DescriptionParaguay is right in the middle of South America, landlocked, developing, we call it. It was divided between farmers in the east and nomads in the west before the arrival of the Spanish. Jesuits tried to create an autonomous Christian Indian nation but were expelled by royal administrators. After independence a charismatic visionary ruled as a tyrant, then there was a military junta, then another dictator. There were peaceful periods. The country got itself involved in an external war during which about 90% of its males were killed. Then more dictators. More war. The latest coup, in 1989, allowed the development of an electoral democracy, which so far (2021) has held.In 1494, when Portugal and Spain were getting ready to seize land in the Western Hemisphere they asked the Pope to sort out the disagreements between them rather than fighting over everything. The Pope pointed to a longitude on a map and gave Portugal everything on one side and Spain everything on the other. Worked out well for Spain. Portugal got Brazil. Spain got everything else.By “Modern World Coins” we mean here, generally, the round, flat, shiny metal objects that people have used for money and still do. “Modern,” though, varies by location. There was some other way they were doing their economies, and then they switched over to “modern coins,” then they went toward paper money, now we’re all going toward digital, a future in which kids look at a coin and say “What’s that?” We’ll say: “We used to use those to buy things.” Kids will ask “How?” The main catalog reference is the Standard Catalog of World Coins, to which the KM numbers refer.
