history is similar would be misleading. As we have seen, the shift did not take place gradually as in Nueva Australia, but relatively abruptly when the second generation began to leave the village in search for a paying job. This was made possible by their most efficient mobile resource, their English heritage language. Thus, rather than proving useless in the immediate environment, the English language in Cosme became a means of social mobility and thereby contributed to the abandonment of the community. For those who left Cosme English continued to be an important language in their sociolinguistic space. Simultaneously, it disappeared from the repertoires of the remaining Cosme population.
5.2 On the role of English in New Australia today In the previous section, it has become clear that in the course of the twentieth century, the importance of racial and linguistic purity and ethnic origins of the descendants decreased, while solidarity with the local community increased. While the relationship between the settlers, the unity among them, and their integration into Paraguayan society have changed over the years, the descendants now see themselves as Paraguayans. The attention drawn to their names, however, suggests that their position in the local society is still somewhat special, which is similar to transnational communities (cf. Levitt & Glick Schiller 2004). This raises the question of what kind of awareness of the English language, which is not only highly instrumental as an international language but also the community’s ancestral language, exists. The conclusion drawn in the previous section suggests that the high prestige of Guarani may have brought about the loss of the value of English as a heritage language for
162 the descendants today. Considering the instrumental value of the English language observed in other studies on English in Latin America, such as in Peru (Niño Murcia 2003) or Argentina (Cortés Conde 1994), it is of interest to know what the value of the English language is for Nueva Australia’s youths today. In other words, the question to be asked is whether the descendants attribute importance to their ancestral language, and if yes, what the reason for this is. So far, however, the present study has focused on generations one to four, while generation five, the current students and young professionals in Nueva Australia, were mainly excluded. In Chapter 2, however, we have seen that the global role of English as an international language has changed considerably since the first settlers arrived at the end of the nineteenth century – also in Latin America. The previous sections showed that along with the integration of the settlers’ descendants into the local community, Guarani has gained ground while English was avoided to the point that it disappeared. Given its international range today, it is nonetheless striking that the international English language was abandoned in favor of an indigenous language in Nueva Australia. If the community is detached from its original homeland, then little interest in learning it can be expected to exist, unless the motivation to learn it is based on instrumental values similar to what is occurring in other countries in Latin America (see section 2.3). In this last section, I therefore seek to shed light on the interest given to the English language in rural Paraguay today. As seen so far, however, English is not spoken in Nueva Australia anymore. The last vestigial native speaker is nearly 90 years old, and there is no need to speak English in the professional or cultural context, since Spanish and Guarani cover all the domains. Hence, the fifth generation does not speak any variety of English transmitted naturalistically within the community, and any competence in English would thus be the result of foreign language learning. This would entail the conscious effort – often including a financial effort, too – by the speaker. Landry and Allard (1994: 25) claim that the ethnolinguistic vitality of languages in fact includes a community’s “willingness to learn and use the language.” A closer look at the motivation of young New Australians is thus expected to answer the following questions on the basis of the discussion presented in Chapter 2:
1) is English of any importance to the descendants of New Australia, and 2) if yes, what are the reasons behind this?
163 Given the focus on the importance of English among the young generation, the focus of this section lies on whether or not there is an interest in learning English as a foreign language and what the motivation to learn it (or any other foreign language) is. The actual level of proficiency in English or any other foreign language will be neglected altogether. In order to explore the reasons why, or why not, Nueva Australia youths harbor an interest in learning a foreign language, however, it is important to define motivation in foreign language learning. I therefore begin with an overview over attitudes and motivations involved in processes of second language learning before presenting the data and the discussion. It should be noted, however, that whilst the literature mainly focuses on second language learning, this term in this context rather applies to foreign language learning since the two local languages, Spanish and Guarani, are spoken to some extent by all participants, and any additional language would be their third, or perhaps even fourth, language.
5.2.1 Motivation to learn English among Nueva Australia’s youths Gardner (2010: 2–3) explains that in comparison to other subjects taught in school or any other instructional context, the learning of a second language is “a departure from one’s own cultural background” in that the individual has to learn to speak like the members of another community. It is in a way a transition into a different community, which means that learning another language may require a greater effort on the part of the student than other subjects. It is therefore important to understand why certain learners seem to be more successful at it than others. Gardner (2010: 22–25) proposes the Socio-Educational Model in order to analyze, and ideally predict, the success or failure in second language acquisition on the basis of six groups of variables:
1) Ability, i.e. the individual aptitude to learn a second language, 2) Motivation, i.e. the behavioral and cognitive predisposition of an individual to make the effort of learning another language, 3) Culturally relevant variables, which include social attitudes toward a language and its speech community and the interest the individual has in them. They can include ethnocentrism, xenophilia, authoritarianism, among others, or simply the interest in traveling to the place where the language is spoken. 4) Educationally relevant variables, which include the school context in which a second language can, or cannot, be acquired. Not only teaching materials and facilities are
164 part of this group of variables but also the instructor as well as the learning environment. 5) Language anxiety, that is the general societal attitude towards either knowing, or not knowing, the second language, which may exert more or less pressure on the individual. 6) Instrumentally relevant variables, in other words, the utilitarian value of language learning without any specific interest in the speech community. The principal driving forces is, for example, the enhancement of an individual’s skills and thus economic or political value, which ultimately results in the achievement of power. This variable is closely linked to the “commodification” of languages as observed by Heller (2010).
The variables that are relevant in the Nueva Australia setting are variables 2), 3), 4), and 6) because they concern attitudinal factors discussed above as well as ecological factors that make a social environment either favorable or unfavorable for foreign language learning. In other words, these factors increase the interest an individual may have in learning English. Point 2) is particularly important since motivation is needed in order to make the cognitive and often also financial effort of learning a second language. It must be kept in mind, however, that English is in a special position in Nueva Australia because it is at once the community’s heritage language and a world language. Hence, the interest in speaking English can, but must not, be two-fold: on the one hand, it is the language the ancestors spoke at the time they arrived in Paraguay, while on the other hand, English is also an international language that can be seen as a professional asset that enhances a person’s social prestige and job opportunities, as was the case in the Cosme community (see section 5.1.2). These two foci correspond to what is generally considered the two principal driving forces in second language learning: integrative and instrumental motivation, respectively. Integrative motivation is defined as “a genuine interest in learning the other language in order to become closer psychologically to the other language community” (Gardner 2010: 85). It thus entails a stronger identification with the speech community and the values of the language that is learned than instrumental motivation. This distinction was first proposed by Gardner and Lambert (1959), and a large number of studies on this subject continue to appear. To name but one example, as mentioned in Chapter 2, Bourhis and Giles (1977: 121; see section 2.2.3) worked with the distinction between integrative and instrumental learners of Welsh and found that while integrative
165 learners tended to mark in-group belonging by learning the language because they identified with the ancestral group, instrumental learners rather pursued an economic or political interest in learning Welsh and their principal identification was thus individualistic. Their study shows that in their native English dialect, the integral learners displayed a more overt Welsh accent than instrumental learners, who identified less with the ancestral language. Motivation may thus determine to a certain degree the linguistic behavior of a speaker. Motivation is assessed on the basis of three components: a) the desire to learn the new language and the enjoyment of this process, b) the attitudes toward the new language, and c) the intensity of the motivation, which boils down to the concrete effort made to become more proficient. In general, Gardner (2010: 8) defines those learners as motivated who “express effort in attaining the goal, they show persistence, and they attend to the tasks necessary to achieve the goals.” Motivations should thus be distinguished from orientations, which correspond to the general goals, such as being able to talk to speakers of a certain language and understand their culture. Motivation has to do with the willingness to make the effort that is necessary to achieve the goal of learning another language and can only be measured when a person is actually in the process of learning another language. Buckledee (2011: 41) adds to the distinction between integrative and instrumental motivation the factors of intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation usually emerges from the individual’s personal desire to learn a language, whilst extrinsic motivation is imposed by external obligation, thus making it similar to instrumental motivation. Buckledee (2011: 17), however, sees language attitudes as one aspect of motivations, rather than the other way round. He argues that the motivation to learn a language is “in its true sense […] a complex, permeable and therefore changeable phenomenon of which attitudes represent one aspect.” He stresses the lengthiness of the process of second language acquisition and the fact that motivation needs to be maintained in order to succeed, which implies that motivation may change over time, whereas attitudes are rather stable. With regard to language attitudes in Nueva Australia, the discussion above has shown that Guarani is valued positively among its speakers despite its low status. The observed linguistic choices suggest that Guarani is a strong in-group marker to the extent that it contributed to the marginalization of English by the third generation. The interest of Nueva Australia youths in English shall be explored on the basis of questionnaires. However, in line with the unobtrusive approach of the interviews, in which most aspects of language attitudes were addressed indirectly, also the questionnaires were designed not to suggest or guide the
166 participants into a certain direction. The relevant point was to avoid suggesting a connection between foreign-language learning and heritage (see the discussion in section 3.2.6). As outlined in Chapter 3, the questionnaires were distributed among young inhabitants of the district born between 1980 and 1999 irrespective of their ancestry. The reason why this age group was selected is that they are most likely to belong to the fifth generation of descendants (see section 4.5), and a large proportion of them have gone to school or are in their early professional career, which means that they have at least basic literacy skills that are needed to participate in the survey. Moreover, this age group is comparable to other studies carried out in the region, such as one in Buenos Aires (Friedrich 2003). Of the 80 questionnaires that were sent to Paraguay in November 2014, 71 were returned, of which 67 questionnaires are valid. The final aim was to explore language use among young Paraguayans and whether there is a correlation between the ancestry and a possible desire to learn English. The data collected in these questionnaires are expected to provide data that are comparable to studies carried out in other regions of Latin America (see section 2.3). The data from Nueva Londres, however, differ from other data in that they were collected in a very rural area of South America, whereas most other studies were conducted in metropolitan areas. The first part of the questionnaires collected information about the social background of the participants, their last names, year of birth, occupation, and educational level. It also inquired about the language the person had had in school as the language of instruction. The second part asked for the participant’s language skills and use, i.e. the languages they know and with whom they use them (in other words, in what domains, cf. Fishman 1967). In part three, the participants indicated whether they had learned a foreign language, and why, or why not, they took the effort of doing so. Finally, part four inquired about the participant’s ancestors, i.e. whether the person had an ancestor that was of a different linguistic background. This part was in fact the most relevant one to understand a possible correlation between an interest in English and the English-speaking past of the community. As indicated in Chapter 3, the order of the questions, as well as their relative openness, was expected to be as unsuggestive as possible in order to avoid drawing the participant’s attention to their possible heritage, which would have manipulated the data. Schleef (2014: 52) holds that a number above 30 represents “normal distribution,” which means that the 67 valid questionnaires collected by Sonia de Smith are relatively representative of the relevant group. There are, nevertheless, a number of caveats that apply to research based on questionnaires. Apart from the challenges presented to this study due to
167 varying levels of educational background among the participants, Schleef (2014: 53) points out that most issues investigated by means of questionnaires are generally relatively superficial since the data are prone to alteration. This can happen due to conscious or unconscious manipulation by the participants, e.g. when they misinterpret the questions or give an incorrect answer. Furthermore, it is important to keep in mind that questionnaires generally work with overgeneralizations, which entails that the results will be somewhat simplistic. The data-driven approach of the present study, however, made it possible to prevent some of these difficulties. For example, the number of questions to be answered on the basis of this questionnaire was limited, and it generally aimed at observing a trend, which is in line with the general qualitative, rather than quantitative, approach of this research. However, there were two problems in the evaluation of the questionnaires: on the one hand, the list of options regarding the reasons behind the interest in learning a foreign language were often left blank or all ticked. They may have caused confusion among the participants. This incongruity makes it difficult to evaluate, as expected, possible correlations between certain factors, for example to what extent a lack of interest correlates with financial limitations. Still, the results from the questionnaires are expected to shed some light on the interest in learning their heritage language among young descendants, and this part of the questionnaire was well completed. To begin with, all participants indicated skills in both languages spoken in the district, i.e. Spanish and Guarani. Interestingly, no language other than Guarani or Spanish seems to be spoken natively in the district: only two individuals indicated to be able to speak a language other than Spanish or Guarani (one person English and another person Portuguese), yet both speakers learned the language in an instructional environment. Given this lack of foreign languages and concrete efforts made to learn them, it is not possible to assess the participant’s motivations but rather their orientations, or interest, in learning them (Gardner 2010: 8, see above). We can thus see whether a desire, or general interest, in learning English exists and what the reasons for this behavior are. The desire to learn an additional language is, in fact, harbored by nearly all participants: 66 out of 67 respondents indicated that they are interested in learning an additional language other than Spanish and Guarani. Table 7 specifies the languages that were explicitly mentioned; in some cases, more than one was listed. Note that in the questionnaire, this was an open question, which means that the participants had to write down the language themselves with no option to tick. This, I hoped, produced answers uninfluenced by a given list of options.
