Editing Mestizo (section)

===Paraguay===
{{Main|Paraguayan people}}
During the reign of [[José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia]], the first consul of [[Paraguay]] from 1811 to 1840, he imposed a law that no Spaniard may intermarry with another Spaniard, and that they may only wed mestizos or Amerindians.<ref name="theconversation.com">Paraguay, a history lesson in racial equality, Juan Manuel Casal, 2 Dec, 2016.  https://theconversation.com/from-paraguay-a-history-lesson-on-racial-equality-68655.</ref> This was introduced to eliminate any sense of racial superiority, and also to end the predominantly Spanish influence in Paraguay. De Francia himself was not a Mestizo (although his paternal grandfather was [[Afro-Brazilian]]), but feared that racial superiority would create [[class division]] which would threaten his [[Autocracy|absolute rule]].

As a result of this, today 70% of Paraguay's population is mestizo, and the main language is the native [[Guaraní language|Guaraní]], spoken by 60% of the population as a first language, with Spanish spoken as a first language by 40% of the population, and fluently spoken by 75%, making Paraguay one of the most bilingual countries in the world. After the tremendous decline of male population as a result of the [[War of the Triple Alliance]], European male worker émigrés mixed with the female Mestizo population to create a middle-class of largely Mestizo background.<ref name="theconversation.com"/>{{failed verification|date=July 2021}}