Cateura, a poor district of Asuncion, has the sad reputation of housing Paraguay’s largest open landfill.
In 2006, tired of seeing the children of the neighbouring slum come to search in the rubbish, an engineer Favio Chavez, specialized in recycling, proposes them an ambitious project: to form a symphonic orchestra. The instruments will be handcrafted from waste (for a violin, an aluminium tray, a paint can and a piece of crate are enough). “The world sends us its rubbish. We’re sending music back,” said Favio Chavez, head of the “recycled orchestra,” at a recent performance in Los Angeles.
The directory? Eclectic, but demanding: Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven….
Favio’s original idea was to give budding musicians a taste for effort. But today the orchestra performs in Latin America and the United States, with some 300 children behind the desks. Thirty were able to pursue higher education thanks to the money raised during the performances. The idea was taken up in Panama, Ecuador, Brazil and Burundi.
Excerpt from the documentary Landfill Harmonic, 2012
