One hundred years ago tomorrow, 5 August 1914, at 12.39pm (EST), the first hostile action of World War I took place, not in Europe but in the eastern entrance to Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne. Refer also to my earlier blog of 27 February 2014, First engagement of hostilities? Very odd angry shots indeed!, for more details of the circumstances.
The first shot came from the Australian military gun emplacements stationed at Fort Nepean on the extremity of Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula overlooking the stretch of open water which separates Port Phillip Bay from the Bass Strait. The target was a German steamer, the SS Pfalz, (the name a reference to the German Rhineland-Palatinate region), was carrying 200 tons of coal intended to supply the nearby warships of the Pacific Squadron of the Imperial German Navy.
The incident that followed is now reasonably widely known – Britain (and by necessity, the British Empire) was expected to declare war on Germany that day. As soon as the news was cabled through from London that this had happened, on instructions from the naval command at nearby Fort Queenscliff, the Fort Nepean battery was given a command to stop the (now enemy) vessel from leaving Australian waters. Two warning volleys were fired from the Fort battery before the German captain surrendered (it seems scarcely credible to believe but the first hostile shot launched by the Allied side in the Second World War 25 years later was also fired from the same gun at Fort Nepean!)
The not-so-certain element of this story is the intriguing question of who actually fired on the SS Pfalz, effectively the first shots of World War I. Among the numerous news items currently circulating in the Australian press, the Age identifies Sergeant John Purdue as the individual who fired that first momentous shot 100 years ago [“Fort Nepean’s Sergeant John Purdue fired first shot of World War I”, The Age, 4 August 2014]. Concurrently with this, some papers are running articles on the role of Corporal William Carlin, which suggest that it was Carlin who fired the first shot [“Historic shot echoes a day later”, The Standard (Warrnbl. Vic.) 4 August 2014; “Marshall’s First Shot Connection”, The Surf Coast News (Bell. Pen. Vic.) 31 July 2014]. Both servicemen are now long deceased, and interviews with members of their families reveal their great pride in the part played by their respective kinsman.
Ft Nepean today
The apparent contradiction can be possibly explained as Sgt. Purdue issuing the on-the-ground command to fire, and Corp. Carlin, or another gunner, launching the shells. Given that the gun emplacement crew at Fort Nepean consisted of five or six men, the reality is that we will probably never know in any definitive sense which gunner fired the first shots across the bow of the German coal steamer. At the very least, we do know that both Sgt. Purdue and Corp. Carlin played key roles in the exact operation which symbolically marked the onset of the World War’s hostilities.
◖◗ See also the earlier, related article on this blogsite – “First engagement of hostilities? Very odd angry shots indeed!”
Visionary thinkers in the 19th Century such as Robert Owen, Comte de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier, provided the impetus for a whole host of attempts to create new communities which aspired to an ideal or utopian existence. Old Europe looked towards to the ‘New World’, the Americas, as the optimal location for the realisation of an ideal society. Many transplanted “would-be” utopian communities ended up in the United States (with bucolic names like New Harmony, Icaria, Fountain Grove and Altruria), but increasingly many seekers of a better life looked optimistically to the less developed reaches of South America as fertile ground for a model community (the US National Parks Service on its website www.nps.gov identifies literally hundreds of communal utopian experiments in the early period of the United States – article “The Amana Colonies: Utopias in America”).
In this piece I want to focus on two late 19th Century Paraguayan utopian experiments, the colonies of Nueva Germania and Nueva Australia. The German and the Australian colonies were both spectacularly unsuccessful in their aims, hardly surprising perhaps considering how unrealistically high they had set the bar, and how incredibly idealistic were their aims. On the surface the German and the Australian utopian experiments seem very different beasts, one a haven for Nordic exclusionists and the other for disillusioned Antipodean agrarian labourers, ideologically though, as I will attempt to show below, the two colonies had much in common in their character and aspirations.
