The story
Fiesta Nacional del Arriero in Caapucu
A rural heritage festival in Caapucu, Paraguari department, celebrating the traditional arriero (cattle drover) way of life through competitions in lassoing, leather and cart racing, and drum races, running for roughly three decades as a marker of countryside identity and family tradition passed down generations.
Caapucu, a district in Paraguay's Paraguari department roughly 137 kilometers from Asuncion, has spent three decades building a festival around a figure central to the country's rural identity: the arriero, the cattle drover whose daily work of moving herds across open country once defined much of interior Paraguayan life.