Sanapaná

Gran Chaco, South America; a medicine man Wellcome V0047535

The Sanapana are one of many nomadic tribes inhabiting the lower

Gran Chaco The Gran Chaco or Dry Chaco is a sparsely populated, hot and semiarid lowland natural region of the Río de la Plata basin, divided among eastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, northern Argentina, and a portion of the Brazilian states of Mato Gro ...

of western

Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...

. With the introduction of

Mennonite Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radic ...

settlements in the central Chaco in the 1930s, many nomadic tribes semi-settled near the Mennonites. The Mennonites established Missions to many of these tribes, often grouping linguistically similar tribes nearby. The Sanapana and Lengua were settled on La Esperanza mission, southeast of

Filadelfia Filadelfia () is the capital of Boquerón Department in the Gran Chaco of western Paraguay. It is the centre of the Fernheim Colony. It is about a 5-hour drive from the capital of Asunción. With a population of about 20,000, it is the largest t ...

, just off the

Pan-American Highway The Pan-American Highway (french: (Auto)route panaméricaine/transaméricaine; pt, Rodovia/Auto-estrada Pan-americana; es, Autopista/Carretera/Ruta Panamericana) is a network of roads stretching across the Americas and measuring about in to ...

. The Lengua, in their tongue, refer to themselves as "Enhlit," which means "the people." The Sanapana refer to themselves as "Nenhlet," which also means "the people." A standard conversation among the Sanapana-Lengua often includes words from their language, mixed with

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

and

Guaraní Guarani, Guaraní or Guarany may refer to Ethnography * Guaraní people, an indigenous people from South America's interior (Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia) * Guaraní language, or Paraguayan Guarani, an official language of Paraguay * ...

, the national languages of Paraguay, and some

Low German : : : : : (70,000) (30,000) (8,000) , familycolor = Indo-European , fam2 = Germanic , fam3 = West Germanic , fam4 = North Sea Germanic , ancestor = Old Saxon , ancestor2 = Middle L ...

, the primary language of the Mennonites. The Sanapana language uses the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

, a sample of which is "Tamilachlech coo evalhoc, Jesucristo singmasma coo." Indigenous peoples in Paraguay Indigenous peoples of the Gran Chaco {{SouthAm-ethno-group-stub