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The remnants of Neuva Germania today
Neu Deutschland im Amerika: Germany’s “would-be” Aryan colony in the Americas
New Germany in Paraguay was the brainchild of Elizabeth Nietzsche and Bernhard Förster, the sister and brother-in-law of the great German philosopher, Frederick Nietzsche. Förster had been prominent in the far right German People’s League, known for its extreme anti-Semitic nationalism. His big idea, supported by his wife, Elizabeth, was to create a model German community in the Americas which embodied Aryan racial purity, free from what the Försters believed to be the “virulent contamination of Europe by Jews”. In the febrile minds of the anti-Semitic couple, the virgin ground of depopulated rural Paraguay held the promise of creating an exclusively Aryan society.
In 1886 Förster and Nietzsche organised the emigration of a small number of select families from Saxony (who were characteristically Nordic in appearance) to South America. The scheme of the Försters was to build the foundations of a supreme Aryan ‘New World’ colony in the Paraguayan jungle. Förster’s hopes initially were high for Nueva Germania, envisaging an “idyllic Naumburg on the Aguarya-umi” River [Ben MacIntyre, Forgotten Fatherland]. In addition to the racial dimension, Förster and Frau Förster-Nietzsche’s Aryan utopia was based on the pillars of German nationalism, Lutheranism and vegetarianism [JF Williams, Daniela Krause & Harry Knowles “Flights from Modernity: German and Australian Utopian Colonies in Paraguay 1886-1896?”, Journal of Australian Studies (1 Sept 2001)].
The dreams of a German-South American Paráiso en Tierra very soon came to dust as the colony abjectly failed to establish any cohesion or viability. A combination of factors contributed to this including disease affecting the colonists, crop failure and infighting among the migrants from Saxony [Simon Romero, “German Outpost Born of Racism in 1887 Blends into Paraguay”, New York Times, 6 May 2013]. The fact that only a small proportion of the settlers were actually farmers was a factor in the colony’s inability to yield sufficient crops on their land [James Brooke, “Nueva Germania Journal; from a Bigot’s Planting, a Garden Assimilation”, NYT, 18 March 1991].
San Pedro (site of the Germany colony): in the middle of the country, south of Concepción
The elitist personal behaviour of the Försters in Nueva Germania affected the colony’s cohesion and disaffected its members. This manifested itself in displays of megalomania by Förster and the Försters’ demonstrably obvious social and economic advantage which markedly set them apart from the other colonists who were for the large part fairly impoverished families. For example, the Försters built themselves an elegant mansion in the San Pedro wilderness called ‘Försterhof‘, in stark contrast to the meagre and pitiful living conditions of the other settlers; the commune’s farmers in the fields were forced to stop work and submissively bow to Förster every time the overbearing leader rode past! [Romero, op.cit].
Other factors (including biological) undermined any prospect the colony of Nueva Germania ever had of flourishing. A community of only 14 families (as it was originally) would almost inevitably be vulnerable to the likelihood of some degree of inbreeding, especially given the racial homogeneity doctrine on which the commune was based [MacIntyre, op.cit.]. This only served to undermine harmony in the commune and exacerbated tensions among the settlers.
Commune leader Förster, in heavy debt, facing the spectre of bankruptcy and in despair at the utopian disaster, committed suicide in 1889. Nueva Germania struggled on without its main spearhead, now led by Elizabeth Nietzsche who made an attempt to recruit more members from the Fatherland – with little return for her efforts. However in 1893 Frau Förster-Nietzsche abandoned the Aryan Paraíso and it’s settlers, returning to Germany to take charge of her famous brother’s affairs and care for him (Nietzsche had fallen into a state of insanity probably as a result of contracting syphilis). In the years after the philosopher’s death in 1900 the warped Elizabeth proceeded to convert him into a kind of intellectual “pin-up boy” on behalf of the emerging Fascist and Nazi movements of Italy and Germany. Significant to note that Nietzsche, when still in full control of his faculties, had been on record as expressing his complete disapproval of anti-Semitism and of the Försters’ plans for establishing an Aryan colony. Elizabeth, who later became a wholehearted supporter of Hitler, criminally and comprehensively traduced her brother’s reputation by falsely resurrecting Nietzsche as a prophet of the German “master race” to come. [J. Golumb & RS Wistrich (Eds), Nietzsche, Godfather of Nazism? On the Uses & Abuses of a Philosophy.]
