Photo caption needed.
Photo by Jason Henry
STORY by ERIK MAZA
PHOTO STORY by JASON HENRY
“An oasis of horror in a desert of boredom.” –Charles Baudelaire
Teculut·n, Guatemala - Luis woke up that Wednesday morning with a leaden feeling that today would be less productive than the day before, when he had picked 90 pounds of tomatoes with his mother for five hours at .50 cents an hour.
His premonition proved prescient, but he couldn’t have expected that the day would end with little more than blood and chicken guts.
Luis took his morning breakfast – black coffee, no sugar – with his mother, sitting on the bed he shares with two younger siblings, beneath posters of Jean Claude Van Damme and the Virgin Mary.
He thought about how his day would unfold: school, lunch?, landfill.
October 1 had begun inauspiciously. It was International Day of the Child, but Silvia Escobar, his second grade teacher, had told the class that there would be no celebration as there surely would be in other parts of the world. The Department of Education had forgotten to pay the lunch bill.
Nuestro Diario celebrated the day of the child with equal zest. The front page that day deadpanned: Six Massacred. Man kills 6 adolescents playing cards. Buried in page 20 was a spread as incongruous as it was macabre: pictures of smiling Guatemalan children alongside statistics about youth in the country: There are 5.5M Guatemalans under the age of 15. Forty-nine percent of them suffer from chronic malnutrition. 12 percent of them work. Forty-four out of one thousand Guatemalan children die before turning five.
In the middle of that one-room primary school in Los Bordos, Luis was a man apart: Alone, like a room with no chairs. He looked more like a pallbearer than a 12-year-old boy. As the Psalms would say, he spent his days like a sigh.
Luis and many, if not all, of the children that live in his village work at the landfill of Teculut·n, where they dig through tons of rotten food, tree cuttings and ashes looking for soda cans and recyclable material to sell as scraps, 3 quetzales, or $.42, a pound.
The cruel and quiet passing of time had taught him to distrust other men. He knew the cost of everything was through the roof, por las nuves. He knew the prices of the food he had – beans (5Q a pound), rice (7-8Q), maize (1.4Q) – and the food that he didn’t have – chicken (6Q), sugar (2.25Q), oil (42Q a gallon). When his mother left to work in the cantaloupe fields at 5 a.m. in the morning, he was in charge of feeding his sister, Fabiola, and his brother, Guillermo, breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Escobar described him as fatherly. “He’s like my right-hand man. When he tells the kids to be quiet, they listen. When he misses school, I ask him, ‘Where were you? I missed you.’ I give him a lot of love because he doesn’t get it at home,” she said. “All those responsibilities his parents have given him have made him mature. His father drinks, and what his mother makes leaves little money for the house. He’s like a little man.”
Teculut·n isn't the only place in the world where the cost of food has skyrocketed. Global food prices have increased an average of 43 percent this past year, according to the International Monetary Fund. The World Bank estimated that the doubling of food prices during the past three years could potentially push 100 million people throughout the world into extreme poverty.
The combined effect of these two factors, along with an increase in unemployment (232,614 Guatemalans in April, according to the newspaper Prensa Libre), led more people to the landfill of Teculut·n as a source of income. But too many people showed up. In fact, by October the landfill had become the main source of employment for the villages adjoining the landfill, Los Bordos and El Remolino, leading to fights over who holds sway in the north section, or who's in charge of collecting broken bottle bits, challos. El Remolino is more dependent on the landfill because, unlike Los Bordos, it is isolated from the main town of Teculut·n.
Escobar said Luis has told her that he won't come to school next year. He has too many responsibilities at home already, and thought it would be more helpful to his mother if he worked. He might be better off, she said. "The sixth grade in Guatemala is worthless. You can't get a job with it anymore. Now they're even asking for university degrees."
The truth is that when the children are at school, they're not thinking about multiplication tables. Even when they're making a kite, they're thinking – ‘what will I have to do after school today?’
