Bricolage
People
involved in rubbish collection in the streets of Mexico City are
known as pepenadores, from the Náhuatl word pepena meaning ‘to choose.’ According to official figures, there are 17 000 such scavengers in the Federal District. If we took into account the strong tendency among the inhabitants of Mexico City to sort out and keep all kinds of bits and parts of broken equipment, in case they are useful one day to repair something else, that number would be considerably larger. This deep-rooted scavenging spirit, far from being an ecological way of inhabiting the world, responds to a need many people have to save or deal with the shortages they face every day. Moreover, the principle of wasting nothing — because today’s rubbish might be the raw material to meet the needs of tomorrow — is based on the possibility of modifying the use for which an object was originally designed. Although this form of recycling is mainly a result of practical concerns, it also leads to the creation of ingenious new designs: doors made from crates, bottle caps used as washers, or walls made of plastic bottles. However, what for most people is a way of reducing costs, for some scavengers has translated into substantial fortunes and political power — for the so-called ‘rubbish kings.’ As in many fields, the system of political patronage that held sway in the 1970s–1990s encouraged their modus operandi, trading the votes of their armies of ‘employees’ for the right to collect the waste from residential areas — the most sought-after waste of all. Nevertheless, this ‘golden age’ ended with the opening-up of the borders which, as one of the principal scavenger leaders was right to point out, brought entire trainloads of better-quality rubbish direct from the US, which put an end to their ‘business.’ Although there are no longer ‘kings,’ the pepenadores continue to ensure the seven lives of many objects and materials: they sort glass, rags, tin, cardboard, recycling that people carry out in their homes, solves part of the problem of the excess of waste in the city, which amounts to 60% of that produced by the nation as a whole. Still unresolved, however, is the problem of pollution — of both the atmosphere and the water table — by the rubbish accumulated in the big dumps.
Multi-purpose
and wood, which they sell by weight for industrial reuse. This, together with the
≥ Mark Powell. (Photo / Foto).
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