History
In its earliest origins, the town was known as Amancio Cué. In 1786 the city became the site of a Jesuit Mission founded by Father Juan Francisco Amancio González y Escobar with the name Reducción Melodía (Melody Mission) in honor of the Governor Pedro Melo.
The town was re-established during the 1841-1862 government of Carlos Antonio López and renamed Nueva Burdeos (New Bordeaux) by a colony of 120 French families. However, it did not prosper and was founded again the next year as Villa Occidental (Western Town). In the late 1860s, when Argentine soldiers occupied the city during the Paraguayan War, they called it Villa Argentina.
Finally, the city was named Villa Hayes, in accordance with the decree signed by President Cándido Bareiro, on May 13, 1879. This name was chosen to honor of the United States President, Rutherford Hayes, who on November 13, 1878, had been asked to arbitrate between Paraguay and Argentina after the Paraguayan War. His award of the disputed Gran Chaco region to Paraguay made him a national hero.
Read more about this topic: Villa Hayes
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. However, the two sides are not to be divided off; as long as men exist the history of nature and the history of men are mutually conditioned.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“A great proportion of the inhabitants of the Cape are always thus abroad about their teaming on some ocean highway or other, and the history of one of their ordinary trips would cast the Argonautic expedition into the shade.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)