Green paradise: covid-skeptics who fled from Europe founded a colony in Paraguay

In the poorest region of Paraguay, Casaapa, a colony called El Paraiso Verde, or Green Paradise, is growing, according to Business Insider. The settlement appeared back in 2016, it was founded by the Austrians Silvia and Erwin Anau. Former Viennese residents, the 68-year-old Anaus, a composer and tax consultant, have fled to Paraguay in search of escape from the "matrix", as their website says.

El Paraiso Verde is spread over 16,000 sqm of fenced and protected land. Now about 150 citizens of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, mostly German-speaking, live here. On the YouTube channel of the settlement, you can see good houses and their inhabitants doing yoga, as well as a school, a lake and a jungle. In the future, according to its creators, El Paraiso Verde should grow to a settlement of 6,000 people with a city and several villages in its composition. If necessary, it can be expanded to 20,000 people. The latter is quite likely: according to the data cited by The Guardian, in 2019 there were only four residents here, but with the onset of the pandemic, in 2020, their number has grown to 100 and continues to grow due to covid-denials emigrating from Europe.

In a video on the colony's YouTube channel, residents explain that their move is due to skepticism about the coronavirus and vaccines. There are teenagers here who call restrictions in Europe “crazy”, and older people who are convinced that residents of nursing homes are dying en masse after vaccination. Local health authorities are concerned about the popularity of Paraguay among anti-vaxxers: the pandemic is already hard here. For example, in June 2021, Paraguay experienced the world's highest daily proportion of covid deaths. And in the poorest region of the country, which the emigrants have chosen as their refuge, there are no intensive care units or ambulances. “We don't want to go through this again. I think that foreigners, wherever they come from, should be vaccinated before entering the country,” says Nadia Riveros, head of the health department of the Caazapa region.

In a statement on the El Paraiso Verde website, Erwin Anau writes: “We are not against vaccination, but for the right to choose which substances to take into your body. Everyone should do their own research to see if they agree to the currently offered vaccinations”. Nevertheless, on the site you can find information that the pandemic that claimed the lives of 5.6 million people supposedly "does not exist", and as the advantages of El Paraiso Verde, the founders of the settlement proclaim freedom "from 5G, chemicals, fluoridated water, mandatory vaccinations and medical prescriptions.