San José de los Arroyos is a town in the

Caaguazú Department Caaguazú () is a Departments of Paraguay, 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 District, Caaguazú were threaten ...

Paraguay Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the Argentina–Paraguay border, south and southwest, Brazil to the Brazil–Paraguay border, east and northeast, and Boli ...

Description

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

Pan-American Highway The Pan-American Highway is a vast network of roads that stretches about 30,000 kilometers (about 19,000 miles) from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in the northernmost part of North America to Ushuaia, Argentina, at the southern tip of South America. I ...

, "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 (), first recorded in ancient India, 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 ...

cassava ''Manihot esculenta'', common name, commonly called cassava, manioc, or yuca (among numerous regional names), is a woody shrub of the spurge family, Euphorbiaceae, native to South America, from Brazil, Paraguay and parts of the Andes. Although ...

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. Soy is a staple crop, the world's most grown legume, and an important animal feed. Soy is a key source o ...

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

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 (energy), biomass, rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in the formation of fossil fuels such as oil. Biofuel can be produced from plants or from agricu ...

. 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 Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. The main geography of Taiwan, island of Taiwan, also known as ''Formosa'', lies between the East China Sea, East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocea ...

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

and

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

. 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, bovid ungulates widely kept as livestock. They are prominent modern members of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus '' Bos''. Mature female cattle are calle ...

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