Cassava, stable crop of NG
Following Elizabeth’s departure from Paraguay, the San Pedro-based colony of German farmers did not disappear altogether but limped on, surviving by scrimping together a bit of income from the growth of yerba mate and other subsistence crops. Nueva Germania (NG) still exists today in San Pedro – as far as ever from being remotely anything like a utopian community. With the bursting of the racial purity myth, the small group of German settlers intermarried with the local Mestizo–Guaraní-Spanish people, and as a result are not conspicuous from the rest of the Paraguayan population. They tend to speak Guaraní, the widely-spoken native language, in preference to German, and are set apart from other Paraguayans only by the retention of German family names (Fischer, Küch, Haudenschild, Stern, and so on).
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Australian economic and labour woes in the 1890s: Seeking a socialist paradise new start
The colony of ‘New Australia’ had its origins in the economic conditions and labour relations in pre-Federation Australia, especially in eastern Australia. In the early 1890s the onset of a crippling financial depression and a series of shearers’ and dock strikes in Queensland suppressed heavy-handedly by British troops fostered widespread disillusionment among bush workers. An idealistic English socialist journalist, William Lane, a maverick of the Australian labour movement, formed the New Australia Cooperation Settlement Association (NACSA) with the aim of establishing a “workers’ paradise” in South America.
The Association looked initially in Argentina for land to settle, but when this proved fruitless, Lane turned to neighbouring Paraguay where they found a government much more amenable. Lane’s scheme to export Australian workers suited the Paraguayan Government which was desperate to replenish the loss of manpower in the 1860s suffered in a disastrous war against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Paraguay, hopelessly outmatched, by war’s end, lost its territorial access to the sea and somewhere between 60 and 70 per cent of its male population during the war, leaving the country with an estimated total of only 28,000 adult males [Thomas Whigham, “The Paraguayan Rosetta Stone”, Latin American Research Review (1999)].
Consequently the Paraguayan Government freely granted NACSA an ample tract of grasslands near Villarica (in the modern-day Caaguazú Department),south-east of the capital, Asuncíon, to the new settlers. Lane brought over 200 colonists to Paraguay including the famous Australian socialist poet, Mary Gilmore, who was the colony’s schoolteacher. The settlement which became known as Colonía Nueva Australia met with formidable obstacles right from the outset.
Benign dictator of Nueva Australia?
A big part of the problem was the leadership itself. William Lane imposed strict rules on the community which alienated many who had followed him on the venture. Members of the colony were forbidden to drink, which given the combination of the oppressive heat and the plentiful supply of cheap caña (sugar cane rum) in Paraguay, was not a realistic proposition. Lane banned the male colonists from having sexual liaisons with the local Guaraní women, who given that they were 80 per cent of the population, was also an impractical notion. He also displayed a puritan streak by insisting that all members of the commune marry for life. In Lane’s own words, the colony was “a commonhold of English speaking whites, who accept among their principles, Life marriages, Teetotalism and the Colour Line.” [Cosme Monthly, Sept 1896].
‘Commandant’ Lane – a left-wing “Captain Bligh”
William Lane was by nature “autocratic, under pressure his simplistic communism and mateship developed a non-denominational but distinctly religious tinge” [Gavin Souter, ‘William Lane’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 9, (MUP), 1983]. Lane’s leadership style, like Föster’s, clearly inclined towards millenarianism and the messianic [John Kellett, “William Lane and ‘New Australia’, Labour History, 72 (May 1997)]
Racism was always a key feature of Lane’s credo of utopian socialism and his overall philosophy. Back in Australia, this had already shown itself in his race novel, White or Yellow? and in his strident opposition to the introduction of Polynesian labour in Australia. Lane’s vision of utopian socialism put great store on the exalted nature of ‘mateship‘, but as the South Australian Register reported on 1 January 1895, many of the settlers thought the leader impractical, “there was too much talk about mateship and not enough of crops and cattle” [Kellett, ibid.].