There’s a saying in Guatemala – there’s no culture on an empty stomach. These children wake up, have coffee and bread, and they’re faced with a cruel but lately ordinary question: school, or work? The children of El Remolino chose the latter long ago.
El Remolino is also predominantly inhabited by single women who, after having their fifth or seventh child, have been abandoned by their husbands. They send their children to the landfill at the crack of dawn. Pedro, a 12-year-old from El Remolino, was known to unload a one-ton truck in less than a half hour.
Pedro’s mother, Narilda, told him to choose between school, picking tomatoes or going to the landfill.
“I need the help,” she said.
He had seen his father leave when his mother had her fifth child.
“They see us with too many patojos, and they disappear,” his mother had said.
After that, he resolved to quit the second grade and work full time, at the landfill off season and at the tobacco fields during tobacco season. “That’s his lot in life,” she said. When he works at the landfill he brings 50Q a week from what he sells in scraps.
“Enough to get by,” his mother said.
Escobar says the real reason Luis wants to leave school is because the kids from El Remolino have an advantage over him. They get to the landfill even before the burning starts, and quickly monopolize the territory. Maria Sushite, Luis’ mother, said they’ll have to resort to picking bits of glass bottles instead of soda cans because the landfill has become too competitive, and too dangerous.
“There are too many tawdry people, gentilla” she said. “There’s one old woman who’s always spoiling for a fight. And she says she’s an evangelist!”
There are six landfills in Zacapa, Guatemala, servicing a population of more than 200,000. Teculut·n is a town of 10,000 in the department of Zacapa. The name, derived from the Nahuatl word for owl, tecolote, literally means land of owls. Zacapa is known throughout the world as the birthplace of Zacapa rum. Teculut·n is known in Zacapa as the first place in Guatemala where the tomato was harvested, for its proximity to the majestic mountains of Sierra de las Minas, and for its landfill.
The landfill of Teculut·n is a hilly cesspool of organic waste, cow shit, and ashes.
The clouds of smoke from the burning trash are so thick that it’s difficult to make out the mountains, some of the highest in the region. The heat is such that flies will get stuck to sweat. If there was soil here once, it is no longer visible – only layers of solid waste, flattened by countless garbage trucks and little feet. The village of Los Bordos is adjacent to the landfill, on the eastern side. The village of El Remolino is on the western side. In the north, there’s a swampy animal cemetery, if a place where there are disorganized piles of animal bones can be called a cemetery. If it’s true that hell is an oasis of horror in a desert of boredom, the landfill of Teculut·n is Satan’s playground.
There are four garbage trucks that make twice-daily pilgrimages to the landfill, once in the morning, and then in the afternoon. The trucks pass Luis’ school, where his classmates will sometimes run to climb on top of them, then pass through Los Bordos and the silly sign that marks the entrance to the landfill. From there they climb a one-mile hill to arrive at a precipice from where the trash will be dropped to the burning valley below it. The children of El Remolino, who mob the trucks when they arrive, tear open the garbage bags looking for recyclable material, and push them down when they find food or tree cuttings.
El Remolino is also closer to the landfill, and the residents there have used their proximity to their strategic advantage. Fernando Oracio, the state-employed misanthrope charged with burning the trash spread out in this two-acre panopticon, has found permanent hideouts throughout the dump where the mothers and children of El Remolino deposit cans as they collect them. He said they are as responsible as he is, if not more so, for disposing of the trash that comes from Teculut·n.
“It’s a tough job,” he said. “I’m poor, but there are some people poorer than me.”
A 1999 study conducted in the notorious landfills of Guatemala City, where there are more than 2,000 landfill scanvengers, or guajeros, concluded that 60 percent of those them suffered from chronic anemia and parasites. Forty percent suffer from respiratory, digestive, and skin and eye conditions.
Even though he had been coming here for almost four years, Luis still didn’t know if it was worse under the truck, or on top of it, or hanging off one of the ropes like the punks from El Remolino. He thought that at least he wasn’t at the bottom of the landfill, like his classmate Ingrid. The competition was ferocious anywhere he looked. He was stuck behind a vicious mob of toddlers, clad in crocs of many colors, gifts from American missionaries.