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Language Number out of 67 Percent English 58 86.56 % Portuguese 16 23.88 % Italian 2 2.99 % French 2 2.99 % German 1 1.49 % Mandarin 1 1.49 % Unspecified 2 2.99 % Table 7: Foreign languages of interest among fifth-generation descendants
A large majority of 86.56 percent of the participants expressed an interest in learning English. This is considerably higher than any of the languages desired by the participants in Zajícová’s (2009: 249) survey, in which between 45.6 and 64.4 percent had an interest in English. Thus, in comparison to Zajícová’s results, the interest in learning English is particularly high among the Nueva Australia youths. The interest in learning Portuguese, which is similarly higher here in comparison to Zajícová’s study, may be due to the fact that a large number of students and professional employees work in the agricultural and stock-farming sector – especially in Nueva Australia with its famous stock-farming families – and this sector is to a considerable extent managed by Brazilian citizens. 30 participants, i.e. almost half of them, report they learned some basic skills in high school or at university; given that none of them indicates to be a speaker of English, however, suggests that the level must have been rather low and did not enable them to achieve a conversational level. In addition, six participants claim to have made the effort of learning English in a private institution, which usually implies a considerable financial investment. The fact that only two of them claim English to be a part of their repertoire, however, suggests that even private language teaching is rather poor. In informal conversations as well as in interviews, parents repeatedly affirmed that there is only one private institution where English can be learned, and the results are unanimously said to be disappointing due to short course modules and unqualified instructors. According to the results from the questionnaires, however, the poor teaching (‘there are no good teachers’) is not mentioned as a discouraging factor. Rather, 14 participants indicated that they do not have enough time to study English, while eleven claimed that it is too costly. Nine respondents indicated that there is no place to study a foreign language. Only one said that English is too difficult to be learned. Thus,
169 educational and financial circumstances limit the willingness to learn English in Nueva Australia. The financial factor, which eleven considered to be an obstacle, is in fact a relevant one. The results from the questionnaires may not be entirely representative since many of the respondents are students who do not pay for their studies themselves, which may draw their attention away from financial issues. Still, the fact that it was mentioned is a relevant one if results from other studies are considered: as seen in section 2.3, English is often an instrument to keep up social dichotomies between higher and lower classes, such as in Ecuador (cf. Ovesdotter Alm 2003) or in Brazil (cf. Bohn 2003). Even though it is not possible to determine to what extent financial factors impose an impediment to foreign language learning in Nueva Australia, they certainly determine one’s freedom to learn an additional language. Foreign language learning is hence likely to be rather restricted to the upper classes in rural Paraguay as well, and it can be seen as an additional acquired symbol of prestige. Furthermore, the questionnaires were expected to show what the reasons behind the interest in learning English are. Also here, open answers could be added, which was frequently done, yet they usually referred to the same points as the options to tick. The options to tick covered both cultural and professional value of English. The participants responded as follows:
Reason Goal Number Useful for studies Professional (instrumental) 26 Indispensable for studies Professional (instrumental) 9 Useful for finding a job Professional (instrumental) 34 Useful on the job Professional (instrumental) 11 Travel plans Cultural (instrumental) 15 Interest in the country Cultural (integrative) 14 Table 8: Reasons for English language learning among Nueva Australia youths
Table 8 shows that both cultural as well as professional reasons are decisive in the interest in learning English. However, the high number of answers pointing at the professional value of English clearly of the instrumental value on the Paraguayan job market, rather than its cultural influence, which would have been suggested by traveling or other countries. Interestingly enough, however, one person added a comment in the open question that she was interested in
170 learning English because “it is the language my grandparents used to speak and also the most universal language.” In other words, one person explicitly mentioned that her heritage was important for her. In view of the community’s history, this number is significantly low. The most important question to be answered, however, was whether the heritage is still of relevance for fifth-generation descendants. This question was addressed individually in part four of the questionnaire, in which the participants indicated whether they had an ancestor of a different linguistic background and whether they harbored the wish to learn that ancestor’s language. If they had such a desire, they were asked to explain in an open question what the reason for this desire was. The answers in this part were clear and only one questionnaire lacked an answer. 41 out of 67 participants indicated to have an Anglophone ancestor, which is 61.2 percent of the 67 participants.56 40 of them also expressed the desire to learn English (the remaining person mentioned German). This suggests that an ancestor from an English-speaking country may draw a person’s interest to English. A closer look at the reasons behind this, however, does not support this hypothesis. Only two persons mentioned explicitly that their forefathers are the reason why they want to learn English. Yet, even if their answers referred explicitly to their heritage, the instrumental value of English was included:
(37) Student, Gen 5: I would like to visit the country of my great-grandparents someday.
(38) Student, Gen 5: I would like to know more about my family roots and because nowadays it is a necessity to speak English because it opens many social and professional doors.
These statements show that they have a clear interest in their family roots. Nevertheless, the instrumental value (traveling or the professional asset) of the heritage language is still relevant. 38 respondents gave an answer that was only related to the instrumental value of English, such as the fact that it is “universal,” “useful,” or “enhances job opportunities.” In other words, 92.7 percent of the fifth-generation respondents had an instrumental interest in English rather than an integrative one. This is clearly in line with studies carried out in other parts of Latin America that showed that English is seen as an asset on the job market. The fifth generation, which is fully bilingual in Spanish and Guarani, lacks an integrative interest in its heritage language. This is rather surprising in view of the fact that
56 Two persons with the last name Murray and Batte (Bates) did not indicate to have a foreign ancestor, which is why they were not counted here. Had they been included, the percentage would have been 64.2 percent. 171 their status as a gringo, though not with a negative connotation as they are fully integrated, is still present in the district. The heritage does not seem to influence the young Paraguayan’s perception of English as an international language. This may, again, have to do with their strong allegiance towards the local community, i.e. other speakers of Guarani. Competence in a powerful language as English would set them apart and thus compromise their in-group belonging. In addition, their linguistic solidarity may even hinder their openness towards the acquisition of an international language as this may be seen as rather inauthentic (cf. Park & Wee 2012). This corroborates that Guarani is of covert prestige on the local level, which determined the fate of English from the very beginning of language contact in New Australia.
5.3 Language Shift in New Australia: an exceptional case? This chapter has described the process of language shift from English to Guarani in New Australia on the basis of the changing Ethnolinguistic Vitality of the English language in this particularly heteroglossic environment. This descriptive framework allowed us to approach the community from a qualitative point of view on the basis of ethnographic data, interview data, and written documents from the past. This description showed that while English had low ethnolinguistic vitality, the vitality of Guarani was high. Language institutionalization and demographic factors were particularly important in the beginning because they determined the development of both communities. In Cosme, English was well institutionalized, because the community ensured that all its inhabitants were English- speaking, a large proportion of them highly educated and committed to similar convictions, such as the upkeep of the literary tradition. This ensured its maintenance. Yet as its English- speaking inhabitants of the second and third generations left, English disappeared from the community’s repertoire. Institutionalization thus appears to be particularly important, yet the demographic development was the hindrance to language maintenance since the disappearance of the speakers entailed the disappearance of their language. In Nueva Australia, by contrast, the conditions were very different. English was relatively poorly institutionalized, and neither schooling nor official meetings could be held in English in the long run. Moreover, the demographic development did not favor the establishment of English: even though the community continuously grew, the elevated number of mixed marriages soon marginalized English as the language of the home and community. As a result, the third generation had very little competence in English, which corresponds to the common rule of three generations in which a heritage language in immigrant communities is lost. In fact, the third generation already had to cope with two
172 languages, i.e. Spanish and Guarani, and bilingualism (even more so trilingualism) is seen as “the first step in the demise of a language” (Joseph 2004: 159; cf. also Cortés Conde 1996). Given these relatively predictable conditions that lead to language shift, Nueva Australia does not seem to present an exceptional case. The fact that English disappeared in the face of an indigenous language, however, is still extraordinary. The detailed analysis of the statuses of languages and their speakers has shown that ethnic identity and in-group solidarity were not beneficial for the maintenance of English. In the early days, the settlers were the landowners and employers, which gave the Anglophone settlers an allegedly higher status in the local context. Ethnic differences in those times were based on primordial markers of identity, such as skin color and physical traits. The linguistic behavior, as well as the critical designations by the local population, however, suggest that this view on the settlers as the high status group was not shared by the local population. Rather, the strong in-group solidarity of Guarani-speakers, which is also expressed in their loyalty toward their language, forced the Anglophone settlers to gradually accommodate to Guarani, the language of covert prestige. As the following generations integrated into the local community, the assignation of high status in Nueva Australia has turned its attention from primordial markers to socially constructed one, that is, high status is now acquired rather than inherited, and in-group belonging is expressed in the allegiance towards the local language and culture. In line with this change, also the two derogatory designations gringo and guarango have acquired a new, socially constructed, meaning that is no longer associated with negative attitudes. The use of guarango, which does not refer to a person’s ethnic but linguistic background, by young people is significant, because it used to be of low status before and appears to have positive associations today. In other words, the descendants of the settlers have turned from allegedly high-prestige gringos into allegedly low-prestige guarangos. Yet, they proudly identify as Guarani-speaking Paraguayans without claiming racial superiority over others, which ultimately suggests that while the gringos used to be covertly of low status, the guarangos were not. Put differently, guarangos are proud of belonging to the low- prestige community and do not attach a negative value to it, because to belong to the community of guarangos was, and continues to be, a virtue. This strengthens the Guarani language. In this respect, New Australia presents an extraordinary case of language shift since hierarchies of prestige seem to be inverted. Language competition is thus truly a local phenomenon (cf. Mufwene 2008) and must be considered on the local level.
173 These changes, added to the data on the attitudes of young students and professionals, suggest that English is of no importance in the community today. As earlier studies on English in Latin America showed, however, English is acknowledged to be the instrumentally most important language world-wide, so to become proficient in English is seen as a professional advantage and serves as a marker of high status. English is thus a “commodity” (Heller 2010) with a high instrumental value. The results of the questionnaires suggest that the instrumental value is also acknowledged among fifth-generation descendants today. However, over 92 percent of the participants who claim Anglophone ancestry and an interest in learning English do no not seem to attach the English language to their heritage. Rather, they wish to learn English in order to enhance their prospects on the job market or to pursue their dream of traveling. Thus, along with the integration of the descendants into the local community and the fading of the heritage language, English now has the same status in Nueva Australia as it has in other regions of Latin America: it is acknowledged to be the most important language internationally and the first foreign language taught in most nations, which justifies its ascription to Kachru’s Expanding Circle (1985) on a practical level. However, English is virtually absent in rural Paraguay.