El Chaco Austral
Added to this, the conditions under which the Nueva Australinos found themselves were very harsh, the climate was inhospitable, the land was not as arable as had been hoped (less like outback Queensland than initially thought); mosquito and parasite infestation plagued them, tigrés or jaguarés prowled around the camps at night [Ben Stubbs, “The New Australians of South America”, www.australiangeographic.com.au]
Nueva Australia was established on the basis of a socialist cooperative enterprise, the colonists were compelled to commit all of their personal savings to a communal fund. Once underway, all cash in the colony was held collectively. Inevitably, this lead to bickering which was ongoing. Some members were accused of withholding money from the collective ‘kitty'[The West Australian, 29 December 1893, The Brisbane Courier, 9 July 1894]. Harmony within the colony by now was already strained.
Things only deteriorated, an anti-Lane faction developed and Lane expelled some of these dissenters from the commune. At the same time Lane was accused of favouring a friend of his who had transgressed the colony rules [JB Henderson, William Lane, the prophet of Socialism”, Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, 8(3) 1968]. Inevitably there was a backlash against Lane’s ‘Law’ by the majority of the settlers. Ideological disputes and personality clashes intensified to the point where Lane was forced to break away from the original settlement and start a new community (he called Colonía Cosme) which adhered to his over-the-top brand of puritanism. The rebels under trade unionist Gilbert Casey maintained the original settlement, Nueva Australia, but disbanded the communistic methods in favour of a more individual approach to financial arrangements.
Banknote from ‘Colonía Neuva Australia‘
Both colonies continued to struggle for viability. The Australian newspapers of the day regularly reported entreaties to the authorities from individual families for assisted passage back to Australia owing to their destitution [Brisbane Courier, 12 February 1896, Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW), 20 January 1897]. Lane tried to recruit new members to Cosme from England but was only at best marginally successfully. By 1899 Lane himself had abandoned his own utopian project and returned to Australasia, eventually to do a political volte-face, becoming a conservative journalist in New Zealand.
By the end of the 1890s it was transparent to all that both utopian experiments were abject failures and the Paraguayan Government stepped in and ended the communal nature of the colonies, offering the remaining members (such as there were) individual plots of land to work. In this transformed fashion the settlements stumbled on, sans communism. Today the remnants of Lane’s idealist vision remain in two townships, one called Nueva Australia and the other (somewhat curiously), Nueva Londres.
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“Eugenically-pure”(sic) New Australia
One of the most pervasive and influential ideas in Western thinking in the late 19th Century was the notion of eugenics. This pseudo-scientific belief underpinned the theoretical framework of both Paraguayan utopian societies. The practice of strict racial separation, whether that be white/native American or German/Jew, was an essential tenet of Nuevo Germania and New Australia, based on the supposed inherent superiority of people of English/German stock. The widespread acceptance of Social Darwinism at that time fed into that self-perception of superiority. Lane envisaged a new type of Australian man of pure English (Anglo-Saxon) stock forged out of the South American jungle, an antidote to racial decay of the white man…the theoretical underpinnings of Lane’s ‘New Australia’ brought him uncomfortably close to Förster’s vision for Nueva Germania – an Australian colony in the wilderness providing the breeding ground for a new, higher and purer ‘race’ (sic) of Saxon stock [MacIntyre, op.cit; Williams, Krause & Knowles, op.cit.].
As indicated above, there were a number of distinct similarities between the leaders of the German and the Australian aspirational utopian colonies in their beliefs and prejudices. Both were religious fanatics imbued with peculiar forms of Agrarian Christian Socialism. Both were wowsers and racists harbouring a deep fear of miscegenation [Williams, Krause & Knowles, op.cit.].