The children surrounded the garbage truck on both sides and took to the falling garbage bags like hyenas to an antelope. Pedro, the oldest of the El Remolino gang and certainly the toughest, had climbed on top of the truck when it first entered the landfill. He was now throwing the bags to his pals, who punctured them with sturdy wire hooks until the insides spilled out.
The El Remolino punks did this with a speed that surprised even the garbage truck drivers, stopping only if they sawee cans, bottles or toys. Sometimes, they found a rare delicacy beneath the rubble: a piÒata with actual candy inside, sometimes still wrapped candy. Pedro and his gang had gotten so quick that the garbage men made a habit of relaxing under the scalding sun. They uncorked a beer, let the kids do their jobs, and listened to station 90.3 FM, the Sultan of Zacapa, where Vicente Fernandez’ La Despedida played.
As expected of boys who have Jean Claude Van Damme posters in their rooms, Luis has been bullied to the sidelines. Something else had happened.
Guatemalans have been scavenging landfills since at least 1976, but the sub-prime credit crisis that had spiraled into a full-out meltdown by that October 1 in the United States, raised the stakes for the scavengers of Teculut·n. By October the price of commodities in the United States had begun to finally decline after its sixth boom year, with metals like aluminum, copper and nickel declining by a third or more. This was good news for American consumers, but bad news for people whose livelihood depends on selling aluminum scraps. The people from El Remolino weren’t just fighting for good spots, they were also fighting for first bids on the cans and metal scraps. More people coming to the landfill, meant soda cans disappeared much faster. “I can’t find a pot to pee on,” said Pedro.
Choveto Morales, who buys the most scraps from the scavengers, pays 3Q per pound of scraps. He then resells those scraps to a recycling plant in Escuintla, where rumor has it Pepsi Cola melts them into re-usable soda cans. A week ago they were paying him 80Q for a100 pounds, but this week the price dropped to 40Q.
“I can’t figure out why the price is so low since the material is so expensive,” he said. “It’s actually embarrassing to come here and give them so little money. But you know why I do it? Because if I help them out, God will help me out. Another guy just gave them 20Q for 100 pounds of scraps.”
Luis comes to the landfill with his best friend Elder, a shy boy who stays close to his grandmother’s skirt. Elder had been skipping school as of late to pick tomatoes with his grandmother or dig through trash at the landfill in the morning with his cousin Ingrid. His mother disappeared when he was just a baby, and his father is mostly stinking drunk in the backyard. His grandmother, Elida, a woman of 81 who has been working since she was 10, was also responsible for feeding a a family of 12 that includesd her arthritic husband, Elder, Elder’s alcoholic father, her daughter and her husband, and seven grandchildren. The family lives in a two-room mud house.
Elder is the only man in the house who works. The women do all the chores. Elida has taught Elder and Ingrid how to pick tomatoes, and how to not get hurt at the landfill. Although the landfill is essentially their backyard, they’re at a disadvantage to the gang from El Remolino, who go to the dump while Elder and Ingrid are still at school. Unless they fight the other kids, patojos, they have to wait for spots to open up, or go to the bottom of the landfill, which is more dangerous, and ultimately thankless.
The Sun is setting.
Zacapa is one of the hottest provinces in Guatemala, with temperatures sometimes rising to 93 degrees Fahrenheit. In the afternoons, the landfill of Teculut·n is steaming. At the bottom of the landfill, where Oracio has set fire to several piles of logs and trash, and one huge pile of what appear to be beer bottle labels, the temperature is melting the cow shit scattered everywhere. Even the flies have left this place. Above, they’re swarming the trucks. The children pulling the garbage bags closer to them don’t seem to mind.
Luis lunges at the garbage bags with determination. His own sack is empty, save for a can of air freshener and a box of paper clips. The El Remolino gang outnumbers ed him.
He feels a hit to the abdomen.
A crotchety grandmother, Pastoral Alvarez, has punched him in his stomach with her elbow and shoved him aside.