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6 Concluding remarks and outlook
The present thesis aimed at providing new data on English in Latin America by describing the extraordinary shift from English to Guarani in New Australia and its descendant communities Cosme and Nueva Australia. Given our still limited knowledge on English in Latin America, above all rural Latin America, this thesis meant to contribute new input to the discussions on the role of English on the hitherto “forgotten continent” (Friedrich & Berns 2003). As has been shown, the establishment of a well-organized exclusively English-speaking community promised to ensure the maintenance of English in rural Paraguay thus giving birth to a new, lesser-known native variety of English (cf. Schreier et al. 2010) in a particularly heteroglossic environment. However, English did not nativize in Paraguay (cf. Schneider 2007), and the descendants of New Australia today are fully integrated into Paraguayan rural society. As this study has shown, the ecological conditions were not beneficial for language maintenance. After the split, only Cosme was able to institutionalize English successfully, thus ensuring its vitality. The lack of economic prosperity, however, induced the community members to migrate to more urban areas where their native competence in English was an asset on the job market and allowed them to move upwards on the social ladder. Their mother tongue thus turned into their resource (Blommaert 2010) and rapidly brought about the disappearance of English from the community. Along with Mufwene’s (2008) argument, economical decisions also determined this case of language loss. In Nueva Australia, by contrast, English was poorly institutionalized, and even though the community grew, the conditions were not favorable for language maintenance. The demographic imbalance between Anglophone men and Paraguayan women marginalized English in the face of the two local languages, and by the third generation, English ceased to be spoken actively. This process was further accelerated by the covert high prestige of Guarani. This symbolic value of Guarani as an in-group marker and as a fundamental part of Paraguayan national identity (cf. Zajícová 2009: 34; Russinovich Solé 1996: 103) became more important as more descendants integrated into the local community. This strengthened the use of Guarani. In the early days, the two ethnic groups of the gringos and the natives were clearly distinguished on the basis of ethnic categories. Similar to the mixture of languages in jopara, however, the ethnic boundaries became more blurred, and ethnic belonging is nowadays based on the use of Guarani. Status and prestige are socially 175 constructed and based on skills, such as horsemanship, political power, and material wealth. This focus away from inherited, primordial markers has become particularly evident among the fifth-generation descendants, who proudly see themselves as guarangos, i.e. ‘speakers of Guarani,’ despite the negative connotation of this label. Along with this shift towards a socially constructed system of values, English has shifted away from an ethnic marker of the group of gringos to a “commodity” (Heller 2010) that is acquired and not inherited. The acknowledged instrumental importance of English as an international language, indeed as the most important language internationally, as well as the effort it takes to study it, have turned English into a socially acquired symbol of status and an asset on the job market, rather than a marker of ethnic or cultural heritage. Thus, the descendants of New Australia today are fully integrated into Latin America’s rural society and cannot be ascribed to the edge of the British Empire any more, as Lane’s original idea had been. The map by Strevens (1992) thus cannot be completed by an additional line into Paraguay, and Latin America mostly continues to be a white spot on the world Englishes map. Latin America is generally accepted as a part of the Expanding Circle. If such a classification is based on the mere “acknowledgment of the importance of English” as suggested by Kachru (1985), then this classification seems justified. However, as discussed in section 2.3, Latin America, and even less so Paraguay, does not have an high number of competent speakers of English, and so far no regional, or national, second-language variety has been described in any Latin American country. This is in sharp contrast to other countries of the Expanding Circle, such as, for instance, the Netherlands, where over 90 percent of the population are competent speakers of second-language English (cf. Edwards & Laporte 2015). Thus, even though the questionnaires suggest that English is acknowledged to be the most important language internationally, it should still be questioned whether a classification of Paraguay in the Expanding Circle is justified. These results from the questionnaire guide us to the second aim of this thesis, which was to explore a new methodological approach that has so far rarely been applied in sociolinguistic studies on English in contact with other languages: an ethnographic approach. Participant observation and the collection of a variety of data types allowed the exploration of the fate of English in this particular setting most efficiently. For example, the Connelly manuscript provided new insights into the community’s past that have not yet been presented before and drew our attention to the importance of women in the development of New Australia, which had been neglected in the literature, since the success of New Australia might have been additionally challenged not only by the difficult living conditions but
176 particularly by discords between men and women. In fact, women were particularly important in this community since they were the principal drivers of language maintenance or shift: while Cosme hosted a considerable number of English-speaking mothers, which ensured the transmission of the heritage language, the majority of the mothers in Nueva Australia were Paraguayans, and their limited English skills did not allow them to pass English on to the next generations. In addition, the ethnographic approach made it possible to observe language choice in this community in participant observation instead of asking, for instance, for rather generalized answers on the basis of questionnaires. This method may have had the shortcoming of concealing certain attitudes that may have been collected on the basis of questionnaires, yet linguistic choices, whatever the attitudes behind them may be, are the driving force in language contact. Furthermore, qualitative data may be more challenging to be subjected to future comparative studies. However, this method has cast new light on processes of language shift that have so far been excluded, such as the negotiation of ethnic belonging, which are particularly important in rural Latin America and appear to be covert, rather than overt. Finally, it must be pointed out that a general data-driven approach made this research possible in the first place. As the research questions had been elaborated in the course of the research, it could be ensured that data to answer them could be collected. This suggests that in general a more interdisciplinary approach regarding methods and analyses may be due if more is to be discovered about our still limited knowledge on English in Latin America. The results of this study should hence be seen as an encouragement for future research projects to venture a methodological approach that differs from the norm and tries new ways of exploring the field. I personally suggest that more data-driven research should be done, which demands flexibility from the researcher, yet the results of fieldwork may be richer in the end. This is particularly the case in such marginal settings as rural Paraguay. The study of Nueva Australia, however, is far from finished. As mentioned earlier, this study has had a purely sociolinguistic focus on the ecology of English, Guarani, and Spanish in this particular setting. The linguistic data gathered in the written documents, above all the Connelly (1924) manuscript, promise to provide a more detailed picture of the process of language attrition in certain individuals. The linguistic repertoire of Ricardo L. Smith, for example, should be analyzed in more detail, as well as the contact-induced deviations from standard written English in the letters written by second-generation descendants. Furthermore, an inclusion of New Australia in studies carried out on the Anglo-Argentine community and
177 other English-speaking communities may shed new lights on negotiations of identity and the strength of local languages in Latin America. This leads us to one of the principal remaining questions concerning English in Latin America, i.e. the question as to why Spanish is so dominant in contact with English on this continent. As sociolinguistic studies showed (e.g. Russinovich Solé 1995), Spanish is a minority language in the United States, and its maintenance is only ensured due to the continuous influx of new speakers. In Latin America, English is endangered wherever it can be expected to be spoken natively, be it in an enclave community, such as in Honduras (Graham 2010), or among the upper-class descendants of Anglo-Argentines (cf. Cortés Conde 2007). It is true that for a speaker of Spanish, English is not a necessity as Spanish is itself an international language in which a professional career can be pursued without restrictions. Yet the value of English on the job market suggests that more interest in learning English would be expected. García (1999: 230), however, argues that there is in fact a cultural resistance towards English. This resistance is part of the Latin American identity. In other words, the resistance of Spanish towards English would be similar to Guarani resisting Spanish and English in Nueva Australia on a larger scale: even though a language overtly has lower overt prestige, as Guarani does, the speakers adhere to it because they express in-group solidarity with other speakers as they harbor feelings of pride. Such a feeling of solidarity seems to exist in places where Spanish is strong even though English is institutionalized, as, for instance, in Puerto Rico. In this country, Spanish is strengthened by social factors, which certainly include solidarity and in-group marking (cf. Velez 2000; see section 2.2.1). I would therefore like to suggest that more studies of identity negotiation and language choice in Latin America are needed in order to come to a more complete picture of the strength of Spanish, Portuguese, and even Guarani, in the face of English. Perhaps, then, New Australia has taught us more than one lesson.
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8 Appendix
The Henry Connelly manuscript, Nueva Londres, 1924 (transcription of the original by Ricardo L. Smith, Nueva Londres, 1950) Transcribed by D. Perez
Mr. Williams, who some 18 years ago, resided on this colony for a few years as a schoolmaster, has since wrote his history, “How Socialism Failed”, which was naturally incomplete and not without some errors. You have asked me to tell youmy tale for the purposes of compiling a c mtlete history of this movement. Any two people looking at the same object from different angles may form different opinions, for we can only see things as they appear to us. But w atever error I may have fell into, in giving personal opinions, altho, they are co clusions arrived at after mature consideration, the opinions are but my own, others may differ with me, But the facts as herein stated are true. It has often struck me that more insight can be gathred from small details than from matters of apparently greater moment. I will therefore commence by giving some personal experiences. Towards the end of 1892 I received a letter fromBrisbane informing me that the first batch would probably sail early in the new year. I having more money than sense decided to enjoy myself for a month or two before leaving. But as you know we did not get away until the middle of July. I had 7 months injoyment. A nd as many others did much the same, youmay be sure large somes o f money was wasted. One of Billy Lanes worst falts was he did not take us into his conferdance. He should have told us right from the first start, that he was in need of maney. His secretiveness bred distrust. When we left Sydney it was generally understood that we had w with us £10,000, - naturally it was a big disapointment to learn later that we were pennyless. There were complaints that Mr. Lane was not showing a matelike spirit, but we too right from the start broke the first communistic commandment, which is, share alike and work alike. And by so doing, we sit the women a bad example, and they kept us up to it somewhat afterwards. On the Royal Tar the men did all the work, holy stoning, washing up and such like. It is only another case of men robbing women of the rights, for which they had come. Th o I never hea rd any complain. The boyage was comparitively uneventfal, we had the usual high sea rounding Cape Horne. I have been on the sea before. On one occasion, on the coast of New Zealand near Wellington we were cort in a storme so bad that the passengers were battened down. But it only lasted a few hours, But rounding Cape Horne, we had two weeks of, and the cold was intense. But the Royal Tar was a sound ship, she could ride most any sea. During the voyage there was only one fly got in our love cradle. It has been commented on somewhat, but not quite correctly. It is true Mr. Lane posted up a notice forbidding women being on deck after dark, but not true that the women rose in rebellion. The fact is, the women said nothing, but just did as they liked. A fter having ruled this world for thousands of years, it was not likely that they were going to take notice of such a small thing. They also knew that there was only one suspect. No, it was the men who made the row. We called a meeting which Willie would not attend, he got Jim Mooney to speak for him. Poor good natured Jim, he did his best to peacifiy us, but it was no go. There were 198 several who spoke against the notice, and Jack Dias who afterwards proved himself one of Lane’s best supporters said I am surprised at Mr. Lane, One capable of organizing this great movement to now actthe part of the little boy. I wont play with you any more. Why is he not here to explane. The matter dropt, but we ust to worne the girls jokingly of the danger of being out against orders. £1000 was cabled to Buenos Aires, [2] which ena led us to charter a river boat to Asuncion, 800 miles up the Plata and Paraguay river, a t which place we were well received. A large building was put at our disposal, Troops of soldiers brought baskets of eggs, fruit and foold of all de scriptions. The soldiers at that time were a sweet lot, mostly criminals if not all. Their uniforms were a pair of drawers reaching to the knees, a short shirt, hanging outside. That evening a special train took us single men, some forty odd, to Virra Rica. That railway trip is not easily forgot. There is a hill not far out of Asuncion, there wasthen no c tting through it and as our engin used wood instead of coal its pulling power was not great, it had to make three drives befor it mounted the hill. It travled at about 7 miles an hour. Ad different places the natives handed us sugar cane thrugh the windows as we moved slowly on. It is about 100 miles from Asuncion to Villa Rica. It took 12 hours to do the trip. After a few hours rest we sholdered bluey, led by a guide to find a place called Espenilla some 30 miles away. The senary is good to look at from the railway. But not so pleasant when humping bluey. For at the foot of each peace of rising ground there is an estaro (swamp) not like anything in Australia, but composed of large tussocks of grass, witha mus trench between. Tuyu Bicue (big swamp) which we had to cross is a dandy. Our cook Fred Bilby a big heavy man, trying to leep from one tussock to another missed his footing and came into the mud with hisswag on top of him. We were all somewhat heavy loded havingbrought our bedding tents food a xes and s ch like. Jack Black a strong wirry young fellow went back to his help saying get on my back Fred, which he did, But they both fell into the mud. They laughed like school boys. We pitched our camp on the bankof a small streem and for a day or two scoured the country in search of the best place to form a settlement. Eventually we selected a place and I dont think we could have chosen a better one. Mr. Lane and 19 bullock drays (carreters) arrived that evening. Dissatisfaction was expressed because there were four or five natives living in the vicinety; and that it would mean their eviction if w3 settled there. Mr Lane seemed sad at the smallness of some of the opinions expressed. A fresh search was commenced, and we chose a place called Las Ovejas, (the s eep run) some 5 miles further on. But our spirits were dampened. This was the 3 of September 1893. We then started w work, some house building others preparing to plant. On Octuber 12 the Minister for Imegration senor Lopez visite us and arm in arm with William Lane declared it a colony expecial. Paraguay is spoken of as being the garden of South America Dont believe them. The open plains will grow an abundance of course grass, but for crops you have to go into the monte (scrub) which is very dence, and then the soil is not too rich, and on account of the splended climate with ample rain, the weeds are a terrer. We had otehr disadvantages, no roads, no market, and with railway and river service very unreliable. We had not been long here when it came on heavy rain, it pured down, most of the familys were living intents, we had done our best for the cook, and he was the right man in the right place. But you can imagin the women and children comming for their meals in therain and mud. Mrs. Posp said this is a perpetual pi cnic. The Pilgrim fathers took their God with them we came without a god or a religion to strengthen us, vainly believing that each was God enoug unto himself. Trust inbrotherly love cried William. But let me tell you that in the masses there is no such t ing. It is but one of the many delusions. When the second batch of carreters arrived, about 25 in number, each containing one family or more e we had got up some sort of shelter. Huts wit thatched roofs and mud worls. The elements must have been watching them for they arrived during the storm [3] which I have just all uded to, the downpur was such as I have rarely seen since Joe Beadle and his family was among them, he was a very religious man. But his God had cloven hoofs, and his religious what is usually called cant. We got to know him afterwards. Some of the