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Remnants of Nueva Australia
PostScript: Inflexible, impractical, headstrong leadership and a failure to adapt to Paraguayan conditions
The Australian and German colonies in Paraguay in practice were neither utopian or viable. They failed, partly because, on both counts, there was a sense of unreality about the entire project. Poor leadership retarded the communes’ development. Lane and Förster’s fantastically dreamy visions were not rooted in anything concrete. “Authoritarianism for authoritarianism’s sake” succeeded only in alienating the settlement members. Both leaders were unrealistic in expecting them to blithely accept unreasonable demands that they abstain from drink, from meat, from physical contact with the local women, forgo money, and so on. In addition to all of this, the harshness of conditions in the jungle and wilderness of Paraguay tested the new settlers and repeated crop failures prevented them from making a decent economic livelihood from the land, condemning those that remained to a life of subsistence agriculture.
I was collected at the Casa Andina at 7am by yet another braces-wearing Peruvian guide to drive to the (inland) port. The port was quite close by, but as usual we had to go via umpteen other hotels to pick up the other passengers. When we eventually got to the Titicaca dock we were swarmed upon by a small battalion of lakeside Indian women trying to entice us to buy a bargain-priced hat or two from a broad assortment they were either carrying or wearing.
The German tourists from yesterday’s Cusco coach were on the same Uros Islands trip as me. These upbeat Teutonic folk were certainly enjoying their Peru visit. I have noticed that Germans on holidays are able to escape the stereotypical dour visage that is generally associated with them.
We were shepherded on to one boat which I thought was going to be our boat for the trip, but before we could settle, the crew moved us across to another boat, and then, after an apparent another change of mind, guided over to a third boat where we were allowed to sit down. There was a bit of a delay in embarking, during which we were entertained by a pipe-playing musician in traditional garb. The piper banged out three tunes, the second instantly recognised as “Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da”, the first time I had ever heard a rendition of a Beatles standard played on a Latino pan pipe! When he finished he took the hat round, most of the punters on board were not particularly generous but I tipped him 10 soles (my small contribution to the cause of local struggling community performers).
Our Titicaca tour director was the same guy who had accompanied us on the bus trip. Not sure what to make of him, he was friendly, enthusiastic certainly, but his thick Peruvian accent was hard to fathom. So, his jokes spoken in Spanglish it seemed to me, were largely lost on me!
Totora reeds, Puno
We got out onto Lago Titikaka which is 3812 metres above sea level and shared between Peru and Bolivia. It is amazing to reflect on the fact that this is an enormous inland ‘sea’, the highest navigable lake in the world, a hundred or so kilometres from the Pacific Ocean! On the outward journey I noticed that reeds were freely growing all along the northern shore of the lake.
The first island we visited in the Lake was Taquile where we leisurely wandered from one side of the island to the other, taking in the views, very tranquil, relaxed ambience. We passed the fields comprising the Islanders’ collective agricultural system which basically hasn’t changed since the 14th century. At the other side we met a family of colourfully and traditionally-attired weavers. We had a demonstration of their antiquated textile techniques, finished products of which were available to buy (I bought a floppy white hat with a colourful patterned band for 30 soles).
After Taquile we went to Llachon – Santa Maria, where a shaman prepared a Pachamanca meal for us on the beach. This is a traditional form of cooking using underground ovens (something very akin to a Māori hūngi). Part meal preparation and part religious ritual, the ceremony involved the shaman pouring wine onto the mound covering the food and waving branches and leaves over it. The purpose of this ritual was to make offerings to Pachamama/ Mother Earth (the Incas’ creation myths have it that the people had their origins in the Lake!). Blessed or unblessed, the meal was delicious!
From Taquile we moved on the ‘Floating Islands’ of Uros, the highlight of the Titicaca trip. The Floating Islands were artificially constructed by the Uros people using bundled reeds from the totora plant mixed with mud to cut themselves off from the Incas and other aggressive neighbours. The community demonstrated how they expanded the tiny island by tying together extra reeds, soil and turf, and affixed to the sides of the island by rope.
