Guarani are a group of
culturally related
indigenous peoples of South America. They are distinguished from the related
Tupí by their use of the
Guaraní language. The traditional range of the Guaraní people is in what is now
Paraguay between the
Uruguay River and lower
Paraguay River, the
Misiones Province of
Argentina, southern
Brazil once as far as north as Rio de Janeiro, and parts of
Uruguay and
Bolivia. Although their demographic dominance of the region has been reduced by
European colonisation and the commensurate rise of
mestizos, there are contemporary Guaraní populations in these areas. Most notably, the Guarani language, still widely spoken across traditional Guaraní homelands, is one of the two official languages in Paraguay, the other one being Spanish. The language was once looked down upon by the upper and middle classes, but it is now often regarded with pride and serves as a symbol of national distinctiveness. The Paraguayan population learns Guaraní both informally from social interaction and formally in public schools. In modern Spanish Guaraní is also applied to refer to any Paraguayan national in the same way that the French are sometimes called Gauls.