199 men derected the carreters to their respective quorters in the pouring rain, Joe expected help, which did not come so he called out. “Where are the single men” This afterwards became a byeword. But we must not be too hard on him or them, as there were only a few who had previously had ruffed it. About this time ther3 was a slight ruffle inthe otherwise not so smooth warters. Harry Tayler had been sent back from Buenos Aires, as Mr Lane had said for the pjrpose ovf looking after the interest of the sailors. Now some one had got a lette which said that Tayler had been sent for the purpose ofmborrowing money to enable us to buy a large tract of land adjoining the colony. A t a meeting Pope asked Lane if it was a s previously stated by him (Lane) that the only motive for sending Tayler back was to look after the interest of the crew, to which Lane replied yes and no, and after complaining of the lack of trust he explained the real reason, why. When Lane had finished, Mr. Pope said Mr. Charman, I am to understand that y your previous statement was a lie, there are many things I can overlook, in time, but a bare faced lie it takes a long time to overlook. Lane asked trust of others, but would give them none in return. He thus put himself in an awkward position and at the same time made it more difficult for us who wished to support him. At the commencement I was put to work in the gardin, but sho shortly after ther e being a shortage of bullock drivers I had to go t bull punching, we had bought bullocks from diferent places which gave a lot of trouble as we had not yet a paddock, we were constantly loosing them. I did my work in the day and for 6 weeks herded the bullocks until midnight, then yarded them, I do not say this is to bost, but rather to show the life we led. There were men who did more, than I, I have seen them comming home from work with their close soping wiet wieh persperation and you could hear the slop slop as they walked, their boots being full of swea t. In this worm humid climate one perspires freely if you work hard. But there were some who would not work, other again who could not. But there was jo complaints against thos who were willing to try. In saying no complaining I must not be taken too literally. A number of people can scarcely be eld responsable for the vulgarerety of the few. There were the Birks family and a son in law. A more respectable family it would be hard to find. But their previous training had unfitted them for a rugh labourious life. On once occasion we were grubbing up trees, and one of that family was with us, he certainly was not much use with an axe, but he he was doing hisbest. We all felt ashamed and affended when one of our men said there are some silvertails here who ought not to have come, as we dont want these lard-dar gentry. This gratis slure was non the more pleasant for having come from one who had been a scab on the labour movement in Australia. We had men of every kind and I could not choose a better example than Denni Connell in giving a d escription of one of the desconted ones. He first come into notice when we were carrying our swags from Villa Rica. We were having a rest near a native house, and Denny asked our guid what you said for water in Spanish, when told it was agua he repeted the word several times, thenmarched off, when he came back he said, that’s a dam fine word they understood it all right, but he continued these people dont understand English, but listen to that ruster he is crowing in English. Afterwards we were working together in the gardin and some were doing more growling than work. But Denny was plodding on. Presently he looked up and said, that all right boys, but keep [4] the tools going, for my part, I am going to stay here for about 3 mont s, j st to give the others a start, t en I’m off this place dont suit me. Lanter on he left, but before going he shook hands with all, assuring that if we returned to Australia, an run into his camp there would be a q art of tea for us. Denny was one of the real descontented ones. But was he one of the worst? And Mick Eogiety another Irish descontent, he was a second batcher, a hard worker, but a contrarry beggar. Loma Rugua, the monkeys were trubblesom eating sugar cane and maize, so they shot a number of them Mick said, well, well, the only chance we single men have of getting wives an d you shoot them. But I am ahead of my story. In November some of our women had to go to Villa Rica to see he doctor. One whoes baby was ill, another had an absess on the face, another something else, and oney young girl witha bad tooth, a dear girl as pretty as the brake
200 of day. It fell to my lot to take them. I afterwards shied clear of those sorts of outings, when I could. The second night we arrived at the Tebicurie river which was running pretty high, it being late a about sundown, the boatman had retired to his house over an half a mile away on the other side, there was no remidy but to camp till morning. Then the dance began, for the mosquitos were as dence as a fog. I let the bullocks go, got some wood, and made a fire. heaped cowminu4 re about it to dry and told them to p resently put it under the carreter to make a smoke, they to get into the carreter which was covered in, I went with the b ullocks to the high ground about a mile back to where the mosquitos were not so bad., promising to return when the bullocks had some food. One should always keep a rpomise. I dident. After the bullocks fed for a time I tied them to tussocks of grass and lied down alongside them till morning. The fact is I was tired. It was just day break when I returned. The women lectured me for havving left them a alone all night. They had been wa lking about the whole time worried by mosquitos, the fire was as I had left it, the could easily have made a smoke, u but I suppose they thaught that was my job. The boatman had not yet returned the woman with the baby a sked me if Iwould mind swiming theriver and going nearly a mile on to the nearest house and see if I could get some milk, I wasnt taking any. In bringing the bullocks up thrugh the long dewey grass, I had got wet to the middle, also my knowledge of Spanish was limited to almost zero. I say this inself defense. Tho perhaps I was somew at to blame. But consider for a moment and you will that it is only those who try fail. He who will not try is held blaimless. Some year gao I wrote an articule under the headin g. Are women instinctive barbarians, in which this passage accured. Experience have taught me this, as I was at tone time a member of a communistic societyof many hundred members. A nd I say nreservedly that the very nature of women combats socialism methodically, no argument canmover her from an a attitude of tacit rebellion, she will bend to the popular will, but never break. She obeys eeemingly and by that very dumb obedience prove her eternal hostility to the spirit of equality or the betterment of social conditions or higher thought sufficinet to breaka man’s spirits who means well to a cause. Many would consider the above a mere battery of words. I dont insist on it being litterally true, but near it. Presently the boatmen arrived, they have two boats one is put oneach side of the carreter with two rails under it, and over the boat, and thus it is floted over, But say it not to the Israelites, the chief man, a strapping built fellow came over absuletely naked. No immoral though t, consequently no immoral act. At that time children both boys and girls went naked until reaching about the age of 13. These men are all good swimmers, they feel safe without close, as there is always the cangce ofa a capsise. There were still two of our familys in Villa Rica attending to th despatch of goods and I was to get my meals with them until the women were ready [5] to returne. But I was much affraid of loosing my bullocks, consequently I staied with them night and day. The second day of my arrival I tied the bullocks up and went for my dinner. I was in a bit late. I heard a woman say to her daughter that if men came from the settlement in future they could cook for themselves. A womans wepon is a cutting tongue. But you can giver her all that advantage and equality thrown is. She cantget away from nature. sHe will always hold the whip. These are nasty things to have to wright, I could fill a book with them, they would not always reflect credit on myself, bit it is necery that Itell you you a few things. A few of the small things which makes up life so that you may the better understand that under our share and share alike equality, the most unplesant work usually fell onthe most willing horse. As socialists, both men and women failed. Heel and toe I walked out hitched up my bullocks and drove back to the colony. And left the women find their way back as best they could. And thos it be that I had not acted as a good communistic should Whatever else you miss, l let this be told. It was the loudest spoken communists who most consistantly avoided the unplesant jobs, wheras they were ever ready to fill such positions as storkeepers, bookkeeping, or any other light work, not too heavy for a woman’s hands. About this time
201 there was a good deal of complaning, as the women had no cooking utensils. Long before leaving Australia we were told not to bring too much luggage, as it would only be an incomberence, consequently the married people sold their cooking utentiols. they regretted it afterwards, as they had to get their food from the cookhous, w ich did not turn out at all satisfactuary and it soon became evident that the Association would have to purchase them. By that act they cured one evil which gave birth to another. For as all things were dest4ibuted from the store, the women watched each other like cats, each to see that the other got no more than her share, and had it not been that Tom McCann the storekeeper had lots of tact, and of a dindly desperssion there would have been more than one unsisterlike seen, as it was he was constantly being accused of favering some one. We come here the women included nder no delusion as to what equality ment, therefor if the storekeeper inserving out the meet gave one women the best, cut, all had to have a best, whether he had it or not. Cha Charley Boys could are me out in this to some extent, he was the head of the gardining department. We had made a special endeavour to have a gardin, and it so happened that one cucumber came on before the rest. Charley was a noted with and yarn teller, but no good at arithmetic, the problem of dividing one cucumber among 250 people beet him. He got over the difficulty by giving it to Mrs. Lane Such faveritism could not be allowed. So Ned Neil a social worker writer and speeker – late of Brisbane, brought it to the notice of the people at next meeting But I must say another word about the storekeeper Tom McCann, he was too good for this life, ne never complained, but I think that the constant haggling played on his mind. At any rate he left, there were lots wil ling to take his place. We choose Harry Watson, a real good fellow, but a growler who often said we would never succeed. But shortly after he got his new billit, some one was doing the thing he had been in the habit of doing predicting failure. But Watsonsaw things quite differently since he had got into the store, so he advised us to pull to gether, for he said sunshine follows the darkest days. This is not written for the purpose ofc4iticising Harry Watson, but to emphasize the fact that 99% of us are individualists, whether we know it or not. [6] But I have outpace events by some 12 mon6hs which I suppose were the hardest trials. The single men had their meals at a ong table in a shed. But we were not long at Las Ovejas before we began to miss knives plates, mugs – everything, after a short time there werescarce any left. Luis Sims lost his temper and shouted out I would not care if I only had a ps pt to drink out of. I also ha had been left with nothing, but Frank Degunst asked me to come to his tent. Will you believe it, he had a bag half full of suchthings as we had lost. I did not give him away, tho I suppose I oug t to have. We always suspected the married people, and where there are a lot of smoke there is usually some fire. We got a new lot, the knives and forks were of the best quality. I worned E.J. King, one of the lads who looked after the table, that he should brand the andles, but this was not done. Shortly afterwards sll our good knives were gone, and in their place we had old ones. We got to know afterwards that some of the things had been sold to the natives. But it got so bad at last, that the men had to take their tables utensils home with them. A long time after that I was at Loma R ugus, one of the men had got leaf of absebce to go out and earn some money. John McPharland and I were cut5ing a one thrugh the brush near the settlement and we came across a bag of tools of all sorts hid in the scrub. They were undoubtedly intended to be sold to the natives. These people of whom I had been speaking were average men and women, yet the small tast tha they had of brotherly love and share alike had poisoned their minds. Or was it that their minds were poisoned before they came here. By a training which enable the fittest to s rvive, the fittest for that civilisation, but the unfittest for the higher.life. In our case we failed, not communism. From what I have alrea dy said, it is easy to understand that we were not long in forming ourselves into two clikds. Those for the rule and those against, I was tith the former. Baist blind partisanship. Both sides equally in fault their fault lay in this. They had signed and accepted rules which they never tried to live up to. We failed because we asked hem to think as we thought. 80 has left, we
202 gave them sufficient money to take them to Buenos Aires, yet I in spite of all this unplesentness, there were some compensation. Of an evenin we ust to have singing and dancing an theatreal performances and strife for the time was forgotten, then to crop in some new quarter. We had bought 100 head of catle and about 200 harses, they run on our land right near by a and sweet pills they were. One would have thought that Australians would have no difficulty with cattle. But for some unaccountable reason we met with all sorts of difficulties. Conditions are so different to Australia. Here we have small plains without a tree, inclosed more or less by monties the scrub is so dence that a horseman cant get thrugh it, the cattle we bought had never been yarded in their lives, and if you tried to drive them, they would go straight for the scrub. Our men had not lurnt to use the lasso, consequently there was no end of trubble. Here the blowflys are very bad, any sore on an animalwill always get maggoty, and most of the young calvs get maggots on the nable and sometimes on the mouth, so that they require constant watching. It is on ly by the use of the lasso that wild cattle can be looked after. Our stockmen would not use. After a lot of descussions proposials and counte r proposials, we decided to sell all the wild ones. We ha d by this time brokenin about 200 milch cows, and nearly 80 bullocks. Christmas 1893 we made a big thing of it, and a number of prominant paraguayans were invited, among them the Juez of A jos, also his sister and a young woman school teacher of Ajos, both very plasent girls and they could sing nicely. But they could not understand the kissing under missletos, but when Mr. Lane [7] explained the origion of this custom they both soon forgot themselves and strolled under it. Women are women the world over. It was real merry, for we had some real livly young men and girls. Sorry that these things were not intended to last, that w3 could be a little more charitable, a little less foolish. The germ of that something better must me in mankind. For we had those among us who could and did. Bebruary, 1894. We commenced to make preparations for the second batch and decided on a site about ten miles away called Lomarugus. It was nearer to the railway, and experience had taught us that too many herded together did not lead to harmony. Jim Mooney was sent to Monte Video to meet them. Jim was Mr. Lanes mouthpeace. He worned them that if they came on to the colony they would have to obey the rules. Those not willing to had better go no further. Some plain talking was done on both sides, and 5 left. Mr. Lane met them at Corrientes on their way up the river. They had among themr number an old crank, by name Pempson, with a young wife. he claimed to be the son on an Earl, as soon as Lane stept abord the old fellow hit him. I think he had some money, anyway he left in Assuncion. As a set5ler he would have been about as useful as an unbroken bullock that is inclined to charge. They arrived on 12th March. As a party they were mostly bushmen, with not too many women and children. Whereas we had brought quite a few town bummers with far more women and children than men. They went to work indead earnest grubbinvg and clearing, unfortuanally they experemented too much. Among other things they grubbed andplanted 22 acresof wheat, which grew well, but had scarce any grain. They were an head strong crowd who resisted all restraint on what they turmed individual liberty consequently there was soon a clash with William Lane, and the consequence was a public meeting, held at the cross montie about half way between the two settlements at which Gilbert Casey was chief speeker against and Jim Mooney for Lane 90% of those present voted in favour of the constitution being put in forse. A few words of explaination is neceerry. We had agreed, knowingly or otherwise to give Mr. Lane dictational power until there was 500 familys on the colony, and then the constitution automatically would come into force. This meeting was held to ask Mr. Lane to put the constitution in force at once. That is give us popurlar control. He gave the liberty asked, but withdrew himself with some 40 odd others. Thus the whole organization wa s broken in Australia dnd cons equently he re. I will never think that he acted right, and we acted shabby by refusing to concede to them a few leagues of our over abundant land. They left on May 24, 1894 taking a proportion of tools cattle and some money. A few hours before
