Paraguay (in Guarani: Paraguái), officially Republic of Paraguay, 1 is a country of America, located in the central zone of South America. Its territory is composed of 17 departments and a capital district. Its capital is the city of Asunción.

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It borders Argentina to the southeast, south and southwest, with Bolivia to the north and Brazil to the east. It is the fifth smallest country and the fourth least populated in South America. Its territory is characterized by two different regions separated by the Paraguay River, the Oriental, which is the most populated, and the Western, which is part of the Boreal Chaco. Although it is a landlocked state, 10 has ports on the Paraguay and Paraná rivers that give an outlet to the Atlantic Ocean through the Paraná Waterway - Paraguay.11

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The human presence goes back to the Neolithic period, which dates back around 3200 years before Christ.12 During the pre-Columbian period it was inhabited by indigenous peoples of the Tupi-Guaraní and Mataco-Guaicurú groups. The arrival of the Spaniards marked the beginning of the Hispanic dominion of this territory until the 19th century, when in 1811 Paraguay achieved its independence. The contemporary history of the incipient nation was marked in an economy that grew in its beginnings, until the advent of two major international wars that devastated the country. The successive political struggles for power, together with two civil wars, culminated in a fierce dictatorship, which was finally overthrown and the democratic period that remains in force until the present was established.