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 Editorials | Environmental | January 2008 
Reynosa Hasn't Found Matamoros Success
 Lynn Brezosky - San Antonio Express-News
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Reynosa, Mexico — Compared to Matamoros, Reynosa is in the dump-site dark ages.
Attempts by the city to seal landfills have had short-lived results because the population is growing so quickly. As one is sealed, new ones pop up.
"The needs are so great the city is overwhelmed," explained Brownsville environmentalist Domingo Gonzalez, who runs the nonprofit Association for Development, Education, Leadership, Advocacy and Service, a catchall organization dedicated to border issues.
Gonzalez recently helped start a program in Matamoros, across from Brownsville, to teach freelance garbage-salvagers called pepenadores how to properly recycle trash in exchange for official access to the city dump.
"They did try," he said of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen.
The Rev. Ed Krueger has been giving tours at Reynosa landfills for years. A longtime labor organizer, Krueger told of a woman who explained she could make more in two days working in a dump than in a week in a foreign-owned assembly plant, or maquiladora.
He said many garbage pickers came from southern states like Veracruz dreaming of riches on the border, leaving behind plots where they had chickens, goats, gardens and fruit trees to help stretch meager earnings.
"When they get here they really didn't realize what it costs to rent a little place here on the border," Krueger said.
A few miles past the Reynosa industrial parks where companies such as Emerson and Black and Decker have set up shop are roads that fork off toward the dumps.
One, run by a private business, charges pepenadores a large sack of plastic bottles for the privilege of picking through it. Donkey-driven carts that collect small fees to cart trash from homes and businesses empty there. The dump earns money by selling about a ton of plastic a week to recycling companies in Monterrey.
A treacherous narrow road winds through acres of trash. Mounds of used tires stretch back hundreds of feet. There are giant rolls of fiberglass and piles of discarded electronics.
Alongside another narrow road leading from the dump is a pepenador squatter settlement. It was built almost entirely with dump pickings — patchworks of plywood, metal, canvas, even a political campaign poster serving as a window cover. There is no plumbing or running water.
The smell of the dump clings to clothing and can make visitors nauseous.
"NAFTA was supposed to bring us to the First World and the fact that this is happening proves that ain't happening," Gonzalez said.
lbrezosky(at)express-news.net |
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