A Text I Walk — Reunión

A Text I Walk
Un Texto Camino

Territorio Wichí, Gran Chaco, 2020 to 2022.
Book: Download (in Spanish)

Caístulo lives in Wichí territory, between the Chaco and the Yungas, in a community made of adobe and nylon houses, without electricity, near a small monte surrounded by scorched earth: monoculture, livestock, oil and dust. When he was eighty years old and the Covid-19 pandemic had just started, he fell into a coma in the woods. After eleven hours he got up and began to sing the messages of the mothers, what we usually call trees. It was the first time he sang. He has not stopped.

We met four times between 2020 and 2022. We walked into the monte. He sang in Wichí lhämtes, his mother tongue: we recorded. Then he spoke to me in his Spanish: I wrote by hand what he said. Without recording. Each time he paused to inhale I moved on to the next line. We read aloud and correct the text together. This book carry his voice, transmuted into written during those encounters.

Song-book in wichí lämtes: Download