Qualla: Cateura https://qualla.com/cateura en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:39:58 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Cateura https://qualla.com/cateura Cateura: Introduction https://qualla.com/cateura/ "The world sends us garbage," a music teacher named Favio Chávez liked to say. "We send back music." He was talking about Cateura, the sprawling landfill that receives most of Asunción's waste, and about the neighborhood of families who make their living from it. Out of discarded oil cans and bent forks, X-ray film and packing crates, the children of Cateura built violins and cellos and learned to play them. The Recycled Orchestra became one of the most improbable success stories in Paraguay. It began here, on ground most people are taught to look away from.

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/p/cateura-wp/6erp-cateura-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Cateura: A Neighborhood Between River and Dump https://qualla.com/cateura/ Cateura sits in the bañados, the low-lying floodplains of southern Asunción, wedged between the open landfill and the Paraguay River. Neighborhoods like Bañado Sur, San Miguel, and Santa Ana spread across this flood-prone ground, where homes are built from raw brick or assembled ...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/p/cateura-wp/6erp-cateura-a-neighborhood-between-river-and-dump.mp3 0:06 2 full Cateura: More Students Than Instruments https://qualla.com/cateura/ In 2006, Chávez, a young environmental technician working at the landfill, started offering music lessons to the children of the gancheros. Word spread fast. Soon he had far more students than instruments, and real violins were both scarce and, in this neighborhood, almost danger...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/p/cateura-wp/6erp-cateura-more-students-than-instruments.mp3 0:06 3 full Cateura: What the Music Meant https://qualla.com/cateura/ It would be easy to tell this story as a tale of poverty redeemed, but the families of Cateura tell it differently. The orchestra gave their children something the gancheros' world rarely offered outsiders' respect, and something more important than that: a reason to imagine a fu...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/p/cateura-wp/6erp-cateura-what-the-music-meant.mp3 0:06 4 full Cateura: The Sound Travels https://qualla.com/cateura/ The 2015 documentary Landfill Harmonic carried the orchestra's story far beyond Paraguay, and the young musicians followed it. They toured internationally, shared a stage with Stevie Wonder, and performed for Pope Benedict XVI at World Youth Day in Madrid. The music school that s...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/p/cateura-wp/6erp-cateura-the-sound-travels.mp3 0:06 5 full Cateura: Reading the Land https://qualla.com/cateura/ The name Cateura comes from a lagoon near the original site, and the place still wears its geography plainly. The landfill rises as a low, terraced mound of compacted waste, threaded by truck tracks, with flocks of birds wheeling overhead. Beyond it, the Paraguay River curves wid...

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]]> Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/6/e/r/p/cateura-wp/6erp-cateura-reading-the-land.mp3 0:06 6 full