Sugar Mill Town · Raw Cane Sugar Block
Rapadura
Photo: Moacir Ximenes / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
Villarrica's sugar mill, one of Paraguay's oldest, has shaped the town's identity so strongly that unrefined cane sugar blocks are still sold as an everyday snack rather than just a cooking ingredient.
Raw sugarcane juice is boiled down and poured into molds to harden into solid blocks, sold whole or broken into chunks at Guairá's markets. It's nibbled on its own or dissolved into hot water and mate.
Why it's made this way: Guairá department's sugar-processing history, centered on Villarrica's mills, made rapadura a defining local product of the region.
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