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"Wavescan" is a weekly program for long distance radio hobbyists produced by Dr. Adrian M. Peterson, Coordinator of International Relations for Adventist World Radio. AWR carries the program over many of its stations (including shortwave). Adrian Peterson is a highly regarded DXer and radio historian, and often includes features on radio history in his program. We are reproducing those features below, with Dr. Peterson's permission and assistance.


Wavescan N579, March 29, 2020

The Early Shortwave Scene in South American Paraguay

Just two weeks back, we completed our mini-series of nine topics regarding the radio scene in the South American country of Uruguay. In our program today, we move over to the other country in South America with a similar name; not Uruguay, but rather Paraguay.

The small independent nation of Paraguay is surrounded by Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia, and it is the smaller of the two landlocked countries in South America; larger Bolivia is the other. The country is 600 miles long and 200 miles wide, and it is shaped almost like the capital letter S in the English alphabet.

The names of the two countries, both Paraguay and Uruguay, are derived from the Paraguay River system (parts of which flow through them both), which in turn was named from the original inhabitants, the tribal Guarani people. Their language is still spoken by the majority of the local population in both countries. In Paraguay itself, the Paraguay River separates the grassy plain and low hills in the east from the marshy plains in the west.

The Spanish conquistadores arrived in 1524, and the first settlement was established by Juan de Salazar de Espinosa at what became their capital city, Asuncion, on August 15, 1537, just 13 years later. Paraguay declared independence from Spain in 1811, and 31 years later this political move was recognized by Spain.

Paraguay has suffered more than its share of internal and external warfare, though these days local productivity has grown, and, interestingly, locally generated hydroelectric power is now exported to neighboring countries. In addition to their own indigenous peoples with their two official languages, Guarani and Spanish, there are several foreign communities in Paraguay, including Japanese, Italian, Portuguese and German.

Strangely there is also an Australian community living in Paraguay, a community that was originally established at a location near Villarica, some 75 miles southeast of Asuncion, in 1893. Led by English born William Lane, a disaffected politician and utopian resident in Australia, a group of 238 people, mostly men and children, settled upon a tract of land measuring 185,000 acres that was made available to them by the government of Paraguay.

Give a couple more years, and an influx of additional migrants came in from Australia, and the original commune known as New Australia broke up, and formed another commune known as Cosme. These days, neither of these communes exists, though some 2,000 people in Paraguay claim that they are descendant from the original settlers, and they do speak English with an Australian accent, even including the usage of some Australian slang terminology.

It was sometime back during the mid-1920s that an international radio communication facility was installed at Asuncion in Paraguay. It was a low powered station, and at least two callsigns were allocated, ZPR and ZPZ.

However, during the year 1935 there was an important radio congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in which many South American countries participated. This radio congress was conducted for the purpose of coordinating the radio scene throughout the entire South American continent, both the internal radio broadcasting scene as well as the international radio scene, for communication and for broadcasting.

Paraguay was a participant in this 1935 Buenos Aires radio congress, and that is when radio broadcasting on shortwave finally came to this small, landlocked, independent country. Callsigns were issued for both mediumwave and shortwave stations, and these consisted of the two initial letters ZP followed by a number.

The December 1935 issue of the radio magazine Short Wave Listener presents a photograph of the shortwave radio equipment at what is described as the leading mediumwave station in Asuncion in Paraguay. The shortwave station was licensed as ZP10, with 15 kW on 8220 kHz, and when in use as an amateur station the official call was ZP2AC. The shortwave equipment was installed in the private home of the station owner, Artaza Hermanos.

Programming for shortwave ZP10 was a relay from their mediumwave station, which was installed at a commercial location. The mediumwave station was licensed as ZP1, the first radio broadcasting station in Paraguay with 1 kW on 1135 kHz.

During the following year (1936), station listings show mediumwave and shortwave stations with callsigns numerically up to ZP15. However during the next year again (1937), Jerome Berg informs us in one of his splendid historical compilations under the title "The Early Shortwave Stations", that Radio Villarica was the only shortwave station in Paraguay then on the air.

Radio Villarica, ZP14, or Radio Cultura, or La Voz del Corazon en Sudamerica, as it was identified, was located at Villarica, a small regional city in the south of Paraguay, about a hundred miles southeast of the capital city Asuncion. Programming for this regional shortwave station was from the mediumwave station Radio Nacional-ZP4, with 45 watts on 736 kHz.

In its first three years of operation, shortwave ZP14 in Villarica received 35,000 reception reports from almost everywhere, including Australia and New Zealand. In 1939, a new 2 kW transmitter was installed at Radio Villarica, with a new shortwave channel, 11720 kHz. Four years later again (1943), this shortwave station was transferred from Villarica to the capital city area itself, Asuncion.

Back during this same prewar era, there was another shortwave station on the air in another regional city in Paraguay, and this was Radio Panamerica-ZPA6 in Encarnacion, right at the very southern edge of Paraguay, at the border with Argentina. Interestingly, this station in Paraguay, was taking a program relay from Radio Belgrano LRY in Buenos Aires, in neighboring Argentina.

During the year 1943, there were just three shortwave stations listed for Paraguay, now with their recently modified callsigns, and these were:

Radio Nacional ZPA1 Asuncion 6265 kHz 3 kW
Radio Teleco ZPA3 Asuncion 11870 kHz 1 kW
Radio Encarnacion ZPA5 Encarnacion 11950 kHz 5 kW

More about the radio scene in Paraguay next time.