The Uros, cutoff from the World in this way, survive by fishing (the Lake is stocked with Canadian trout and Argentinian kingfish) and by trading the goods and materials they produced for food from the surrounding larger islands. I couldn’t help wondering about the kind of alternative, parallel life they lived, living freely for sure, but living in a very enclosed, claustrophobic world – to my eyes. Walking around the uneven reed floor of the island was a novel and strange experience.
Whilst on Uros we were given a boat ride around the lagoon in one of the Island’s reed boats. I had used up all the money I had brought with me buying some cushion covers, so I experienced an uncomfortable moment when the reed boat pilot tried to hit me for a donation after we had returned from the ride. He looked quite put out when I intimated that I had zilch on me.
Reed boat
About 50 metres away from the island was a second, smaller artificial island, the story of its existence was a peculiar one. Four of the families on the original island fell out with the majority of the families and broke away from them, constructed a new floating island. The tourists in our group were a good bunch of people (mainly Americans and Costa Ricans), we exchanged lots of jokes, eg, do you need a passport to visit the breakaway reed island?
After returning to Puno I went for dinner in the town. Walking through the streets, just about every café and bar with a Peruvian band that I passed was playing that old favourite, ‘El Condor Pasa’. I returned to the hotel after eating and souvenir-hunting to find that a bulldozer was busy decimating an old building directly across the road – as if the road wasn’t already stuffed up enough!
Left the Sorgente hotel in Puerto Iguazú to get an early start for the bus ride to the falls area. When we arrived there were already a great number of visitors lining up at the entrance – international visitors, nationals (Buenos Aireans and from elsewhere in the country), school groups, and so on.
We were at the Argentinian section of the falls of course (on the Brazilian side the falls are called Iguaçu). Spare a thought for Paraguay and its tourism industry, the country shares the Rio Paraná with Brazil and Argentina and is just up the river from Iguazú, but none of the falls lie on Paraguayan territory.
Train thru the jungle to the Falls
Inside the national park, despite the train standing on the track, our guide gets us to by-pass the train and walk a couple of kilometres through the bush to the second train station. By getting there before the first train arrived at station # 2 this ensured that we’d be in the first train to arrive at the falls. Good, but I was left wondering WHY, a) there wasn’t more trains scheduled seeing that Iguazú was a world-class highlight on the global tourism calendar, and b) train # 1, instead of terminating at station # 2, didn’t just go straight through to the falls, considering that both trains left from the same track! To me, that would be the logical way to operate it!
The falls as a whole are divisible into two parts, the Cataracts and the Gorge. We started at the Gorge first, El Diablo Garganta. From the Gorge entrada, we still needed to walk about 1200 metres on a linear footbridge to the actual ‘Devil’s Throat’. As you get closer to the throat, the roar of the powerful waters gets louder and louder and a couple of hundred metres away, the spray shooting up from El Diablo can be seen.
El Diablo
When you finally get there, it is 100 per cent worth it! At the edge of the waterfall, the catwalk bends round into a U-shape (more accurately the structure is three-pronged, fork-shaped) to maximize the number of people that can view the waterfall from point-blank range. The viewing platform extends out over the edge of the ground (as in the Grand Canyon) so that anyone standing on it cannot avoid getting a decent old drenching! Ponchos are definitely the preferred accessory at the Throat! Standing on the footbridge, trying to look and take photos and videos at the same time, you get the sense of all that cascading power, the spectacle was quite mesmerising.
Cory – the long-nosed Argie coatí
Later we journeyed the short distance to Cataratas del Iguazú, exploring the multiple, other reaches of the falls, walking on the National Park’s upper and lower trails, the Paseo Superior and the Paseo Inferior as they are called. This gives you a different viewpoint of the Cataracts and lots more photo opportunities. Plenty of flora (in a broad, dense jungle) and fauna around, including dazzlingly beautiful and unusual butterflies and cute long-nose coatís. However I lucked out on spotting the elusive toucan, the emblematic bird of the falls.
