Gaining Agency through Trash: "The Landfill Harmonic"
Landfill Harmonic is the story of a group of young adults growing up in a slum situated on a landfill in Paraguay. On the outskirts of the capitol, Asunción, Cateura is a town that subsists off the dump. Labeled as one of the poorest places in South America, approximately 2,500 families survive off recyclable materials they collect, much like the catadores in Waste Land. In Landfill Harmonic, we see the older generation working at the dump seeking out materials to repurpose into classical instruments for the children of their community. Through the use of these repurposed instruments, and with environmental technician Favio Chávez, at the head of the endeavor, a music school was opened in the neighborhood. While the film is currently being completed (and has reached its goal on the crowd-source funding site Kickstarter), a recent CBS "60 minutes" feature and the trailer for the film provide insight into the importance these instruments have on children of Cateura.
The exposure to music locally and globally has a profound impact them (CBS). Not only are these children playing on materials reclaimed from a dump, they are finding new avenues of expression, as well as hope for a better future. Music has become their salvation and a way for them to give back to their community, where 15 year-old music students become the teachers of novices.
Chávez states that music “teaches the kids respect and responsibility,” an acute difference from the crime and violence found on the streets of Cateura. In Cateura, a “factory-made violin is worth more than a house” and so children in the recycled orchestra cherish their instruments. Chávez says: “People realize that we shouldn’t throw away trash carelessly. Well, we shouldn’t throwaway people either” (Landfill Harmonic). Here, Chávez importantly signals the relationship between the discarded materials from the dump and the invisibility of the impoverished and forgotten. Like Furtado’s Ilha, Chávez again shows how the poor lack of an official voice in the political system and this relegates them to pick through mounds of trash. He further explains the importance of their mission: “These children were hidden. No one even knew they existed.” (CBS) The Landfill Harmonic serves a twofold purpose: the recognition of the orchestra by an international audience draws attention not only to the issues of poverty, but also to issues of waste, garbage, and reuse. The exposure to different lifestyles and options would have been impossible, if not for the ingenuity and work of the community members of Cateura.
