Look for Paraguay on the map and you’ll find it squeezed between Brazil, Bolivia and Argentina.

It may not be the first stop on the average tourist itinerary, but it is a fast-growing and vibrant nation that has understood the importance of communications and media.

So when the Paraguay Bishops’ Conference invited CREC to visit the capital, Asunción, and offer a Media Workshop, we jumped at the opportunity.

The session centered specifically on “Peace Journalism” and was attended by about 50 Media professionals from all over the country.

Amongst other things, we discussed the speed of social media: the horizontal, digital time-line that obliges us to set our sights on what comes next – almost before it happens.

That was when the Guaraní participants in the audience interrupted with an objection.

Guaraní time, they reminded us, is not horizontal – but circular.

Like the circle of the seasons.

Like the cycle of Life.

Like unity, equality, community.

In fact, the Guaraní have no word for “tomorrow”.

Ko’éro – If the sun should rise”, is as conditionally close as it gets.

Instead of fretting over the past, and fussing over the future, they concentrate on the present – and what it means.

Traditionally, that search for meaning has found expression in the most varied Mediums: music and dance, art and architecture, carving and painting.

Add to these the latest communications technologies and techniques, and you have a positively explosive multimedia mix that is putting Paraguay back on the media map of the world.

Paraguay. Where tomorrow is today.


Seàn-Patrick Lovett
Ary Waldir Ramos