NICARAGUA:
Fighting Over Society’s
Scraps
By José Adán Silva
MANAGUA (IPS) -
Thousands of people who
eke out a living by
selling recyclable trash
scavenged from the
municipal dump in the
Nicaraguan capital are
staging a protest over
control of the city’s
waste, blocking access
to the dump by the
garbage trucks.
As a result, garbage has
been piling up on the
streets of Managua for
almost three weeks now,
putting the city’s 1.6
million inhabitants at
risk of disease
outbreaks.
Some 1,600 waste pickers
who comb through the
garbage in the huge La
Chureca city dump, on
the northwest outskirts
of Managua, for scrap
material to sell began
the protest on Mar. 1.
They accuse local
authorities of
encouraging municipal
employees to sell
recyclable material
themselves to formal
sector companies that
pay taxes.
Germán Salgado, the
leader of the garbage
pickers, told IPS that
the roots of the problem
date back more than two
years, to a municipal
government decision that
has hurt more than 2,000
people who depend on
selling waste materials
like aluminium, iron,
copper, bronze, plastic,
paper and glass for a
living.
"There are more than
1,600 people who work
here day and night, and
another 400 or 500 who
wash the materials and
sell them," he said.
"But over the past two
years, the pickings have
become more and more
scarce, and now we
realised that the city
government is removing
the materials and
selling them."
According to Edgard
Narváez, one of the
organisers of the
protest and a member of
the Movimiento Comunal
(Community Movement), a
grassroots social
movement, the municipal
measure has pushed the
families of garbage
pickers to the verge of
starvation and made
their already extremely
tough lives even more
difficult.
"Workers here used to
earn up to three dollars
a day, but now on many
days they don't even
earn as much as a dollar
for their work, because
the garbage has already
been picked over,"
Narváez told IPS.
He is calling on the
municipal government to
keep its workers from
selecting the best
recyclable materials to
sell themselves, and to
force them to deposit
all of the garbage in
the La Chureca dump.
A report by Nicaragua’s
Centro de Trámites de
Exportaciones (Export
Procedures Centre)
indicates that exports
of recyclable material
amounted to 18 million
dollars in 2006 and 21
million dollars in 2007.
Because the protest has
kept the drivers of the
60 garbage trucks that
service the capital from
taking the rubbish they
collect to the dump, the
1, 200 tons of trash
generated daily by the
city are now clogging
the streets of Managua.
Mayor Dionisio Marenco
said the protest was
endangering public
health in the city, and
authorities at the
Health Ministry and the
National Disaster
Prevention System have
issued a health alert
against possible
epidemics.
Walter Calderón,
spokesman for the
non-governmental Centro
Dos Generaciones (Two
Generations Centre),
which supports the
families who live in and
around the La Chureca
dump, told IPS that the
protest "is just the tip
of the iceberg of deep
underlying social
problems."
"An emergency had to
occur for Nicaraguan
society to remember that
there is a hell on earth
where women give birth
to their children in the
garbage," said Calderón,
who added that the
protest should serve as
a wakeup call for the
authorities.
La Chureca, which is
located next to the
Acahualinca slum
neighbourhood, is a
64-hectare dump that was
created in 1975 on the
shores of Lake Managua.
Of the more than 1,600
people who work in the
dump, more than 500 are
children between the
ages of seven and 18,
who help scavenge for
materials that they can
sell, and for discarded
food scraps to feed the
family, reports the
Centro Dos Generaciones.
The landscape is bleak,
with mountains of
steaming garbage on
every side, and streams
of mud and rotting trash
running down to the
lake, while people, dogs
and carrion-eating birds
fight each other over
scraps of food.
Around 147 families live
on one side of the dump
in a slum consisting of
shacks made of
cardboard, scraps of
wood and corrugated
iron, and other
scavenged materials.
Some 700 people of all
ages live in the
overcrowded shacks,
according to a study by
the Asociación Cristiana
de Jóvenes (ACJ) of
Nicaragua, a related
movement of the World
Alliance of YMCAs.
Before the ACJ became
active in the area 12
years ago, La Chureca
was a "hot zone" of
drugs, drinking,
prostitution and violent
crime.
"I was stabbed in the
back when I was trying
to pull an old bicycle
out of the garbage,"
said Antenor García, one
of the slum’s founding
residents. "The
competition in this
world is tough, and not
everyone survives."
Justina Santos, 45, who
has lived in La Chureca
for 12 years, told IPS
that the violence and
crime have recently
improved, but not the
living conditions.
"We used to eat at least
twice a day. Now we are
hard-pressed just to
make soup, so the
children can be fooled
into feeling full," said
Santos, who works with
her partner and their
three children under the
age of 13 scavenging
among rotten food
scraps, dead animals,
cans, glass, dust and
dirt.
Cirilo Otero, a
sociologist who heads
the Centro de
Iniciativas de Políticas
Ambientales
(Environmental Policy
Initiatives Centre),
said the protest is an
excellent opportunity to
put an end once and for
all to the slum in the
dump and provide the
families with a better
life.
"The problem is not
going to be solved by
dumping ‘better’ garbage
so that these people
have something to live
off of," he commented to
IPS. "The solution is to
move them out of there,
train them in some
trade, and insert them
into a healthier and
more productive life."
"Pulling them out of
there would save the
lives of many of those
kids, who are dying
every day from eating
contaminated food," he
said.
A study by the
Autonomous National
University of Nicaragua
and the Lund University
of Sweden found in 2007
that more than 30
percent of the children
who live and work in La
Chureca are affected by
lead, mercury and DDT
because of exposure to
garbage and consumption
of fish from Lake
Managua.
After nearly three weeks
of protest, municipal
and central government
officials are discussing
an immediate solution to
the problem, while
hundreds of waste
pickers continue manning
the roadblock that is
keeping the garbage
trucks out of the dump.
The search for solutions
has already led to an
agreement signed earlier
this month by the city
government and Spain’s
International
Cooperation Agency (AECI),
to finance a project to
close the dump within
the next few years.
AECI regional
coordinator Elena
Montobbio told the press
that her country would
provide 30 million euros
(47 million dollars) so
that the city can close
down the dump, and build
decent housing to
relocate the families as
well as a community-run
recycling plant. Within
five years, the families
should be able to leave
behind their old lives
in the city dump
forever.
But in the meantime, the
rubbish keeps piling up.
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