203 they left I met William inthe gardin, he ha d just put his pipe in his mouth, he asked, Have you a match Harry, Igave him one, my greatest sorrow was that I had not a million times that much to give. iStrange as it may seem, some men attracts, other repels, I could not follow him, he was too straight lased, he did not make sufficient allowance for others who differed with him, But I at any rate knew that hsi motives were good. After leaving they staid on a plase called Codas for a few weeks, and it appears they were without meet, that did not some of the back bush brothers, one morning William smelt meet, and after an invetagation, Paddy Linch, George Roberts and another chap whose name I forget, all first batchers, were named as guilty of appropiating that which did not belong to them. No forgiveness they had to go. Three of the best men among his crowd, Roberts Especially, there wasnt a better man, W hen we camewe brought a boat with us, thinking that [8] we would settle on the Tibecurie river, but as we did not we left it in Villa Rica. The three men after leaving Lane went to Villa and got the boat and by some means got it to the Tibecurie and paddled down to the Paraguay river thence to Corrientes where they were arrested for being in charge of an unregistered boat. But the British consul got them out. Paddy wrote to us from Corrientes, and told of being bleed white by mos quitos while going d down the Tebicurie and inreference to taking the boat, he said, placed in the same position you would have done the same. S o we would. Poor George Roberts, we heard after that he perished for worter in Australia. As for Lane, and his party, they purchased 7 leagues of land on time payment and called their new home Cosme, a place about 50 miles vfrom here. Their people visited us sometimes and we returned the visits. They worked very hard and pulled together and I dont know to this day why they did not succeed better. Their land was payed for, so I am told, with money received from Australia. In 1898 quite a number of their members left. But I think it was in – 99 that they had their first serious brake. As is the rule a woman was at the bottom of it. Mr. Lane wrote an article, and delivered a speech on, where love is, there God is. He alsotold them that he could but see their raiments which covered the frame, but no soul. I was told by some of his own people that theyresented such trash. Yet had they known better what God is, they might have understood William a little better. Who was it that wrote Ag God, that men could see a little clearer, or judge less archly what they cannot see. Ah God that men could live a little nearer. They would then come a little later. But they carried on valliantly yet for a time. The had aspered higher than we, consequntly they had further to fall when they decided to brake up. We broke up in peace, but with them it seems to have been grab who grab can, they rengled amongst themselves over the spil for nearly a year, and spent thousands of dollars in legal expences. They had got themselves into the hands of a crafty half lawyer, who would have bled them of their last, had not the government intervended and commissioned Mr. James Kennedy of this colony tosee if he could settle matters. Mr. Kennedy visited them but concluded that his time would not allow him to undertake the business. Eventually the Government sent Gilbert Casey who succeeded in winding up their affairs. Excepting $2700 which their lawyer had succeeded in winding into his own pocket. So ended communistic Cowsme. Which is now composed of only 7 familys. But they deserved a better fate. Our cook had gone with Lane, and Jim Barnes took his place. The cooking was a pretty big job, with only two assistance he had to cook for all hands. The women took a liking to Jim, a nd they found an unusual way of showing it. They used to interfere with his fire or disturbe his work jus t for the fun of hearing him sware, and he could sware correctly. But there was something so natural about th e fellow that he never offended. Upon Mr. Lane withdrawing, we elected Fred Kidd President. He was a second batcher, and a real fine fellow, and at the same time we sent Gilbert Casey to realise the assest. Owne McGuire wrote him a God speed poem which was published in Australia. I remember a portion of it, as follows: Go tell our mates a cross the sea, that New Australia lives and thrives. There is no such thing as fail. And further on he reminds Mr. Casey that he has our
204 conferdance, he says, and in return we ask of you, to tell the truth, the honest truth and nothing more.. Yes in our new paradise, w e hat potery, songs and music. We also had popurlat control, so I supo suppose had our forebarers, the monkey. But there was [9] wa s still some to find fault they had not found an heaven of rest, so they had to blaim someone. I suppose that was to be expected. But for the next 12 or 18 months we sailed thrugh reasonable fine weather. Our principal trubble wa s to raise revenue. For the only thing we could frow and sel a t a price which would pay for the labour was potatoes. But here it takes the best soil to produce 3 ton pr acre, so there is no furtune in them Paraguay imports them from Argentine. We grew and sold fairly large quantitys of them for which we got $10 per ton. I think we made a mistake in forming 3 additional camps. For do their best, and they worked hard, it took 12 months before they could produce any crops for themselves. Building houses alone took time. Loma Rugua was the principal grainery consequently the new settlements got most of their supplies from there, which caused some grumbling. As the Loma people felth that they were carrying more than their share of the work. They were mostly single men as the bulk of their ma rried people had gone to Las Ovejas. They produced in proportion to numbers a bout twice a s much as the rest. Gradually jeoulsy and party wrangling caused dissension, and eventually it became Loma Rugua against the rest. None at that time or since could truthfully say a word against Fred Kidd, and I am convinced that had it been possible for him to have remained President to this day therewould have been a more pleasant tale for me to tell. He was a man without any special ability, yet no fool; he had no the tact or persistence to meet Caseys tricky opprsition. But he was absolutely sincere. And sin cerity goes a long way. No man can be a successful leader who is not sincere. Party bickering caused Kidd to resign This wa s January 18, 1896 and Gilbert Casey who had returned from Australia some time before this and had been the principile mud thrower at Kidd, even as he had been at Lane, was elected unopposed. Some say that the elements conspire against God’s chosen. A proverb we may eccept as our excuse. Was he forced on us by destiny? It may be that we are beings of free will, tho I doubt it. But a trubblesom curse did the Lord our God send to rule over us. he wa s always causing strife. He said himself that the moment lifeless peace came he would leave. So you may be sure that during his short term of office there was some sq arls. On one occasion at a me eting of the Board of Management, Gilbert pa ssed some cutting remarks about John Sibbald, the secretary, John in his cool way turned his back to Casey and said. The Chairman has passed reflections on my actions and motives. I cast the false imputations back into the gentlemans teeth that used them. One would think that such a smack would smart. Not so with Gilbert, he only smiled. He had had a number of ruff knocks, yet I doubt if he has the slightest ill will against anyone. The real character of the man can be gauged by his remarks when the board of management requested his resignation. He simply said YES you can put me out but Ill be Gilbert Casey still. If Mr. Lane had possessed some of Gilbert’s pluck, this movement might have been different, yet with al his contraryness, he has some good qualities. And whatever may be the complection of his children, they are educated and can speak English (tho their mother cant) which is more than I can say for a lot of others. Casey lasted about 6 months as chairman, when we elected Sydney McCreen, but as Casey refused to resign and the Directors were 3 for and 3 against him, his casting vote kept him President of Directors. McCreen was chariman of the Association, but until Casey resigned he had no legal powers. The position was, that whatever [10] one did, they could nullify or undo. But McCreen carried on all the same, and proposed taking a poll on the partial braking up of the colony. John Sibbald, a nd Alfred Walker has previously drawn up a scheme by which any one who so desired had the right to claim his shair of assets and to take up an allotment with the free use of the camp for his cattle. But Casey ha d ruled this unconstitutional, as it made no provision for absent members. We took advantage of a clause in our rules which provided that a ny 7 members by signing requision could demand a vote of the people on any quest ion.
205 32 of us signed a requision asking that a poll be taken on the above scheme and as usual when we proposed taking a vote on a ny question of importance, we held a meeting to discussit. This meetin was held at La Novia. It opened at 2 o’clock with John Sibbald, in the chair. After one or two had spoken Gilbert got the flore and spoke till dark, and the meeting broke up without a vote being taken. I remember one of the things he said was there are some who want a life of peace and ease to become corpulent capaletists, sit on an ea sy chair witha peon to serve the mate bombilla, such lifeless inactivity would never suit me. But all his talking could not stop us we took a vote some time after and carried it by a large majority. Buthe was too resourcefull. Or was it that we were not res ourcefull enough? McCreen now came along with a new scheme, which allowed any groop toclaim their shaire, but they had to continue under the socialistic rules. He was going to Asuncion with the avowed object of approaching the Government on the question. He also proposed taking a poll of the people upon his return. About a dozen members signed a protest against him. A nd they sent Denis Hoare to Asuncion to explain to the Government thatMcCreen did not represent the colony. McCreen and Hoare went to Asuncion together. Denis was hotheaded and if my memory serves me right he tookthe bit in his teetch. I well remember him saying that this proposial to have several colonys instead of one was unworkable and wors than the disease which itproposed to cure. At any rate without the consent of the people or Directors he succeeded in getting Senor Santos secretary to the Minister for Immergration sento to the colony with the following proposials. That we hand over our provisional titles for the 50 leagues of land which w3 held conditionally and the government would grant us as a free gift 60 squares (about 105 acres) to each colonist and 6 leagues for communial use and new commers (one league is nearly 3 miles each way) This was put to a vote and carried unanimously To brake up communism was the first unanimous vote we had ever taken. Gilbert Casey did not vote ad he said he would take no part in the breaking up of the A ssociation. He opposed any alteration. But as Abe Lincoln said “the Pope might as well issue a bull against the course of a planet. Probably Casey’s belief in the practicability of continuing communistic brotherhood was no greater that the rest of us. But he resisted a change for the sport of oppersition. From sheer devilery and love of notority. For a clearer account of what led to the brake up of the Association I refer you to an article by Denis Hoare which appeared in the Western Champion, (I think that was the name of the paper) it wa s published in Barcoldine centeral Queensland about 1898. Iespecially refer to this articule as I can vouch for its truth Excepting in so far as he was blinded by biast, poor Denie, the thought that those of a different opinion to himself were prompted by base motives. Should these lines reach that far I Hold out my hand to him in friendship. I also hopt that you will hunt up Denis Hoar’s articule as it will settle a dispute between Mc Creen and myself. He says that I am in error in saying that it was [11] Hoar who brought about the breakup of the Association, but that t it was himself that did it. I cant find any official proof, but my memory is playing a funny prand if Syd Mc Creen was not the only one who opposed at a meeting at Loma Rugua when Santos read the Government’s proposials, McCreen said I have only lately arrived from Australia there are a groop only wating a faverable report from me, they are ready to come so soon as they receive that report, it will be a big disappointment to them s hould they arrive and find the Association broken up. Santos called a meeting of Directors, and we had to show that each had been properly elected. But when it came to our chairman Santos explained, that Casey not having resigned, the Government could not recog-nize McCreen. This meeting was held at Los Amigos, Casey was at Las Ovejas, Santos sent for him and after a lot of trubble. A lot of meetings of Directors in November an december. On the last day of 1896 Casey ha nded in his resignation. The Directors then confirmed on behalf of the A ssociation and Santos on behalf of the Government the election of Sydney McCreen as President of the A ssociation. We then wrote to absent members whos address we possessed and inserted notices in the papers of the intended liquidation. It was not till Febrary that the division took place whichwas completed
