San José de los Arroyos is a town in the

Caaguazú Department Caaguazú () is a department in Paraguay. The capital is the city of Coronel Oviedo. History In the 16th and 17th centuries, European settlers in the present-day department of Caaguazú were threatened by the Portuguese Bandeirant and Gua ...

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 t ...

Description

It is located 100 km to the east of Asuncion on a branch of 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 ...

, "Ruta #2". The county comprises an urban area of around 8,000 inhabitants and some twelve smaller satellite villages or dependencies known as "colonias" raising its population to roughly 20,000 inhabitants.

History

Although there is some controversy regarding its foundation, the official version is that it was founded by a former governor of Paraguay, Don Pedro Melo de Portugal on March 19, 1780, still during the time of Spanish colonialism and later elevated to a municipality in 1884. Like most towns in Paraguay with few exceptions, the colonial architecture survived until the early 1980s when, due to a lack of protective laws, it suffered a massive destruction and replacement by generic modern structures. It comprises an 887 km² surface and topographically has two remarkably different types of terrain. The colonies to the west of the town are mostly formed by mild slopes with very fertile land adequate for cultivation of most agricultural products such as

cotton Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus '' Gossypium'' in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor pe ...

cassava ''Manihot esculenta'', commonly called cassava (), manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America. Although a perennial plant, cassava is extensively cultivated ...

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

soybean The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses. Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu ...

sugarcane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of (often hybrid) tall, perennial grass (in the genus '' Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fibrous stalk ...

and some grains) and therefore more prosperous, whereas the east is characterized by mostly planes with few patches of elevated land good for agriculture. This region is mostly driven by raising cattle, but in recent years, it was discovered that these plains provide the ideal soil for sugar cane cultivation, the raw material for

biofuel Biofuel is a fuel that is produced over a short time span from biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels, such as oil. According to the United States Energy Information Administration ...

. It is worth mentioning that, in recent years, from the start of 2005, Paraguay has gained a privileged place in the international meet market entering demanding ones such as the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are located primarily in Europe, Europe. The union has a total area of ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-ei ...

and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the eas ...

. This progress obviously has its repercussions to the eastern region of the town given the fact that these colonies are primarily dedicated to raising cattle. This also brought along other impacts such as a remarkable appreciation of the real estate value of the land. San Jose is in general an average Paraguayan town with a promising future based on the bio-fuel exploitation and the emerging solid

cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus '' Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ...

industry which, if administered wisely, can drastically change the fate of this town. Populated places in the Caaguazú Department {{Paraguay-geo-stub