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Puerto Vallarta News NetworkEditorials | Environmental | July 2005 

Guatemalan Scavengers Endure Toxins
email this pageprint this pageemail usMaría De Jesús Peters - El Universal


Hundreds of migrant Indians toil amidst hazardous wastes at the Tapachula dump, sorting through garbage without proper protection.
Tapachula, Chiapas - Carmelina Ramírez Sandoval, 16 and a mother of a one-and-a-half-year-old baby, has spent more than half her life living amongst the flies, buzzards, dogs and rodents that inhabit Tapachula's municipal dump.

Since she and her parents arrived nine years ago from San Marcos, Guatemala, Carmelina has worked as a garbage scavenger, searching the mounds of trash for sheets of cardboard, plastic bottles, and any piece of metal that might exchanged for a few cents.

She also keeps her eyes out for items that she might find useful for herself.

"(I look for) furniture, clothes or toys for my son," she says, child slung over her back, flies buzzing around her head. "Or maybe something that we can eat."

Carmelina is one of the 300 Guatemalan Indians who work as pepenadores, or garbage scavengers, at the Tapachula dump. Most came from the impoverished border community of San Marcos in search of work and a better way of life. But what they have found has been low-paying and degrading labor that puts them in direct contact with an environment loaded with toxic and disease-laden substances.

Among the pepenadores are children, elderly, pregnant women, and young mothers, all of whom work without proper protective devices to shield them from the site's toxins. Many exhibit signs of skin infections from direct contact with dangerous waste materials. But as illegal, nonresident workers, they receive no health care from the local or state governments.

Leobardo Pérez Sandoval is the head of the municipal waste facility, and admits that his 300-person scavenger crew is predominantly Guatemalan and without legal documents.

"Only about 15 people who come to scavenge the trash are Mexican," he says.

Among the Guatemalans are Cleotilde Sacul and Fidelia Ramos, who are six and eight months pregnant, respectively. Still, despite their condition, they work side-by-side with their husbands, gleaning salvageable waste from the 300 tons of trash that arrives each day to the Tapachula dump.

Both are reluctant to talk to reporters, although Cleotilde, 35, acknowledges this as her sixth pregnancy. Fidelia, 17, is only a month away from delivering her third child.

Simón Yac is a young Guatemalen who has worked at the dump since the age of seven, recovering materials that he sells to recycling companies. He says that he earns between 30 to 50 pesos (US2.75 to 4.50) daily for his efforts.

During a brief break period under a makeshift tent where she lives on dump grounds with her seven children, Juana Hernández de Martínez, 40, shows the swollen sores that have begun to appear on her back. She says that several of her children, also pepenadores, suffer the same sort of skin infections.

Asked why she doesn't look for better work in safer conditions, Juana says: "It's hard to find a better job. But here, it's easy to find work, and you can make a little money."

In another nearby tent, Oralia Ramos, 18 and the mother of a seven-monthold baby, is also taking a short break from the grueling work. The uncovered feet of her child are covered with sores, possibly from insect bites, or perhaps from the contaminated soil where the family lives.

Orlia is not sure of the cause of the sores she has them, too, she says but notes that almost all the children living or working at the dump suffer diarrea, vomiting, colds, fever and rashes.

And none that she knows of have received medical attention, she says.



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