206 without a itch. Several schems were suggested. We chose the one of Peter McRorie, which in actual practice, with small alterations worked well. There were 88 Members. All over 18 years of age wa s counted as such, and our buisness was to devide the assets in such a manner so as to give no reason for complaint. And the strangest thing is we succeeded. We first got the black smith to make brands from 0 to 9 and then we started on the cattle drafting 88 best cows, run them through the crush and started by branding the first with no.1 second no 2 and so on up to 88. We then drafte d second best and followed the same method They run out 8 cattle to each member. The few that were over were put with thehorses and branded in lots according to value. Then tickets numbering 1 to 88 were drawn for. I drew 33 consequently all animales bearing that number were mine. Other assets were valued, wuch amounted to so much per member, who received on the books a purchising power nearly equal to his shair. The rest were drawn for. After the division for 2 or 3 years we carried on any how. Then we made the mistake of electing a Board of Directors with Gilbert Casey as Presedent, none thought that he could now do much mischief. But he was Gilbert Casey still. But as I will deal somewhat fully with that subject in the next few pages I need notdwell on it here. But I must say a few words on how it faired with us in the meantime. After the division there were a few who had a nest egg, that is they had not thrown in their all, they were enabled to purchas cattle and have had no difficulty climing the ladder somwhat. Others, a part of their time at their traid or storekeeping, with spare time farming, have succeeded in getting well out of the reach of want, some are decently well off. As for me I worked 2 years in the Argentine A rgentine, and saved some money, I have now nothing to complain of excepting my imvironments, which are far from that which produce the best. We are also handycaped by living so far apart, as I believe if we had a debating club, it would help the young people to becom thinking beings a nd play their part better in the world. The education in Paraguay seems to be of amsll value, perhaps none at all. [12] THE POBLADOR QUESTION. After the liquedation, for a ime we lived in peae. Each man being a law unto himself. But peace was not destined to last. Gilbert Casey, with his unquenchable thirst for improvement, must have an Junta. The minute b book for 1899 and 1900 shows that consequen ce and to s how what the consequence was I mus take a short retrospective glance. Whenwe first arrived here there was supposed to be 45 Paraguayans family on this 7 leagues of land which we nlw hold. And in forming our different settlements, we removed 2 from La s Ovejas 2 from Tuyu Rugua, none from La Novia, 2 from La s Amigos, and 5 from Loam Rugua. There was 1 removed after the liquidation. It may be that there were 1 or 2 more which I cannogt call to mind excepting the one who wa s put out after the division. In each case they w were pa yed for their improvements, and they had the liberty to settle on a ny part of the land approved by the Directors. I only know of one to leave the colony Carlos Figero, he took up a block on the Ajos colony. But i cannot be cirtan that there was only one, there may have been even 4 to 5. I must also add that on the colony they had free use of the camps for their cattle and also that we never in the smalest way interfered with them. In fact we had always been quite toofriendly with the natives. On A A ugust 6th 1899 the first formal Junta was formed with Casey Presedent and by the end of the year a storme was brewing. Up to then there was no reason why this should not be a British Colony. Since; Impossable. March 4th 1900 the Junta was in open revolt against the Presedent. This dispute lasted about 12 months during which time there was no business done. I gather this from official documents and minutes of Boarcd meetings. As I myself at the was in the Argentine. But I gather that neither the Colonists nor yet the members of the Junta knew what Casey was doingor driving at until the 26 of June. Mr. O Donnell received a communic-ation from the British consul in A suncion to the effect that the Govern- ment had asked him to call a conference to be held in Asuncion for the purpose settling the dispute on the colony. The said conference to be held at the British consulate on July 10th. Mr
207 O Donnell also told that Mr Casey the principle on one side of the dispute and himself the principle on the other side were to name two representatives each to meet him at his office with the view of presenting the conclusions arrived at to the Minister Mr Casey na med James Kennedy and John Cadogan. Mr O Donnell named Fred Kidd and E Jones. I may say that Mr Caseys two representatives were both new commers. When they met at the Consulate, Mr Gosling informed them that there was now no need for a conference on the question of right or wrong of Mr Caseys contention as the government had decided to suport him. Both O Donnell and Kidd desired to put some questions. They were informed by Gosling that he could not discuss the matter, but that it was the Governments earnest desire that they should come to a mutual agreement. O Donnell’s party saw that they were beet and admitted it, but inform ed Mr Gosling that they could not work with Casey. This cant be repeted too often, as it is constantly being said that the conference was held to decide the poblador question. That question would have been settled with out going to A s uncion, for ha d Casey appro ched the people in a right spirit Instead of acting the dictator, I have no doubt he would have carried his point. A nd he knew it also. On the following the day the minister asked them to name a new Junta. Casey is no fool. He took good care to name a [13] anpliable one.. Or rather I should sa y, on e of hos own way of thinking. These remarks dose not apply to Jacobson or Gorman, as they were only pawns in the ga me. And as for J. King, Guess I’ve been personal enough already without adding to my sins. I have said that Casey was no fool. But me must have been hard pressed to select a committee on this colony who would work with him and therby assist him in his scheme of spite, for so far as I know, excepting Kennedy and Cadogan every man was against him. This if nothing else shows that he was a man of conspicious ability and determination, after a sleepless night and immense thought he submitted the following names to the minister which was naturally eccepted Gilbert S Casey as Presedent, George Jacobson as Vice Presedent, Thos King, James Kennedy, John Cadogan, Wm German. I have spoken of the consequence of an Junta on this colony with Gilbert Casey at its head, I must now go into some details. As it was – excepting the exit of Lane and the liquidation of the most important event in our history. A t the time of our arrival in Paraguay, it was not customarry, at any rate in this part to buy farm land as occupation for a number of years on fiscil land was considered nearly equal to ownership. And even now these s mall farmers, they only cultivate 2 to 5 acres each, do not usually buy, as the Government is constantly buying land from the big landholders and cutting it up into 16 square blocks, (16 squares is about 25 acres) for settlers. Such persons get their titles free after fulfilling certa in conditions. But by law, occupation did not mean ownership on th these lands, as this wa s not nor had not been private property for ages. Consequently the natives had no legal claim. But Mr Lane to prevent ill will, conceded to them 3 leagues of land at Ajos (pronounced Arcos) a township that was within our concession. The Government had 500 16 square allotments surveyed at the time, mo4e since for native who may leave here, or others who may wish to settle. We removed somewhere bet ween 10 and 15 most of which resettled on other parts of the Colony. I mention this because we have been accused of dealing archly with the Paraguayans. I have devoted some space to my preamble. which will I hope clear the position. I will now state the case. Mr. Lionel Stanley had applied for an allotment on which a Paraguayan woman lived. The Junta granted his application. Casey was Presedent of the Junta. But he sometime afterwards objected to what he had previously agreed to. The Junta after a squabble of some months called on him to resign, but he would not. They then approached the Government, to put him or them out. Hence the conference. He had us at a disadvantage, we had little or no money whereas he undoubtedly had help. As for Mr. Gosling the British consul. I got to know him afterwards intimally, and the impression I have of him is a British buldog, not likely to lend himself to anything underhand, and yet on this occasion, If he knew anything of the law,
208 he must have known that he was countenancing a breach of the law, and a breach of faith. Other names I need not mention. That they did it in defence of the Paraguayan is only a camuflage used to blure their real motives. The real motive was 1st oppersition to the colony, 2nd to be looked upon by the Paraguayans as their champion. A breach of law the Government admitted by giving ½ league of land in compensation. Let us now see if there was a breach of faith. When Santos came to Loma Rugua, he called a meeting (he spoke English fluently) After explaining [14] the Government’s proposials, by which we got 60 squares each an additional 6 leagues for communal use. He was asked have the natives any rights to to the land they occupy on this 6 leagues. He replied None whatever. And when our agents signed the transfer in Asuncion they were officially infor-med that the natives had no claim. Again in 1899 the Junta got to know that Casey was in Asuncion working on behalf of the natives. they sent Mr. ODonnel who sayw the secretary to the Minister who informed him that the natives had no claim. Also, when the surveyors arrived Santos was here and appointed Cas y to superentend the survay of the south. W.K. Birks the centre a nd H. Connelly the north. In a few cases there were natives living on the lots which we had survayed. Niether Santos nor the survayer complained. The Paraguayans were told that the could get land on the Ajos colony if the caired to move. Nor yet was there any allowance made for the land occupied by the Paragua yans when survaying the 6 leagues. Further I am told that the Government admitted breach of contract at the time of granting the ½ league compensation. But no ½ league could compensate us. For our brand new junta were not satisfied with mearly carrying out the Governments request, viz. give allotments to settlers who were on the Colony. For under their paternal rule Paraguayans were brought in by the score. I extimate that not less than 50 familys were introduced from outside. The conditions were made worse for us as we had not settled near ea ch other, but had spred all over the land as it would be more suitable for cattle. The incoming natives were allowed to settle almost where they liked, picking the most suita ble sites. This brought a close contact and as is almost the case the higher race sinks to the lower. A Mr. Stanley who visited us about 8 years ago wrote of the Paraguayans in the Sydney Bulletin, that they the morality of house cats and the energy of sloths. I believe there is a rea son for all things. But in this case there are two. First an d principle the tranauil climate, (this country ought to have been called placido) secondly being situated in the centre of a contenant, th the native has not had to fight against competition. There is nothing to put life into the people, and in other respects this countr y is in a sense unique. New arrivals coming here mostly just stay long enough to have a look round, and then leaves again. It appears that it is only those who have fell out with the rest of the world, or given up the fight that remains. They a re not naturally the worst, but they are not Empire builders. Consider for a moment on these last few lines as they will help you to understand better t e truth or falseness of my contentions. In the right or wrong of actions, which often depends on circumstances. For instance, In Australia there are German colonys. It is not considered lowering for them if they adopt A ustralian habits, whereas if they has settled in, let us say Cylon, or among any other backward races, it would have been lowering. Because they would deterate. And we having desregarded this rule, have lowered and detera ted. We had some grit, so some determination, some desire for liberty both in thought and action, But now we accept our invironments without resistance. We have not one among us strong enough to take the lead and those new arrivals who remain they are bumped up against invironments not cal culated to produce the best. For ages, the people, mostly half breeds have been contented to live on maize and mandioca, their close of calico, boots unknows untill lately. I dont know to what extent we are the children of our invironments. We immitate 5 out of every 6 flots with the stream [15] little regarding where it takes them Then there is something in this hot climate that dose not stimulate mental vigor. There are thousands of descendants of people from most parts of the globe in Paraguay, they all seem to come down to the Paraguayan mental level which is at the bottom of the ladder. Those attempting to account for our falure, must not
209 overlook the influence of our invirements. About 140 years ago, a number of Irish formed a colony in the Argentine, and their descendants are Irish still. Their climate and inviromentds did not so conspire against them, but with us one half of the first generation are almost true Parag-uayans. And I cannot help blaiming this close intercourse with a lower race, which was forced upon us by an Junta composed of men foreign to our interest, for our moral and mental decay. When I was returning from the Argentine at the end of 1900 I met Casey and Codogan in A suncion. Gilbert explained what had taken place since I had left. He said in a bosting way. I beat the consul, I beat the colony, I beat the Government. But I could not have done had I not received help. When we got the consul over to our side the rest was a simple matter. Now tell me he continued, havent I reason to be proud. I told him that I would not answere until I had an opptunity of understanding better. Well I got to understand better. A nd the next time I say Casey I told him that if I met him on a dry track perishing for a drink of warter, I would not give him one. Some 10 or 12 years after he reminded me of what I had said, and continued. Perhaps at the time you ghought that you would not gove me a drink, yet you would be the first who would. You cant beet a man of that sort. I ha ve opposed Casey and Co openly, and it says something for their tolerance that we still remain friends. Some say that I am intolerant, perhaps I am. But I knew it then. I know it better now that Iiving in such close contact with the natives could only mean our extinction as a British comunity. Ant it may be that those who call me intolerant, are themselves and intolerant. who will not see the truth, they can only see or think in the direction where their dolars lay. Having the natives living alongside of them means cheap labour. To make my meening clear I cant do better than mention a small matter which is jus t now occupying public thought. Our Postmaster O’Donnellhas intimated his intent ion of resigning, and some nominated Mr. Kennedy as postmaster, whichgave rise to a petition being taken around. This petitionstates in pretty plain language that Kennedy as Administrator and dictator is now scheming to get the post office. That the charge is not true, for to my knowledge Mr. Kennedy does not want it. It is only a subterfuge, for the real motive and the only reason why that petition was signed, was to let the administator know that he has not the conferdance of the people. And in exactly the same way Casey and a few others in 1900 with the same subterfuge called on heaven and earth and all the angels in heaven and all the devils on earth, to be their witnesses that it was the legal and moral rights of the poor Paraguayans they were defending. Their poor backward bretherin. For according to them, we are all brothers so long as it dont tuch their own private interest. They who lend money to there back-ward brothers at 10½ interest per month need not teach me moral laws. Neither need they with trickry diplomatic fawning indeavour to teach me aught as to the natives legal rights. It is a stand which cannot be defended, for they had none. Truth says; I was personal spite against [16] us colonists, a determined ans successfull plot to kill this as a British community which first gave birth to the Poblador question which from first to last was a camoflag a subterfuge which, in plain words means deception. But about this Post Office there is no deception. The veil which covers it is too transparent to deceive anyone, yet it brings back memories of the past. In this day of grace, the very end of 1923 after public spirit had been dead for 20 years, the corpse moves, which is a sign of life in that which appeared to dead or if not dead, then fossolised. I have myself at times said that I would prefer going to hell on my own upp, than be led lamblike to heaven by a leader, though his intentions be ever so good. Fellow colonists, fellow sinners, join me in giving three cheers. The corpse moved, the corpse lived. There are said to be about 750 Paraguayans, men women and children on the colony they own about 3000 head of cattle and there are only about 17 European familys, but if you dont draw the colour line too neat you might make about 10 familys more. In 1901 Mr. James Kennedy became Presedent of the Junta, and shortly after it was abolished at their own request., the nominated Kennedy as administrator, he got the job which he still holds. Gilbert
