Ycuá Bolaños

In my first week in Asuncion, some of the Stouts, Hannes and I went to a huge park in the centre of the city, and on the way we passed a large ruined building.  Even some of the lived-in buildings here look ruined to my eyes, but this one was different.  It was a supermarket, but had no activity, yet its large sign atop a great pole still stood out on the skyline.  Kelly told me about what happened there on August 1st 2004, the last day it lived: it was a Sunday when many families were shopping, and the supermarket was full.  However, a fire had broken out in the building, and the owner, with a clearly dim view of humanity, thought the hundreds of shoppers, if alerted to the fire, would grab things and run out without paying, so he ordered the doors be locked and the people kept inside.  The fire spread and engulfed the entire building.  394 children, women and men had no escape and were burned to death in order to save this man from losing some of his toothpaste and toilet paper.  Someone recently labeled it the Paraguayan 9/11 due to the great loss of life and the evil behind it.


Over the course of 3 months I have passed the supermarket and have learned a bit more about it, such as the puny sentence the guilty man received, how the architect who designed it designed it without emergency exits, and how many families and orphans sought some form of compensation for what nothing could compensate them for.


The burned-out ruin became a shrine, a place or remembrance of the many victims.  I had the opportunity to visit it yesterday with Mike.  I don't know what I expected to find when I went, but it turned out to be a truly dark place.  The shrine occupied what seemed like the only intact room left, and it looked out onto the street where through caged walls passers-by could see a series of shrines built like a wall of pigeonholes filled with pictures of the lost (so many young), symbols and religious imagery.


Mike and I went up the stairwell to look into the main hall which had now been cleared of rubble.  It stank of urine and there were large pools of vile, green liquid we had to manoeuvre through.  There was a great spiritual darkness there, and although it was mid-day, it felt like a bleak, final midnight inside the darker recesses.  Here are some of the pictures of a most tragic place.

Graffiti covers many of the walls.

The sign from below.

The underground carpark that seemed highly dangerous even at midday.

Plaster hanging from the ceiling.

Mike, on an island in the middle of urine and algae photographs an ominous doorway.

A window looking out into the main hall.

A hole in the ground leading to a lower level.

The main hall now removed of debris.  A place where hundreds of people were burned to death.

Graffitied walls with a cable that forms a cross in the window.  The words behind it are true, 'Dios no es religion, es relacion.' (God is not religion, is relationship).

These 2 women ran around the building hiding from nobody and laughing.

A room had exhibits in glass cases.  These are perfume bottles burned in the fire.

The back entrance.

Posters of some of the victims.

Slogans made prior to 2006 when some form of 'justice' came.  5 years in prison for the one who ordered the doors to be locked.

Some of the shrines.

A group of the younger ones lost.

Under a stairwell next to the now open exit are dozens of hand-prints painted onto the wall.

The underground.

The lifeless back hall.