Filadelfia

Filadelfia is the main town of the Mennonite colonies in the central Chaco, founded in the nineteen thirties by German-speaking settlers from the Soviet Union who turned one of the harshest landscapes in South America into productive dairy and cattle country. Plattdeutsch is still spoken in the shops. The town is a grid of wide dusty streets and cooperatives, and its museum covers both the settlement and the indigenous Ayoreo and Nivaclé peoples. Beyond it the thorn scrub runs for hundreds of kilometres and holds jaguar, puma and the Chacoan peccary. The Trans-Chaco road is long, straight and almost entirely empty.