Qualla: La Colmena, Paraguay https://qualla.com/la-colmena-paraguay en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:58 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: La Colmena, Paraguay https://qualla.com/la-colmena-paraguay La Colmena, Paraguay: Introduction https://qualla.com/la-colmena-paraguay/ Eighty-one people stepped off into the Paraguayan interior in 1936, more than seventeen thousand kilometers from the islands they had left behind. They came at the foot of a long volcanic ridge, to a stretch of red sandy soil and subtropical forest, and they began to clear it by hand. They called the place La Colmena — "the beehive" — for the kind of patient, collective labor they intended to pour into it. It became the first Japanese colony in Paraguay, and against considerable odds, it held.

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/s/la-colmena-paraguay-wp/6ers-la-colmena-paraguay-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full La Colmena, Paraguay: Why Paraguay https://qualla.com/la-colmena-paraguay/ The story starts with a closing door. Japanese emigration in the early twentieth century had flowed heavily toward Brazil, but in 1934 Brazil sharply curtailed immigration from the Far East, and families who had pinned their futures on crossing the Pacific suddenly had nowhere to...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/s/la-colmena-paraguay-wp/6ers-la-colmena-paraguay-why-paraguay.mp3 0:06 2 full La Colmena, Paraguay: The Red Earth https://qualla.com/la-colmena-paraguay/ The land tested them immediately. La Colmena sits on the gentle lower slopes of the Cerro Apitagua, a ridge running some 40 kilometers east to west, raised long ago by volcanic activity. The soil is red and friable, a sandy loam that looked rich and behaved otherwise. Cleared for...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/s/la-colmena-paraguay-wp/6ers-la-colmena-paraguay-the-red-earth.mp3 0:06 3 full La Colmena, Paraguay: Arriving in Waves https://qualla.com/la-colmena-paraguay/ Settlement was not a single landing but a slow, interrupted tide. Families kept coming in groups from June 1936 onward, until the Second World War cut the route. By 1941, roughly 790 people from 123 families had made their homes at La Colmena. They built farms across the subtropi...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/s/la-colmena-paraguay-wp/6ers-la-colmena-paraguay-arriving-in-waves.mp3 0:06 4 full La Colmena, Paraguay: A Town That Kept Going https://qualla.com/la-colmena-paraguay/ Today La Colmena is no longer purely Japanese; many native Paraguayans live here too, and the two cultures have grown together over the better part of a century into something neither would have been alone. The town lies about 130 kilometers southeast of Asunción, reached by a ch...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/s/la-colmena-paraguay-wp/6ers-la-colmena-paraguay-a-town-that-kept-going.mp3 0:06 5 full