This serie of documental photographies produced between the second semester of 1989 and the first trimester of 1990 has the pretension of helping divulge and preserve the memory of cattle and cowboys, personalities of Goiás´ interior ("sertão"), rarefied nowadays.

The roads and the transportation by trucks push this personality to the past, leaving just the nostalgia of some other time when men, catlle, mules and horses interacted with the exuberant nature, facing difficulties sometimes untold, taking trips that not rare exceeded one hundred days, leading a cattle of a thousand animals, from the heart of the Central Plateau ("Planalto Central") to the north of Paraná, passing through the Mineiro Triangle ("Triângulo Mineiro"), São Paulo and South Mato Grosso ("Mato Grosso do Sul").

I had the privilege of spending time with some of these men and travel with them, riding on a donkey back for a few, but remarkable days. And the joy of knowing closely people like Neném – Leonardo Prado – a cowboy´s son, cattle commissary who still is, today already away from the cattle , a human being of extraordinary value.

My memories are from the deserts, the big spaces, the trails and the far away landscapes, where I used to ride and see the cattle lazily graze and walk, I used to chat, under the water season rain or under the dust raised by the cattle in the dry season, either with the cattle leader ("ponteiro"), holding the horn ("berrante"), or with the "premereiro", or with the "chaveieiro",and sometimes being left behind in the long distance of cattle, with the "culateiro", always satisfying my curiosity about listening to the cases of those simple and hard country lives.

The "landing", where the commission stopped, the chats around the campfire on the ground, the hunted, wolfmen, headless mule stories as well as the fortuitous love, dreams, life projects, told with the honesty and pureness of the cowboy, in the middle of interior ("sertão") nights, invoked phantoms that even I could see from my hammock set between two trees by the dirt road side or in an old farm corral, which gave us some place to rest form the daily journey.

Caricio, Mr. Álvaro, Vandes, Antonio, Jaci, Ditinho and many other cowboys, personalities of a Brazil no longer existing, are unforgettable to me. The severity and the seriousness that they execute their jobs are unforgettable. It is unforgettable the precision that they harness their mounts, decorating them with rings and the most varied leather and metal adornments. And it is unforgettabel the vanity and the pride that belong to this kind of so special men.

Explanatory notes:
- Commissary: the responsible for the transport of the herd, from the origin until the delivery in the destiny.
- Ponteiro: the cowboy that is going in front of the herd, playing the horn to join the cattle
- Berrante: horn with characteristic sound, when blown
- Premereiros: the ones that goes in the front flanks of the herd
- Chaveieiros: the ones that goes in the back flanks of the herd
- Culateiro: the one that goes at last, taking care so that no cattle gets lost
- Comission: the comission, the coach with the groceries and stuffs