“My name is Francisco de Assis. I am a son of this land.”

A vaqueiro, tall and sinewy, sun-burned, he carries the Sertão in his body—a land of drought and flood, of extremes. The leather he wears protects him from thorn and heat, but it is more than protection: a second skin, bound to generations.

“To be a Pantaneiro,” says Galho Velho, “is to know the land—to move through it by horse, by boat, or on foot. To read it.”

Born on Fazenda Bahia das Pedras, he knows every path, every shift of water and season, the movement of animals, the quiet codes of those who belong.

Between the Sertão and the Pantanal, these lives are not shaped by the land.
They are inseparable from it.