‘For our grandchildren’: the man recording the lives of Paraguay’s vanishing forest people

Mateo Sobode Chiqueno, an Ayoreo oral historian from Campo Loro. Since 1979, he has recorded songs and memories of his fellow Ayoreo, including those who once lived in the forest. Photograph: Santi Carneri

In a tattered cardboard box in Mateo Sobode Chiqueno’s home, hundreds of plastic cassette cases contain four decades of memories. “Here in my house, I have more than 1,000 cassettes of Ayoreo histories and songs,” says Chiqueno, who keeps them alongside his tape recorder at his wooden shack in Campo Loro, Paraguay. Many of the voices belong to people who are dead.

Chiqueno began compiling his interviews with the Ayoreo, hunter-gatherers of the Chaco Forest, in 1979, after seeing missionaries using tape recorders to document their experiences. His tapes partially preserve a fast-disappearing culture.