Travel Guide Villa Hayes

Villa Hayes is the gateway to the Chaco. Like the eponymous department of which it is the capital, its name pays homage to U.S. President Rutherford Hayes, who intervened in 1878 as a mediator in the border conflict between Paraguay and Argentina after the Triple Alliance War. Hayes had proved Paraguay right by establishing the Pilcomayo River as the natural border between the two countries. Villa Hayes is nicknamed "the city with five names". It was originally called Reducción Melodía (1786), then Amancio Cué (1800), Nueva Burdeos (1855), Villa Occidental (1856), and finally Villa Hayes (1879). The third name translates into French as "Nouvelle Bordeaux". Farmers from Bordeaux (but also from Béarn) set up an agricultural colony here in 1855. A project organized by Francisco Solano López and Carlos Anatonio López with the French government. But the four hundred settlers expected something quite different from this infertile land, this infernal climate and these clouds of mosquitoes! The French then organized the first strike in the country's history, which provoked a real diplomatic crisis between Carlos A. and the French. López and Napoleon III, who even considered invading Paraguay... The crisis was resolved by a large compensation payment to France. A descendant of Frenchman, journalist Salvador Garozzo Simon (1929-2011), has worked all his life to preserve the history of the city in a museum, now renovated and run by his daughter. Today, Villa Hayes' activity is based on the sugar industry, shipyards and soap factory, but many people work in Asunción. Tourism is limited, although Villa Hayes has a few restaurants along the river, the Salvador Garozzo Museum and beautiful houses from the late nineteenth century, such as those of the Gobernación and the Centro Cultural Melodía, built after the Triple Alliance War by Paraguayan prisoners.