{Cinemania Student Critic} A Recycled Orchestra

By JBFC Cinemania Student Critic Ilani Denzer

In a town that is home to Paraguay’s main landfill Favio Chavez, a resourceful ganchero, and many determined children came together and formed the Landfill Orchestra of Cateura. Here 40% of the youth don’t finish school because their parents need them to pick garbage in the landfill to help provide income. Moreover, while Favio had originally went to work on a recycling project, he quickly realized that giving music lessons was a better choice in project because it enabled him to take children away from the landfill. When Favio began to offer music classes, he quickly realized that there were more children than instruments, so he and Cola got to thinking and started coming up with ways to make instruments. Eventually when they did find a way to make instruments, it was out of the most abundant resource around them, trash! Because the instruments were made out of trash, not only did it help with the shortage of instruments but also made it safe for all children to bring it home and assured that the instruments wouldn’t be stolen. For some, having instruments made out of trash also reassured them that they wouldn’t be sold or traded by family members for drugs. For many of these children, the opportunity to learn about music and change their future of working in the landfill was nearly impossible before Chavez came along and decided to help. And in the end the children, along with their teacher, travel the world after hitting internet fame performing solo acts and duo acts with some renowned rock bands such as Metallica and Megadeth.