Pétanque in Paraguay

Paraguay's boules scene runs through the Federación Paraguaya de Bochas, a multi-discipline federation - the same governance pattern already documented on this site for Italy, Croatia, and Chile - that oversees raffa volo, zerbín, and pétanque (locally "petanca") together. Of the three, petanca is the youngest and least formally organized domestically, but Paraguay has already sent a national petanca team to a Pan American qualifying tournament, and the country is home to the only stadium in the world where all three bochas disciplines are played under one roof.

History

Bochas arrived in Paraguay with Italian immigrants who settled in the country following the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870), and clubs dedicated to the sport spread through the 20th century. The Federación Paraguaya de Bochas was founded on 5 August 1942 to organize that growing club scene. For most of its history the federation's competitive strength has been in raffa volo (Punto Raffa Volo) rather than petanca specifically: Paraguay's national raffa volo youth squads have won multiple medals at World Youth Championships, including two gold and two silver medals at the 2025 edition in France (individual women's gold for Thaila Kreuz and mixed-doubles gold for Marcos Vinicius and Fernanda Schwingel) and further medals from the 2025 Punto Raffa Volo Juvenil championship in Algeria - results that belong to the raffa volo discipline, not pétanque, a distinction worth being explicit about given how easily Paraguay's various bochas medals get lumped together in press coverage.

Petanca itself has developed on a slower track. Paraguayan sports press covering the federation's push to bring the three disciplines together at a single national venue in 2022 described petanca as still being practiced informally by an unaffiliated group of players that the federation was working to bring into its formal structure, rather than as an established competitive discipline with its own domestic league - a genuinely different starting point from Italy's or Chile's longer-running pétanque programs under similar umbrella federations.

The World's Only Triple-Discipline Bochas Stadium

Paraguay's Centro Nacional de Bochas, part of the Parque Olímpico Paraguayo in Luque, opened for the XII Juegos Suramericanos Asunción 2022 and is described by Paraguay's national sports secretariat (Secretaría Nacional de Deportes) as the first and only stadium in the world where raffa volo, zerbín, and petanca are all contested at the same venue. At those 2022 South American Games, Paraguay's own players competed in the Punto Raffa mixed pairs final (Marcos Moreira and Ramona Torres, who lost 12-3 to Argentina's Jonathan Rupere and Milagros Pereyra) and in volo mixed pairs - the host nation's medals that week again came from raffa and volo rather than the petanca event, whose mixed final was contested between Argentina and Venezuela - Venezuela's María Pérez and Carlos Marcano won that final 11-0.

International Results

Petanca's clearest step onto the international stage for Paraguay came at the Panamericano de Petancas Limache 2023, held 6-10 December 2023 in Chile - the inaugural Pan American pétanque qualifying tournament for the 2024 World Championship in France, already documented on this site's Chile profile. Paraguay was one of eight nations invited alongside Argentina, Canada, Chile, the United States, Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic, marking the country's first confirmed appearance fielding a national team specifically in the pétanque discipline internationally. Specific match results and the Paraguayan squad's roster for that tournament were not independently confirmed via available sources.

Paraguay also sent CIEP/FIPJP coaching candidates to the Formación de Técnicos de Petancas course held in Santiago, Chile in November 2025 alongside candidates from Chile and Canada, certifying to the FIPJP/CIEP Level 1 diploma - a sign of continued, if still early-stage, investment in growing petanca specifically rather than only the federation's stronger raffa volo and zerbín programs.

Federation

The Federación Paraguaya de Bochas is based at the Complejo SND, Av. Eusebio Ayala y R.I. 6 Boquerón, in Asunción, and is led by president Alcides E. Acosta, with Víctor I. Ubaldi as vice president and Carlos O. González as secretary, per Paraguay's Secretaría Nacional de Deportes. The federation can be reached at fedpbochas@hotmail.com.