As 80 per cent of the waterfalls are on the Argentinian side of the river, the best panoramic views tend to be from the Brazilian side or from the river itself. So, I decided on the optional speedboat ride (Macuco Safari Boat Ride) under the waterfalls itself, which was a great thrill. Be forewarned though that YOU WILL get drenched by the falls and from the motion of the boat rapidly swerving from side to side (make note to bring or wear swimmers on the falls tour).
Amenities at Iguazú left plenty to be desired. The Kiosk and the other food outlets were not good quality or value, not a great selection of food and (predictably) overpriced. Don’t try to exchange dollars at Parque Iguazú, the rate is not good, wait for BA.
The more than one-and-half stretch of Iguazú’s falls were simply astonishing to behold, even a bit intimidating to witness the scope of its sheer, unshackled power. Undeniably it is one of the natural wonders, a sublime Maravilla as the Hispanophone South Americans say.
The first shot came from the Australian military gun emplacements stationed at Fort Nepean on the extremity of Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula overlooking the stretch of open water which separates Port Phillip Bay from the Bass Strait. The target was a German steamer, the SS Pfalz, (the name a reference to the German Rhineland-Palatinate region), was carrying 200 tons of coal intended to supply the nearby warships of the Pacific Squadron of the Imperial German Navy.
Ft Nepean today
Commune leader Förster, in heavy debt, facing the spectre of bankruptcy and in despair at the utopian disaster, committed suicide in 1889. Nueva Germania struggled on without its main spearhead, now led by Elizabeth Nietzsche who made an attempt to recruit more members from the Fatherland – with little return for her efforts. However in 1893 Frau Förster-Nietzsche abandoned the Aryan Paraíso and it’s settlers, returning to Germany to take charge of her famous brother’s affairs and care for him (Nietzsche had fallen into a state of insanity probably as a result of contracting syphilis). In the years after the philosopher’s death in 1900 the warped Elizabeth proceeded to convert him into a kind of intellectual “pin-up boy” on behalf of the emerging Fascist and Nazi movements of Italy and Germany. Significant to note that Nietzsche, when still in full control of his faculties, had been on record as expressing his complete disapproval of anti-Semitism and of the Försters’ plans for establishing an Aryan colony. Elizabeth, who later became a wholehearted supporter of Hitler, criminally and comprehensively traduced her brother’s reputation by falsely resurrecting Nietzsche as a prophet of the German “master race” to come. [J. Golumb & RS Wistrich (Eds), Nietzsche, Godfather of Nazism? On the Uses & Abuses of a Philosophy.]
The Association looked initially in Argentina for land to settle, but when this proved fruitless, Lane turned to neighbouring Paraguay where they found a government much more amenable. Lane’s scheme to export Australian workers suited the Paraguayan Government which was desperate to replenish the loss of manpower in the 1860s suffered in a disastrous war against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Paraguay, hopelessly outmatched, by war’s end, lost its territorial access to the sea and somewhere between 60 and 70 per cent of its male population during the war, leaving the country with an estimated total of only 28,000 adult males [Thomas Whigham, “The Paraguayan Rosetta Stone”, Latin American Research Review (1999)].
I was collected at the Casa Andina at 7am by yet another braces-wearing Peruvian guide to drive to the (inland) port. The port was quite close by, but as usual we had to go via umpteen other hotels to pick up the other passengers. When we eventually got to the Titicaca dock we were swarmed upon by a small battalion of lakeside Indian women trying to entice us to buy a bargain-priced hat or two from a broad assortment they were either carrying or wearing.
Left the Sorgente hotel in Puerto Iguazú to get an early start for the bus ride to the falls area. When we arrived there were already a great number of visitors lining up at the entrance – international visitors, nationals (Buenos Aireans and from elsewhere in the country), school groups, and so on.
As 80 per cent of the waterfalls are on the Argentinian side of the river, the best panoramic views tend to be from the Brazilian side or from the river itself. So, I decided on the optional speedboat ride (Macuco Safari Boat Ride) under the waterfalls itself, which was a great thrill. Be forewarned though that YOU WILL get drenched by the falls and from the motion of the boat rapidly swerving from side to side (make note to bring or wear swimmers on the falls tour).