210 Casey retired wit well erned laurels, got his naturalization papers and became a Paraguayan subject. The Government rewarded him by appointing him comesario (head of police) on a colony some distance from here. He served as such for over 16 years then retired on a well earned pension. He is living again maong us. He Gilbert Casey, the one time anarchist, is now a respectable member of society, althoogh 70 years of age he still possesses much of the same mental vigor as of old. But he is now a supporter of law and order. Time is a healer of wounds. we try to look on the best side. We even sometimes give credit where no credit is due, and I sometimes think that in his refu-sal to resign the presedency of the Ass ociation in 1896 he may have had other reasons than those of which I have credited him. For one thing, I doubt that he thought McCreen the most fitted man to take his place, Mc Creen being somewhat of a dictator in a veiled way, with a good flow of words, but like most of us, not too much brains. One blinded by Balmain swand and visionary to the extream, and like Gilbert an overpowering love of notority, visible to all exceting himself, and withal, a likeable man always ready to do a good turn. But inrefference to Gilbert’s persistence I only state this as a possable reason for it is more than possable that his love of acting was so overpowering as towarp his judgment. Be that as it may he has some good qualities, there is no cant about him, and like most such, excepting when proved to the contrary, his word may be relied on, and I must not overlook anothe strong point in his character. He cant meet with oppersition without resorting to personalitys or abuse, and his weakest failure, like a number of the rest, not strong enough to resist the forces that was brought to bare against him. South American morality. Besides a number of small risings, Paraguay had revolutions in 1904, and again in 1911, 1912 the latter lasted 12 months. Troops passed through the colony without in any way interfearing with us or our property. Up to that time we had somewhat held ourselves aloof from them and they trusted us and held us in respect. Quite a number brought their horses tous for safety on many occasions giving areceipt as having sold the animal to us, such stock were not interfered with neither by the Government nor yet by the revolutionary forces, But for the last 10 years more than half the colonists [17] are accepting the Paraguayan standard of morals as their own, conseque-ntly we are treated as equals, not superiors, for the nearer we are to their code of morals and to their level of thought, the further we are from manly actions or strenght of character. A revolution which lasted 18months has just terminated. Nearly all the colonists lost some horses others lost all and large numbers of cattle besides having our houses robed and put up with insults from degraded troops. And we who ought to be somebody, not having the power to hit back. Some of the colonists are now selling out, or trying to, with the intention of leaving the country. In mexico there are always revolutionary agents advising the people is preferable to living under their present Government, be that government what it may. The same this is going on here, with numerous dupes ready to give ear. If it be tha t we have to go through Mexico’s experience. It would pay us a l to go cost w hat it may. The Paraguayan has advanced considerably in the last 30years, but to me it looks like a backward advance, or as Adam Lindsay Gordon says, wiser and worse are one. I have said that we have lost prestige, it is alw ays so where the whites have treated a coullared race as equals. If the British in India treated the natives as equals, they too would have to go. About 15 years ago there were persistent rumers of a conspiracy by which, so rumer said, General Escobar, an expresedent of Paraguay and said to be the most influential wire puller in the Republic was negotiating with o one or more correctly two of the colonists for the pjrpose of adding this colony to his other estancia which is on our border. The rumer seemed absurd but dont be too hasty in rediculing rumers of that kind in South America, for however much they may be behind Europe in other respects they are nothing behind in political trickery, we were wlrned at most every meeting to be on our guard against outside influences. I myself might have been credo-lous enough to have given ear to the report, were it not that I has suffi-cient conferdence in one of the supposed conspirators to render suspe cion impossible, for though I am not blind to his foults, we all have them, he is not a man of a
211 scheming kind. In this I dont want to be personal, so I am enclosing a letter which I have just received from Mr. John Cadogan, it explains how the rumer originated and I wish here to say that I am very much indebted to Mr. Cadogan for the straightforward manner in which he answered my many questions. For Ibeing somewhat an egotist, find some pleasure in having previous beliefs and expressed opinions confirmed and thus being able tosay I am right after all and more especially because I received no support at the time. In 1914 the Administrator called a meeting of the colonists and explained that he had approached the government with the object of having an Junta. This Junta would deal with all matters, notpurely colony affairs. It was not the first time that he had recomended it, he had for years insisted that this was our safest course to guard against treachery. To my dull mind, if there was any trachery, Kennedy’s proposials werejust such as would make successfull conspiracy possable. For if once an Junta was established, Mr Kennedy not being an energetic man there was always the possibility of this Paraguayan committed ruling the colony. A nd there would be nothing to prevent them (if this was worht their wile) from giving the General to run his cattle on this camp. That would would be the first step, the next would follow. Neither Mr. Kennedy nor yet his supporters denyed this. Nor could they show what [18] advantage an Junta would be to us. You will notive that in one of my open letters written in 1916 I said you have been worned of the danger from without, I worn you of the da nger from within. Yet the people with lamb- like docility supported the Administrator, with only one desenter, I lost my patience, as I do sometimes, I went to different houses and told that they were a lot of children who cries out “epunarty” (a Gurini (Indian) word for splendid) to anything that Mr Kennedy proposes, although it be contrary to all reason. A day or two later I went to Mr. Kennedys as one can explain objections better privately than at a meeting I pointed out, what the danger of an Junta was, that it would be composed of Paraguayans that they would elect their own presedent which might be Gilbert Casey. In a very short time that wouls usurp the powers and duties of the Adminis-tra tor which would bring us all under Paraguayan control. Mr. Kennedy exp lained that the the discussions would have to be in Spanish, that was no reason why the members should not be mostly colonists. I asked him how many colonists therewere who are mentally fit and also a sufficient knowle-dge of Spanish to carry on a debate in that language. He did not reply I also told him that the Paraguayan method of doing buisness and ours were so different that none of us would sit with them and also it would mean a considerable addition to our expenses. Thus ended the Junta controversy. Died, died, in its attempt to give to an hybrid. We have had but a few meetings in the last 8 years. The last I attended was on May the 17 1917. The trubble wich caused the meeting arose this way. We have or ust to have an advisery committee to assist the administrator. Mr. Lionel S tanley had complained that Mr. Kennedy was acting over their heads. I also wrote certain letters which smarted a bit. This meeting was called to give us an opportunity to state our grivence, Mr. Stanley accused the Administr-ator of having sold timber without consulting the committee, I accused him of absolutely ignoring the committee, and added, so long as I am on the colony, I will never be on another. Time is the great agency which separates the truth from fiction. More than half now admits that I have not always been wrong. I believe that most people comes to t eir senses just before death. I have worned you against accepting statments as true without first examining and comparing them with the evidence for and against. To me it is unpardonable offence for anyone but most especially for one of some public note to contort the truth, to treat truths and falshoods as imple-ments to be used to be used at discretion, but of no moral importance. Falsehoods told on the colony for local consumption, may perhaps sometimes be overlooked. But the offence ismade much more serious when the intention is to deceive strangers. I am sending you a circular published by Gilbert Casey and dated September 7 1897. I writing this history I have been caire-full not to let personal feelings of biast to any way influence me. But this letter is such a travesty of fact that I ask no pardon if I let myself out abit. It is scarcely neccery for me to point out any errers in it, as it is all untrue. If not in
212 letter, then in spirit. It is true that after the division there was 9 or 10 withCasey at their head, did agree, or rather agreed to disagreed as brothers usually do. I think I am safe in saying that they did not work cooperatively for one day, nor had any kindly feelings towards eeach other for one hour, though there does seem to have been some agreement among a few of them. Gilbert was one, to get hold of the others fellows property. Tools agricultural implements etc. [19] As a matter of fact they never were a society, excepting in name, they were knownas the holy brotherhood, it was about 12 months after that holy birth that they decided tobrake up (not without wrangling) and called upon Sydney McCreen and myself to arbitrate and wind up their affairs., giving a written undertaking to a bide by our by our findings. In this pamplet Casey tells intending imegrants that they will participate with us (the holy brotherhood) in subsidy, I am not sure as I have only my memory to guide me. but Mr. T. O Donnell is of the same opinion, which is that there was no subsidy paid after the division and that it was at Mr Casey’s suggestion that it was stoppe d. The letter also says that the government pays the salaires of a schoolmaster and other officials whom we appoint of our own members. It would be of some help to me if he would name one of these school master of officials so appointed. Let me tell Mr Casey that the Government has never paid $1 towards the salaries of schoolmaster at any time, and a as to the payment of officials. what officials? We had an Junta, and for the last 22 years an A dministrator which has always been paid at the Colony’s expense. But strange also that shortly after publishing this pamplet he should accept a government appointment as head of police to enforce law and order against which he had always spoke. I am sorry that so much of this pa per is devoted to criticism and explanations, but I must further ask your indulgence. In 1903 Mr Kennedy resigned the Administratorship and Mr Fred Kidd was appointed in his stead, and why Kidd resigned some 18 months later was never made clear to my satisfaction, but I have my suspecions. Previously in 1902 Mr Kennedy had sold some timber, but before doins so had asked permission from the Government, but, now Kidd sold timber and as he took the stand that our papers were equal to definite titles, he did not ask permission, consequently he received a rather sharp letter from Asuncion telling him that he had exceeded his power. To this letter Fred replied as follows. Sir, ir reply to your communication re the rights of this o colony to manage their own affairs and sell timber, etc, I respectably draw your attention to clause .. of our agreement of April 1897. I am your obedient servant F. Kidd. A letter couched in such language was not suitable to the sensitive official stomach, it made them quite ill. Well rumers had it freely that the Government had intimated to Kidd that his resignation would be exceptable. Had Kidd possessed some of the combativeness of Casey the Government have had to show their hands in an unmistakeable manner befor they would have got rid of him, but Kidd was not combative. This may have been rumers only, but I dont think so, at any rate he resigned and as we all know Kennedy wat thought highly of in Asuncion and that means a lot more than it ought to do, we again nominated him Administrator, a position which he has held ever since. A few days ago I was at his house and he handed me a bulky document which he haid might be of some use in compiling this articule. This paper Mr. Kennedy informed me, he had read at a meeting when handing over the administration to Fred Kidd in 1903, altho it is very long I think it may be usefull to you, so I am sending a copy as Mr. Kennedy wishes the original returned. T at I dont remember the meeting aluded to nor do I remember ever having previously heard of this document detracts nothing of its value, as I suppose it is my memory at fault. He informs us that during his term of office, he had admitted one native, and o one only. Carlyle would exclaim, Great heavens only one. He gives the mans name and the reason for admitting him fully. And yet at the same time [20] And yet at the same time there were numerious complaints of natives being admitted, whos names I mostly forget, but I remember Charly Antell telling me that when Segundo Cuevas got provisional titles for 16 squares adjoining him, he (Antell) complained to Kennedy about it and that Kennedy was quite indignant about
213 people acting the dog in the manger by refusing to give natives land, Kennedy also expla ins the great difficulty he had in getting title deeds for the colonists. Strange that amongst us even cooperation in so small a way dont work. For previous to this each colonist had to get his own titles and I knowed none who had the slightest difficulty. There were about a dozen who had not yet applied for theirs. I was one of them, in December 1901 I was in Asuncion and saw Santos, I asked him if he could get my titles thrugh. He told me that they had some 6 months previously wrote to Kennedy asking him to supply an informe of all the colonists who had not yet received their titles, but he said we have received no answer yet. He said they could not issue any more totles until they received this informe. I went back to the colony and not being much concerned about the titles, I ma de no inquiries. But a few months after speeking to GeorgeJocobson I told him w hat Santos had said, Jacobson assured me that it was the first he had heard of it others told me the same, so Iwent and saw Kennedy and explained what Santos had said. Mr. Kennedy asked me if I thought it was hs his business to go to every house and inquire if hey had received their tid titles. I said no, I did not think it was, but he could easily give notice tha5t any one who had not received titles should call on him. Yes he said, I could do that. A bout 6 months after this the notice was given in the and in the course of time we received out titles. And I have only now lernt the amount of labour it caused Kennedy further in the report he deals with the stray cattle nusence and shows that he induced Leon Gonzales to fence his boundry, it w as not Mr. Kennedy’s fault that after the fence was completed Gonzales always left a gate open so that the cattle continued to run on the colony as befor. Then in reference to giving Mayor Furros permission to run his cattle on that part of the colony called Corriche, It was afterwards that he granted to the Capataz Francisco Agurreo was reputed to be a horse an cattle steeler. Well poor devil some time after, in a drunkenbrawl he dilled 2 policeman and got 2 years impesonment for it, when he came back he was killed himself by some of the relations of the men whom he had murdered. I may add to show the security of life in Paraguay, that some time previous to this his employer Furroes had been killed in a revolut-ion. There have been considerable material progress in Paraguay within th the la st 30 years, but like Europe the progress is in the wrong derection. The world is getting more materialistic every generation. We read of and I have been acquainted with people who lived in North America and Canada 50 or 60 years ago, they all say that it was costomary, especially in the farming districts to give one another help. And we read that when Presedent Garfield died, the neighbours plowed and planted his widows farm, but it seems to me mutual help throughout the world is a thing of the past. This colony went thru it liquidation, I question if the wholde world has not to go through the same process befor long. Therefor this colony may not be the only black sheep. with us it may be true and I suppose it is, that the best of the old pioneers have left, consequently the worst remained. But is that a reason why the new commers who obtain land on this colony should not realize that they have some responsibility. I write from a communistic [21] spirit, for I have still a leaning that way, I am not blind to the fact that it is impracticable. But is that a sufficient excuse why men and women should not live up to the best that is in them. Yes the best have left or died, new mommers have taken their place. It is small credit for them to know that tho the go from one end of the colony to the other, roads such as they are, cut through the monte, a permanen6 bridge over Tugu creek done by voluntary labour, while they will do no public work, excepting when paid. If a tree fell over the road, or a bog w ants draining, they will leave it to the other fellow, a nd were they a little more logicall and had a little less contempt for the communists and themselves set us an example of mutual help and good feeling, I would be spaired the duty of writing these lines. There is a law in Paraguay which requires all men over 18 and under 50 to work one week each year for the public good or pay $20. In the colony like most things it ha s not been carried out or only in a luke warm manner, but some years ago, the A dministrator asked the colonists if they were willing to comply with the law. They all replied in the affirmative.
