Went out a couple weeks ago to Nuevo Amanecer, which is a community of returned refugees who lived in Chiapas until the peace accords here were signed in 1996. It was an interesting trip: got to see rubber trees being bled for rubber, saw a honey-making business. Also toured a tortilleria where I had a revelation about machine-made tortillas. The reason that they are thin, limp, dry cardboard compared to handmade tortillas is the tortilla-making machine. The whole apparatus is a series of conveyors, and one conveyor is also a heating element. If the tortillas are paper thing, the machine can cook them in literally two seconds. And when they're still warm, they are really really good.
Anyway, on the way up we headed past the trash dump, which is maybe informal, maybe formal, not sure. All I know is that you can smell it coming, and it's a creepy half mile stretch of burning plastic and rusty mattress springs. Everything's on fire, to dispose of the burnable stuff, and the poorest people in the area pick through the rest for glass and other things of marginal value. Many of them are kids, and at any given time there seems to be maybe 20 people picking through it, all day.
And dozens of vultures circle, and it makes you feel bad about life.
I realize there are no people in the pictures, but really, I'm not exaggerating. It's just that it's incredibly tacky to take pictures of children picking through garbage.
Anyway, on the way up we headed past the trash dump, which is maybe informal, maybe formal, not sure. All I know is that you can smell it coming, and it's a creepy half mile stretch of burning plastic and rusty mattress springs. Everything's on fire, to dispose of the burnable stuff, and the poorest people in the area pick through the rest for glass and other things of marginal value. Many of them are kids, and at any given time there seems to be maybe 20 people picking through it, all day.
And dozens of vultures circle, and it makes you feel bad about life.
I realize there are no people in the pictures, but really, I'm not exaggerating. It's just that it's incredibly tacky to take pictures of children picking through garbage.
1 comment:
this makes me feel bad about life.
Post a Comment