CAPIATA, Paraguay -- Deep in the subtropical heart of South America, the hunt is on.
Buried beneath red ocher earthen streets, or perhaps in the shade of mango trees in the fields beyond, opulent treasures are scattered for hundreds of miles -- at least according to a fable that has permeated Paraguay's cultural subconscious for generations.
The treasures are known as plata yvyguy (pronounced PLA-ta uh-vee-GWOOY) in Paraguay's guttural national language. They are largely thought to have been hidden by the government and the panicked elite fleeing Asuncion, the capital, just 13 miles to the northwest, as occupying forces advanced during the War of the Triple Alliance, fought against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay 150 years ago.
The passage of time has not dimmed hope of unearthing tons of bullion, troves of British pound coins and -- most coveted of all -- ornamental pineapples forged from gold.
"Paraguay is full of plata yvyguy," said Juan Alberto Diaz, 57, a full-time treasure hunter in a rural corner of the small city of Capiata. His neighbors manufacture bricks. The heat rolls off the land -- dotted with cows and guava shrubs -- like an oven's breath. "Everybody who knows it exists is after it."
In recent years, high-ranking military officers, mayors, a president's brother, architects, physicians and laborers have been consumed by the legend. They have planned expeditions, deciphered maps, swept sites with metal detectors and cut up stretches of land.
It is, in many ways, one of the greatest modern-day treasure hunts in the Americas. In different countries, the nature of these hunts has varied.
In the United States, a search continues in the Rocky Mountains for a treasure chest hidden by an eccentric art dealer. Tales persist of Confederate gold buried in Arkansas and of Blackbeard's treasure in the Carolinas. In Peru, the plundering of ancient sites in recent decades has at times imperiled the country's archaeological preservation.
The job of preventing a similarly ugly scenario from occurring in Paraguay belongs to Ana Rosa Lluis O'Hara, the government's director of cultural heritage. She has a 64-page file on Diaz and rejects authorization requests for digs from her basement office in the national library, citing a law that protects archaeological artifacts and sites.
"It's a threat to our cultural heritage," Lluis O'Hara said.
Arguments develop because the country's civil code includes provisions that can give finders of hidden treasure the rights of ownership. Still, the provisions do not apply to items of historic value, including most wartime artifacts, according to legal advisers to the government.
Seated by a hole 10 feet deep and partly covered with corrugated iron -- remnants of a recent failed dig -- Diaz, a former electronics dealer, recalled an audacious excavation he led in 2013 that piqued curiosity nationwide.
In that attempt, Diaz and several other treasure hunters, authorized by the mayor of Capiata at the time, Antonio Galeano, opened up a pit with excavators where they thought they had detected 13 tons of gold bullion.
Within two weeks they uncovered a hefty steel chest, Diaz said. But by then a federal prosecutor had halted the hunt, charging Diaz with endangering an important aquifer and ordering the pit to be filled.
Most Paraguayans seem to believe the theory behind plata yvyguy, viewing it as feasible that in the midst of a savage war Asuncion's elite buried small fortunes, and state treasures were sent out of the city on train wagons and then hidden along tracks or in nearby hillsides.
But wild myths now color the hunt.
"There's so much fantasy, fabrication and rumor," said Jorge Rubiani, 71, an architect and former culture secretary for Asuncion who has written about the treasures. "History's been reduced to a moronic tale."
Some believe that treasures are defended by local goblins like Karai Pyhare, the jet-black "Squire of the Night" whose task is protecting nature. Others say families or even the government killed Paraguayan soldiers and buried them with the fortunes in the hope that their spirits would act as guardians. Mysterious fleeting fires are said to flicker in the night at sites where treasures were stowed.
In their quests, many hunters hire local clairvoyants to find hidden fortunes. Others turn to experienced hands like Francisco Moreno, 68, a retired port worker captivated by plata yvyguy since his grandmother told him of treasure she discovered almost 80 years ago: a clay urn filled with Spanish coins.
Paraguayans sensing there may be treasure in their backyards pay Moreno $175 a day to visit them in his 1994 Mitsubishi sport utility vehicle equipped with metal detectors, which he also sells to budding hunters.
Demonstrating the detectors in the garden of his Asuncion home lined with fig and palm trees, Moreno said he had unearthed coins here and there, though never a larger haul. Still, he persists.
"A pessimist never triumphs," Moreno said with a wide smile, flashing a golden tooth.
There is even a dubious set of maps detailing the locations of treasures across the central part of Paraguay, said to have been sketched by Domingo Francisco Sanchez, vice president to Francisco Solano Lopez during the War of the Triple Alliance.
The treasure hunt absorbs the nation to such an extent that filmmakers and playwrights have dedicated works to it.
"It's in Paraguay's DNA," said Miguel Rodriguez, 37, the director of Empty Cans, a small-budget picture about rural treasure hunters released in 2014. "Who doesn't want to win the lottery?"
Theories about the origins of the treasures abound, with obscure explanations that involve Egyptian pharaohs and shifting tectonic plates. One popular theory is that during colonial times several Spanish galleons headed for the Atlantic Ocean with loads of precious metal from Bolivian mines and sank in the River Paraguay. Others point to Jesuit colonizers in the 17th century.
But the most common belief, endorsed by prominent local historians like Alfredo Boccia Romanach, is that heirlooms including jewelry, watches and porcelain were buried by affluent families during their getaway from Asuncion in 1868, when Paraguay lost a decisive battle to Brazilian-led forces and the government ordered an evacuation of the city. Historians say it is also quite likely that government reserves of precious metal were hidden by the wartime president, Lopez.
The vast majority of these treasures, some of which were also stuffed into wall cavities, were stolen when the enemy troops pillaged the city, Boccia Romanach said.
"The Brazilians destroyed Asuncion, torching homes to keep searching through the night," said Rubiani, the architect. "They probably found most of the treasure."
But that has not deterred the hunters.
SundayMonday on 03/13/2016