To clarify, as I might have omitted this before, I live in
Antigua, but my organization works in Guatemala City. Antigua is smaller,
safer, and more foreigner-friendly than the City. Its cobblestone streets are
lined with colorfully painted one- to two-story buildings, along with ruins galore; the vacant remains of 17th-ish century churches speckle the
map. The tiny, one-block park is the center of town, the hub of its charm. The
Cerro de la Cruz (Hill of the Cross) marks the north, and Volcano Agua dominates
the skyline to the south. Every afternoon, the market on the west side booms
with cheap produce. Avocados grow rampant here, and native Antiguans are known
as “Panzaverdes” or “Green-bellies” for their avocado-heavy diets.
Antigua attracts heaps of international ex-pats, as well as
wealthy Guatemala City residents, who saturate the streets on weekends. There
are spas, language schools, and gourmet restaurants. I've seen menu items here
I never dreamed would have reached Central America – gnocchi, crepes, bagels
and lox, a bottomless mimosa brunch?? Even in St. Louis those are hard to come
by. Thank you, tourism industry.
By contrast, I spend most of my days in Guatemala City’s
Zone 3, a place adamantly avoided by tourists and Guatemalans alike. The
primary features of Zone 3 are the General Cemetery and the Basurero (Garbage Dump). Before I get off the bus, I can usually smell it – the putrid scent of
rotting… everything. Vultures swoop overhead. Above dirt-caked asphalt, dusty tennis
shoes hang from electric lines by the dozens. Makeshift tin and/or grey
concrete homes fill every square foot available.
The communities surrounding the dump arose during
Guatemala’s Civil War. Their story echoes many around the world: Circa the
1970’s and 80’s, state military and guerrilla forces pursued each other in a
battle for control of territory/resources. Rural communities got swept up in
the violence. People witnessed violent atrocities. They saw their innocent
neighbors, friends, family members murdered. Tortured. Massacred. People ran.
They ran to the capitol, and they survived, settling in the least desirable
sections of the city.
In Guatemala City’s garbage dump, the children and
grandchildren of the war’s internal refugees continue to fight for survival.
Many make a living digging, waste-deep, through the trash, salvaging and
re-selling anything of value that they can find. Many more operate as middle
men, buying salvaged materials from the dump and refurbishing them for sale to
manufacturers. Very few remember, nor do they hope for, a life beyond Zone 3.
I often reflect on the terrible synchronicity of it all. The
people whom those in power considered trash now live in trash. In the land
society has designated to bury its dead, reside those who are dead to society.
And in the ravines of this land, day after day, these people bury themselves in
waste and decay, in order to live on that which has been left for dead,
forgotten. As they themselves seem to be.
The idea of our work at Safe Passage is to break the cycle
of working in the dump, to empower our students to move UP. If a young person
achieves a high enough level of education, s/he may get hired in a formal
capacity. If the mothers of our students can learn a new trade through our
social entrepreneurship programs, they can make more money and save for their
families in ways that were never before possible. If the fathers can advance
their own education in adult literacy classes, perhaps they can use what
they’ve learned to take on a new level of employment. The smallest increments
of progress make an indefinable difference.