As he watches the gang from El Remolino empty what is probably the last garbage truck of the day, he thinks about his inability to overcome his adversaries. Does he not want it enough? It is only 4:30 p.m. but he suspects he will go home empty-handed again, with only the scar on his hand to prove his presence at the dump.
Ingrid is at the bottom of the landfill, under the threatening sky, surrounded by brimstone and fire. As often happens in moments of anticipation, her mind drifts. She is having a private moment. The trucks are pulling up above her, but they feel distant. Her front teeth are coming in, those sharp ones at the front. She moves her tongue upwards to the farthest reaches of her jaw, feeling every tooth, every crevice. The falling ashes warp her silhouette, so that from a distance she takes on a misshapen form, like a tear in the landscape.
The garbage men above throw bags over the edge of the truck, and the punks of El Remolino, in charge of the good spots beneath the truck, pull at them with sturdy wire hooks. Being at the bottom of the landfill is an act of resignation. Nothing of value could be found here. This is where the smoke is thickest, and where the heaps of burning trash are not just palpable, but menacing. Junk, as usual. Ingrid wonders, when will the molars come in?
The sky had taken an unpleasant pallor minutes earlier. The sun is setting. Ingrid turns her face tos the mountains and notices a truck driving towards the farthest part of the landfill.
The two other girls next to her notice the truck as well. Another truck! Maybe the women at the top saw it too. The truck could be the one that buys the scraps from us. The truck could bring cans, or bottles. It might come from one of the factories. It could have some aluminum scraps. She runs.
Ingrid whispers the word painted on the side of the truck – Areca. Already the old woman – Pastoral – - has set up a mat of cardboard boxes next to the truck. Her expression reads: my property.
“Spread them out more,” she tells a child, presumably her grandchild.
Blue plastic boxes start coming down the back of the truck, filled to the rim with what looked like wet fetuses, arms akimbo, but no heads. Whole chicken. Areca, one of Guatemala’s three chicken distributors, with clients like McDonalds, dumps their spoiled chicken here. The driver - Pablo Enrique Romero - comes here every two weeks or so to dump chicken that has spoiled.
“The power failures we have make it go bad,” he explains. The old woman gets her boxes directly from the driver, turns them over on her mat, and then hands the box to the driver again. But she is soon overcome.
The children and women who had ran from the top of the landfill, a not so close distance of about 80 feet, now crowd the back of the truck, hands up in the air, like they are asking for communion or a blessing. Instead of handing the boxes to Pastoral, the driver starts throwing them over the crowd. Realizing that this is inappropriate, he decides to just give the boxes to the restless mob of toddlers and older cousins.
“But you have to give me the boxes back!” he says to the mothers, who stand to the side, their eyes confusedly jutting back and forth between child and chicken. “They never let me dump them,” he says.
The children dump out the sack of scraps on a hideout of their own and fill up the sacks again, this time with whole chicken.
“They have to choose,” Barrero explains, “because not all the chicken is good. But they do that later, at home. “Nothing happens to them. They cook them real well.”
Some children walk away with five or seven, or even ten, whole chickens in their sacks. It is almost 6 p.m.. They won’t be collecting any more cans today. Ingrid has stayed behind the whole time.
“I don’t take this,” she says. “I only take the ones that come frozen.”
A wise man once said that any kind of inhumanity becomes, with practice, human. But does it? Luis watches the spectacle from a mound facing the chicken truck. He only has one question on his mind: should he risk collecting the spoiled chicken?
Earlier that day he celebrated, in an admittedly modest fashion, the International Day of the Child, a phrase that seemed paradoxical to him now. He had flown kites. He had played hopscotch.
He also thought of his mother. Just yesterday he had walked 200 meters with 25-pound buckets of tomatoes on his shoulders. Would this day be any different?
The clouds of smoke gave the sheltering sky a minatory shade of gray. Sunset.
His eyes linger on boys who only minutes earlier he had considered adversaries.
They were ramming chicken bits, stillborn-like, into dirty burlap sacks.
He couldn’t.
“They’re eating more flies than food.”