Paraguay Aussies - Peru

Sep 2006
Paraguay, one of South America's poorest countries, is the surprising home to an Australian diaspora that began 113 years ago.


We meet descendants of what The Bulletin magazine of the time called "a harebrained scheme" to build a new Australia in the middle of the jungle, a society in which all Australians were supposed to be equal.


About 2,000 Paraguayans can trace their ancestry to a group of 500 bushmen, shearers and unionists who left Australia in the 1890s, led by radical socialist William Lane, after a violent clash between Australia's colonial government, and striking shearers.

Among those to undertake the journey was Mary Gilmore, who would later become one of Australia's best known poets. She eventually returned to Australia and excerpts from an interview she did in 1959 are included in the story.

"It was purely communistic. I wouldn't say it was a success, but I certainly wouldn't say it was a failure." Dame Mary said.

But the dream did fail. Within months the settlers had fallen out, with many refusing to obey Lane's rules of no alcohol, and no mixing with the locals. Many eventually returned to Australia, and those who stayed ended up abandoning communal living, and simply divided the land among themselves.

We find that some of their descendants -- with names like Wood, McLeod, Burke and Murray -- are still on the same farms today.

Produced by ABC Australia
Distributed by Journeyman Pictures

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• Paraguay
• Australian
• Diaspora
• bushmen
• shearers
• unionists
• William
• Lane
• Socialism
• news
• documentary
• current affairs
• journeyman
• journeyman pictures

[piolin7]

Que tiene q ver Peru?

[demikede1]

Not only the Australian Paraguayans are seen a rarity, there is a community made up of 50,000 descendants of "Confederados" former Confederate Americans in a town called Americana in Sao Paolo State, Brazil. Their ancestors were families whom left the southern US after the Confederates' defeat in the US Civil war in 1866 and the Brazilian government offered asylum for 15,000 persons from the Confederacy. They maintained a sense of "American" identity while they became Brazilianized over time. +

[Evergr3entree]

@claudialurego Lo que hace fea a la gente es el carácter, no la apariencia física.

[claudialurego]

@DarkwarriorPy LA VERDAD PERUANOS Y PARAGUAYOS SON LOS MAS INDIGENAS Y FEOS DE SUD-AMERICA.

[c2328420]

cool Rodrigo,, my friend personal..-

[TheLoyalhuman]

@cooldewd35: No there entity you mention not classified as a nation but a colony. They left a colony and this is exactly what I had refered to. Indedendence differs from patronage. The fact remains that a nation is soveriegn with the recognition of those around the sanction of those around it and this would apply to this circumstance. By defintion that australia was neither a nation before founding as such a right of return would be contested via technicalities.

[cooldewd35]

@TheLoyalhuman I beg to differ. The Australian cricket team has been in existence since 1877 officially. Edwin Flack competed for Australia at the Athens Olympics in 1896. These people viewed themselves as Australians and the the rest of the world viewed them as such as well. The diggers that died in the trenches in WW1 did not die for anyone but Australia. Yet they were mostly born before Federation in 1901 - thus by your reckoning they were not Australians as the nation was yet to exist!?

[cooldewd35]

Furthermore, the Volksdeutsch of Eastern Europe settled there before "Germany" came into existence as a unified nation - yet no-one would seriously dispute the Volksdeutsch right to identify as Germans. Those Volksdeutsch of the Siebenburgen are not even of "German" descent...yet they can "repatriate" to Germany without drama.

[cooldewd35]

@TheLoyalhuman In actuality, there was an entity known as the Colony of Australia when they left in 1894. Native born inhabitants were referred to by others as "Australians" and self identified as "Australians". Hardly any of the Australian soldiers who fought and died in WW1 were born after Federation. They were born during colonial times, yet they certainly hated British officers and viewed themselves as being a seperate nation and people.

[DarkwarriorPy]

@oskarfq Un peruano hablando de indígenas, que ironía. Si Peru con Bolivia son los países con mayor porcentaje de indígenas en Sudamérica. Seremos pobres pero no somos feos.. XD

[adric137]

i meant very interesting video

[adric137]

a veery interesting video