Going home for the first time to a country left behind as an infant is a complicated experience. We were hoping the visit would help Emily understand her complex identity: Paraguayan-born but American-raised; native in appearance but dressed -- in jeans and a Red Sox T-shirt -- like a tourist. Familiar with GameCubes and iPods and the notion that she will one day go to college, but not so familiar with the idea that her future would have been far less certain in Paraguay. A preteen who is uncomfortable seeing homeless people in Boston would see people at home in flimsy shelters under corrugated roofs.
The transition from American kid to tourist in her homeland began as soon as we touched down in Asunción, the capital, about 15 hours out of Logan, amid an approaching rainstorm. Large drops hit the window of our cab, a wreck with torn seats and no windshield wipers. Our children leaned forward to see a drenched street peddler offer a new wiper to our driver, who pressed on to the Gran Hotel Del Paraguay.
As rain pelted the hotel's lush grounds, we were protected in its humid rooms and dark halls, though little in Paraguay guards you from its tumultuous history. The Gran Hotel embraces a colonial estate that until 1870 was the residence of Eliza Lynch. She was the fair, scheming, Irish mistress of Francisco Solano López, the president of Paraguay who was responsible for starting the disastrous war against Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina (1865-70), during which more than two-thirds of the country's male population died.
That first day, we waited out the torrent, then walked the 20 or so blocks downtown to the Plaza de los Héroes, the main square. We saw faces that reflected both Spain's settlement of the region in the 1530s, and the Guaraní, the indigenous people here since long before then. The country has 6.3 million people in an area slightly smaller than California.
''I'm scared," Emily said, as we crossed a cracked sidewalk to avoid a dead rat. A man, a gold tooth glinting, walked by selling ''chipa," a chewy Paraguayan bread made with corn and cheese.
