Mexico Reforms Mean Little to Poor in Garbage Dump

Eight-year-old Pancho lives and works amid the flies, roaches and rats that feed on the vast open-air garbage dump in this dusty town on the outskirts of Mexico City.

He has never been to school and says he cannot remember the last time he left the garbage dump for a glimpse of what he refers to as “the clean world” outside.

Like his parents and thousands of other children across Mexico City, Pancho is a pepenador , or scavenger. He wades through tons of garbage every day to search for recyclable goods and anything else of value.

“I don’t want to go to school because I can help my mother when I stay home,” says Pancho, whose only toys, a broken plastic truck and a one-armed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, were found in the dump.

“We all have to work so we can have enough to eat,” Pancho added, a shy grin forming on his dirt-caked face.

President Carlos Salinas de Gortari has been given high marks for his efforts to open up the economy and make Mexico a more attractive place for foreign investment.

The reform-minded Salinas has also launched a high-profile “Solidarity Program” aimed at easing the plight of the poor in a nation where half the population lives in poverty.

But Solidarity and the economic recovery Mexico has experienced over the last two years have yet to reach places like the Atizapan dump.

“I’d like to get out of here. But where are my family and I supposed to go?” said Pancho’s father, Enrique Garcia.

Garcia, 48, said he was a construction worker and electrician. But he said he was unable to find work outside of the dump and garbage is now all that stands between his family and starvation.

“We eat what rich people throw away,” he said bitterly, pointing to a sack full of rotting potatoes on the dirt floor of his one-room shack.

The copper wire, tin cans, cardboard, iron and even bones that Garcia, his wife and Pancho sell to recycling companies provide them with an income of up to about $30 a week. Some weeks are better than others, however, and the work is nonstop.

Garcia and other residents of Atizapan recall with resentment how officials of Mexico’s ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party visited the dump to urge people to vote for the PRI in local elections recently.

“They came to ask for votes but they didn’t offer anything in return,” Garcia said. “The government doesn’t help us. It doesn’t do anything for people like us,” he said.

“The truth is, you don’t see much of the government around here,” said Raul Martinez Esquivel, a 19-year-old who said he had been living in the dump with his nine brothers and sisters since he was 4.

“It’s hard work and you have to put your back into it or you don’t make enough to eat,” Martinez said. “You get used to it, though,” he added. “It’s a job, after all, and since I never studied, what else can I do?”

The Atizapan dump, which is home to more than 100 families, is one of four open-air garbage pits in the Mexico City area. Its residents say they fear the government may soon shut it down, however, to cut down on Mexico City’s chronic pollution.

The dump caught fire earlier this year, causing it to belch out dense plumes of toxic smoke for several days.

“The government doesn’t help us. They don’t even want to leave the dump here so we can keep working. Where are we going to go if they close it down?” asked one woman resident.

“Life is hard,” she said. “But if they shut this down it will be even harder and some of us might even die of hunger.”