214 What happened? No more was heard of it. The colonists being but ordinary men wated for some oneto set up the neccery organisation or tell them what to do. There being no leader, nothing was done. Eccepting one man who did his bit without being wating to be told. The roads are now for wheel traffic almost impassible. It is this sort of a thing that makes the best worst (unless he is made of cast iron) and dose not improve the worst. For there are few of us who could be communists. Only those who do right for rights sake are communists. For in practice we find that good deeds and kindly actions are usually rewarded with ingratude, if then we dont find sufficient reward in the act itself, we are apt to give up hope and turn to the other extream by becomming pure materialists. A nd what of the youths who have grown up on the colony. Some few years ago, Syd McCreen wrote an open letter in which he pleeded for popula r c-ntrol, in oppersition to a one man administrator, he says, we have amongst us vardant youths destined to grace our legislative council and this paper will at least show them the spirit in which public matters should be delt with. My answer was. Just so. Let us hope that they a re, but they would need to be better than their elders as we would not grace a legislative pig sty. Yes we have vardant youths, bardant I understand means green, and it is this that trubbles me. Green, undeveloped, yet in phisic and appearance better than the avarage. But a combination of things whichwe call invironments have prevented that vardant plant ripening to hay, have prevented that mental groth without which could grace no legislative council. For a number of years we had the church here, but they brought no God known to natures kindon, we have also an administrator, but neither assumes leadership we might then have realised better our responsibility. For looking back ever since the liquidation, the principal fruit of their brains a re that done which ought to have been left undon, the things undon which ought to have been done. This may seem strong language, but I refer you to my open letters, which deals with this subject. They were read by all the colonists and none were able to refute what I had wrote, and yet whó am I to constitute myself of others seeing that I am not competent to judge myself. To assist you to visualise our invironments better I must state a case or two. Many years ago we were coming from Villa Rica with several correters, the Tebecurie was running a bunker, and so as to prevent the bullocks swimming down stream, one of our chaps W. Tomas stripped and swam below them to keep them up stream. After [22] they had safely crossed, Bill swam back. Just then some market women came and as is their custom gave us a segar each, they were in no way concerned about his nakedness. In that respect the Paraguayan may lead us., less sham less pretence. But there is another side to the Paraguayan Character, the men treats the women with no consideration or respect, and also the Paraguayan is I believe the most mudderious people in the world, and their morality isto us lowering and degrading. It is not from love of the Paraguayan that they are invited into the colony, probably I who have faught this close intimicy from the beginning loves them as much as the rest. We have heard of people selling their sons and daughters into slavery, I wish to know if this is not just as bad? If you took Ajos as a centre within a radius of 10 miles within the last ten years there has not been less than 100 murders, probably many more. The population is estimated at 18,000. For nearly 15 years, with the assistance of the Church of England we had a good school, but the time came when the majority of the children could not be called British, they do not understand the language and the school had to close. After a short time a school was started in which Spanish alone was taught. We were fortunate in getting a good German schoolmaster. For a time both colonist and native children were taught, but as the Paraguayan would not pay anything, their children are now bored. I am in hopes that shortly English will again be taught. There is one redee-ming point, the colonists alone support it as we got no assistance from t the Government. In writing this short account I fear that I have dwelt almost exclusively with the dark side of communistic life. The fact is that the other things seem almost too small to mention. And yet it is th these small things which imprints themselves on the mind. When we first came herewe made a special endavour to get the gardin going as soon as possible. We grubbed up the small trees but left the stumps
215 of the large ones, consequently we could not plow, there being to many roots, so we dug the ground with the spade. There were a lot of us working side by side. I remember working along side George Roberts. He being a heavier man than me used sometimes get ahead, he would then incrouch on to my ground to help me along, and also I have worked with Jim Mooney cutting rails and beems in the montie. When carrying them out, he would always take the heavy end. Many of these small things I remember well. No sir, we were not all bad. There were men and women among us who did try to help others and they were often those who had the least education The many articules which I have read dealing with our early endavours have all left the part played by the women severely alon. It is a most difficult themm to write, she had got equality, but that did not help her to get out of the grove wh which her sex compelled her to follow, a kind of obscurity. Look at her impatially compaided to men, she is half a child, is it then any wonder, seeing that the spirits of a number of well meaning men broke down, that the conditions proved to trying for her. She is more individualistic, than men but not so pronunced. A woman will work 12 hours a day in her own house or out of it, she is not affraid of work, but like a child, to get the best out of her, she must find pleasure in doing it, for her own family. It is so also with men, But it must be more or less voluntary. Dont try comp-ulsion.. I think the best women are the worst communists. At Loma Rugua they had a general wash house, where they also washed for the single men. The chackers (plantations) sometime had a lot of burs and cobblers pegs. The women gave notice that they were not going to wash close which the burs had not been removed from. This reminds me that something similar occured at Las Ovejas with the men. The bootmakers posted up a notice [23] that no dirty boots would be reparied. My impression is, you may draw up rules and regulations to govern wome, give her freedom and equality. Such rules and regulations are only scraps of paoer, she will make no open protest, but just do as she likes, and if men waites on her and treats her as a doll, she will not hav3 the slightes objection to just doing the looking one. During the time of the Association they had a vote equal to men, I heard a number say that they would be just as contented without it. They have no vote now, and there are not one who wishes for it. They know quite well that have just as much influence without it as with it, thos I think there are some questions she ought to vote on. Others she ought to leave alone. When we first arrived at Las Ovejas we agreed to work 10 hours a day for the first three months, at the expeation of that time we were to take a vote on wether we were to continue the 10 or only the 8 hours. Jim Mooney asded several of us wether it would not be better to continue the 10 hours a little longer, we mostly agreed. But we lost when it came to the poll, as the 8 hour party carried it. We had been in the habit of having smoke on during working hours so Jim proposed that it be continued. Again we were in the menority, I dont think that any of us caired much which way the vote went as we would have our smoke a anyhow. Some of the women voted against smoke ho. Mr Lane was an inveteralt smoker himse lf and thought women should not vote on matters which they were not directly interested in. Jim Mooney also expressed desapproval. We could rebuke them. Yet without their company, life would have been just unbearable. Women like the best of men appeals to us most not by the great and heroic acts of which the historian loves to dwell but by those thousand and one kindly actions which alone makes life livable. To write a history of New Australia without mentioning what it led up would be incompleat. Therefor I am sending you copys of open l letterswhich I sent browd cast worning them that we were sinking to the level of our invironments. I am also sending 2 open letters of Mr. Casey’s one of which he sent to the five settlements in 1896 the other was p published in England. I have commented on it elsewhere, I am sorry to say that a case about one metre long by half metre broad was destroyed some years ago, as the moths had destroyed most of its contents, which were books and papers of the old Association. I am also sending coppys of minutes of a number of meetings of the Directors and Bord of Management and Junta. I also refer you to A Short History of New Australia by John Sibbald, afterwards published in pamflet form by W. K.
216 Thomas, printers, Grenfell St. Adelaide, no date, but I believe it was in 1898. John Sibbalds articule ixs not only true but absolutely without bias. There was a copy of Mr. Williams history – How Socialism Failed on the colony but I cant get hold of it now, I would like to point out a few errors and I must also worn you against taking too literally articules wh which appear in the newspapers. I have seen many, most all contain false statements. A god example of newspapers verasity may be gleaned from a two collum articule which appeared in the Sydney Daily Telegraph July 21 1923. While there is a good deal in it that is true, there are many misstatments, For instance it Says Lane had carrefully selected the members. The truth is that there was no attempt to select. The only think asked was 60 pounds cash down, not 50 as said same articule. A lttle further on it says Lane himself contributed 1,000 pounds, well if he did I never saw him, you may take that with a pinch of salt. Further on. The colonists spent 250 pounds on a brass band whereas we never baught it, as it was a present from Mr. Pogson our bandmaster. We returned it to him when he left. The articule continues, the bandsm en practised as part of their 8 hour day. Not true, as they practised at night and [24] an d never in working hours. And then we had surrendered all civil rights, yes, so the discontented ones never tired of telling us. But let the truth speak we had surrendered no rights excepting such as were necery that we should su render, until the initial difficulties had been overcome. Inquire into this and you will find that it is true. And then, Lane shutting down all discussions. Mr. Lane never at any time interfeared with any discussions excepting his absence could be called interfearance. The articule also says that the Governmend confirmed them in the possession of 25 square miles. Whereas it was about 60 square miles of land, bein in all over 7 leagues. I have only criticised the the Daily Telegraph to put you on your guard against other medicine of this sort. Some time ago I read in a paper that in the early days we had not enou gh to eat. It is true that at times, perhaps oftimes we had no flour But passable bread can be made out of ither maiz or mandioca. If you know how to cook it. We always had plenty maiz, mandioca, vegitables of all descriptions and rairly was there a shortage of beef. As for the children poridge is he best food for them they were robust and healthy. Our food was not the best, but we had plenty, it may look like pauperism that we accepted a subsidy of $ 800 a month from the Government for the last 5 months of the Association, well we never asked for it and I remember right, it was at our su gestion that it was stoped. The exchange was at the time $ 28 to the pound sterling, it is not $ 210, as the quotation is 4200. I wish also to say that William Lane did not receive his just dues His fault was he tried to do that which his nature did not enable him to do. He was not fit by nature to lead, nor had he ever associated ith or understood the class of men who joined this movement. He should have remained behind in Australia behind the sean and let his pen do the work. Nor yet were we fit to follow. Yet fit or not it, I dont regret having come. We had something to do. Good or ill I suppose we were borne to do it, we didnt shirk it we were game enough to try and I suppose we are all better off in dolars than we we would have been had we not come., and if there is an heavenwe get nearer by trying, tho we fail. Always remember, it not those who have the best close the best food and such like as are happyist. And also we and others who tried and failed, are as a finger post. We have not lived for nothing. But I am now convinced that it is only those who have a real God, not a delusion as a sui t of close which is only to be worn on a Sunday, and dose not cover their nakedness for the rest of the week, could have done the thing which we tried to do. We had those among us who pretended to have a God and a religion, exxepting a few. Harry Taylor was one of the few. Their God was my Devil. I repeat that it is only those wh do right from shear pleasure, to please themselves to satisfy the God of which they are a part, are fit to live that high life which we attempted. Some of our members were Gods in themselves, they contained that something good undefinable which I call God. Perhaps they knew it not. And I pray you that in writing your history, you will have a good word to say for those who are able o live for something more than self. For God and man are our witnesses, they are of the worlds best. But why did we fail? Were a group of the stoutest hearts to start
217 an association in the centre of Australia, say North West Queensland, let them work never so hard, falure would be a certainty, we too courted falure by establishing ourselves in the centre of a contenant. Our falure is no charge against communism. The very fact that we settled where we did proves hat we were not a thining body of men. And thus it is at all times.. Communism can not attract us, we are its unlike, we are not fit for a social order superior to ourselves. Our civilization sowd the seed and we reap the harvest. and we too also sowd the seed, and we too reep the arvest. The old colonists who in the past did lead, now no longer leads. But our opinion have some weight still, but the time will come soon when we must go, and with us he last vestige of what this colony ought to have been. The last inward and outward sign of beinga English speeking community; For we cannot look forward to new arrivals for fresh vigor. Henry Connelly, Jan. 19th 1924.
218 The questionnaires
Este cuestionario forma parte de mi proyecto doctoral en sociolingüística en la universidad de Zúrich, Suiza. Por favor, tómate un momento y llénalo. Tus datos serán anonimizados y se manejarán con absoluta discreción. Se trata de un estudio sobre el uso de lenguas en Paraguay. Puedes indicar más que una respuesta y añadir más comentarios en el reverso.
Parte I Apellidos
Año de nacimiento
Lugar de nacimiento
Sexo ☐ Hombre ☐ Mujer Lugar de residencia
Ocupación Por favor, indica qué estudias ☐ Estudio ………………………………………………….. / estudiaste o en qué trabajas. ☐ Trabajo como……………………………………………… ☐ Otro: ……………………………………………………….. Educación Por favor, indica en qué ☐ Primaria en ………………………………………………...... instituto has estudiado. ☐ Secundaria en ……………………………………………… ☐ Superior en ………………………………………………… Lengua de instrucción en la primaria ☐ Castellano ☐ Guaraní
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Parte II ¿Cuáles son las Castellano: ☐ Hablo ☐ Escribo lenguas que sabes? Jopará: ☐ Hablo ☐ Escribo
Guaraní: ☐ Hablo ☐ Escribo
Otra: ☐ Hablo ☐ Escribo ……………………………
Tu lengua más ☐ Castellano usada es … ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ Otra: ………………………………………………………………… ¿Cuál lengua usas los amigos ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’ con las siguientes los padres ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’ personas? los abuelos ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’ los profesores ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’ los compañeros ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’ de uni / colegio el cura ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’ un funcionario ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’ un policía ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’ un vendedor ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’ un asunceno ☐ Castellano ☐ Jopará ☐ Guaraní ☐ La ‘otra’
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Parte III ¿Tienes interés en ☐ es muy caro. aprender alguna lengua ☐ No porque… ☐ no hay dónde estudiar. extranjera? (puedes indicar ☐ no hay buenos profesores. Por favor, indica primero si varias respuestas) ☐ no tengo tiempo. es que sí o no y luego indica ☐ es muy difícil aprender otra lengua. las especificaciones ☐ no hace falta. requeridas. ☐ otro motivo: …………….………………………………….
☐ Sí. ¿Cuál lengua?………………………………. ☐ Sí, porque… ☐ sería útil para mis estudios. Puedes indicar ☐ es imprescindible para mis estudios. varias respuestas. ☐ sería útil para encontrar un trabajo. ☐ sería útil en mi trabajo. ☐ es imprescindible en mi trabajo. ☐ pretendo viajar y lo necesitaré. ☐ es admirable saber varias lenguas. ☐ me interesa el país donde se habla. ☐ otro motivo: ……………………………………………….. ……………………………………………….. ¿Has estudiado o estudias ☐ No porque… ☐ No hay dónde. esta lengua extranjera? Puedes indicar ☐ No hace falta. varias respuestas. ☐ Es muy caro. ☐ No tengo tiempo. ☐ No hay buenos profesores. ☐ Es muy difícil. ☐ Otro motivo: …………..………………… ……………………………………………….. ☐ Sí. ☐ En la escuela o el colegio Por favor, indica ☐ En la universidad
221 dónde la estudias. ☐ En un instituto privado
Parte IV ¿Hay o había en tu familia algún extranjero / ☐ No extranjeros? ☐ Sí. Si es que sí: ¿Quién? ☐ Tatarabuelo paterno ☐ Tatarabuela paterna
☐ Tatarabuelo materno ☐ Tatarabuela materna
☐ Bisabuelo paterno ☐ Bisabuela paterna
☐ Bisabuelo materno ☐ Bisabuela materna
☐ Abuelo paterno ☐ Abuela paterna
☐ Abuelo materno ☐ Abuela materna ☐ Padre ☐ Madre ¿Cuál es / era la lengua materna de esta(s) Lengua 1:……………………………………………………. persona(s)? Si es más de una, por favor, indícalas. Lengua 2:……………………………………………………. ¿Hablas la lengua de esta(s) ☐ No. persona(s)? ☐ No, pero me gustaría. ☐ Sí, la aprendí en casa. ☐ Sí, la aprendí en ………………………………………….. ☐ Sí, la estudié. Si es que no la hablas: ¿Te interesaría aprender ☐ No porque………………………………………………. esta lengua? ………………………………………………………………..
☐ Sí porque …………………………………………………. ……………………………………………………………….. ………………………………………………………………..
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¡Muchas gracias por tu participación! Si te interesan los resultados de mi encuesta, contáctame bajo [email protected] o a través de Sonia Uldera.
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