Searching for Green Peace

I’ve said before that Paraguay is like a Paradise, a tropical oasis of exotic smelling fruit trees and golden sunshine and gentle rolling hills. All this is true and even more, sometimes. The red sandy dirt feels softer than in the States, for example, and the water from the faucet, too, tastes sweeter than I’ve ever had.

The problem, though, is that it’s a terribly polluted paradise. It seems that Paraguayans, in their carefree lifestyle of ease and anything-goes, care very little for the environment and rarely think of the impact their trash will have on the earth and, ultimately, their neighbors and themselves, too.

For example, yesterday a young man at church -- a member in good standing who plays in the praise band – finished off a pack of cookies. What was the natural thing for him to do when he was done? He threw the plastic container on the ground in the middle of the church playground, expecting it blow away sometime and perhaps become someone else’s problem. And the strange thing is that this small act of selfishness, even from an upstanding member of the church, isn’t so strange here. Everyone throws all their garbage on the ground or out the window or into the river, dumping junk where they can and leaving trash where it’s convenient. For this reason, the tropical paradise is in many places a tropical garbage bin, littered with blowing bags and pocked with used plastic bottles.

The streambeds are where you can see pollution at its worst. Heavy rains may do their best to clean the streets of garbage, but it all collects in the drain basins and eventually the waterways. Here, huge-ton-piles of assorted trash ferment in massive gob-balls of filth, like so many mutant monsters birthed from landfills nursing on humanity’s worst muck. The effect is altogether discouraging, if not depressing, for a North American who prefers tropical paradise to tropical ruin.

Not only does the landscape look bad because of the trash, though, but many waters are also ruined because of it and other pollutions. The Caballero home is close to the Rio Paraguayo, but only the most-daring would think of swimming or fishing in its murky waters. Two weeks ago we had the chance to visit the largest interior lake in Paraguay- a beautiful body of water surrounded by hills and at one time by hotels and resorts, too. The trouble is, the past few years the lake has become so polluted that it’s no longer safe to go swimming in it. The tourists are leaving, the resorts are closing, and the beaches are dying. The water looks and smells like black sewer, and even crusts over in some places with oily residue. The lake is an amazing refuge completely spoiled, pure delight blighted with the diseases of human progress and ruined by the selfish exploitations of an easy-does-it society.

In Paraguay, it’s easy to imagine how creation was supposed to be: a tropical fruit garden with sunny skies and crisp clear waters; a place where it pleased God to walk side-by-side with men. Unfortunately, the effects of the Fall are also clear here. There’s trash everywhere, the lakes stink, and somehow everything’s become dirty. Something’s gone wrong – very wrong -- in the garden, and we can hardly recognize the way things were originally created to be. There’s plenty of suffering to go around because of it, too, as creation itself seems to groan under the weight of humanity’s filthiness. The earth desperately needs and cries out for Health, for a Savior; for Emmanuel, for God-with-us. Ultimately, it cries out for His eternal life and for his final redemption, “Come, Lord Jesus, come!”