Nearly 50,000 people live in the neighborhoods surrounding the largest waste plant in the province of Buenos Aires (Argentina), a place that is a source of environmental pollution, but for many it is also a source of work. How does the Catholic Church accompany the reality of those who “live off garbage”?
Known by its acronym: CEAMSE, the State Society Metropolitan Area Ecological Coordination is the entity in charge of managing urban solid waste in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area (Argentina).
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To do this, it uses different properties located in different parts of the province. One of them, called Norte III, located in the town of José León Suárez, receives approximately 85% of the system’s total waste, with an average of 436,325 tons of garbage per month.
Near this large property are, on one side, the towns of Villa Hidalgo, 13 de Julio, Los Eucaliptos and 8 de Mayo; and on the other, Villa La Cárcova, Independencia, November 5, Lanzone, Costa del Lago, Costa Esperanza.
living off garbage
On the shores of the garbage dump, the town populations already coexist naturally with pollution, odors, and a large part of them, in direct contact with the garbage, exposed to the dangers that this entails.
There, there are many families that “live off garbage”, that is, they make the garbage dump their source of income, either by collecting waste for later sale (cardboard, plastics, etc.), as well as by search for foods that, beyond their expiration date, can still be consumed.
Many consider it their source of work, but many others do it because “they have no other choice,” Father Andrés Benítez, parish priest of San Juan Bosco, acknowledges to ACI Prensa, a community that is made up of nine chapels located along and the width of Villa La Cárcova.
For many years, the shepherding of these communities was under the staff of Father José María “Pepe” Di Paola, who was recently assigned to the Primate Archdiocese of Argentina, Santiago del Estero.
Today, Father Benítez puts “the parish on his shoulder,” to attend every day to the five neighborhoods of José León Suárez, where nearly 50,000 people live. The advantage, says the priest, is that the community “banks on you,” that is, it supports the work. Every day is “a lottery,” he says, “but it is beautiful, it is God’s surprise, which is the most beautiful of all.”
A permanent deacon, some nuns, and numerous volunteers collaborate with the parish activities. Today, the main thing is to feed people, because the demand is great. Every day, the different chapels are transformed into dining rooms that deliver an average of 3,000 portions daily.
To cover this need, the parish uses donations, which are received in the current account of the BBVA bank, to CBU 0170457420000000076412. Account holder: San Juan Bosco Parish.
Relieve hunger, above all
“If you ask me today what the parish’s priority is: cooking, above all else,” he summarizes. “Today for me the most important thing is that, that the week starts and that I know that all the chapels have gas in their bottles, that the pots are good, that the stoves are working, that they have noodles, potatoes, carrots, onions, meat, condiments, water.”
Recently, the situation in the neighborhoods has worsened, the priest acknowledges. “People don’t get their jobs back, they don’t have it, they can’t keep it. There are no sources of work,” he explained. The “changas” (occasional work) end soon, and in the lines to receive the food “there are more and more people.”
In this framework, CEAMSE becomes a source of work for many inhabitants of the area. “The dump has an impressive magnitude. It is a neighborhood, where there are a lot of people working inside, by sectors, by zones,” explains the parish priest.
“There are times when the CEAMSE allows families, obviously authorized people, to come and do recycling work, or collection, or selection, so to speak, of the things that they can use, mainly for sale.”
“If food arrives, sometimes it is obviously food close to its expiration date, or expired, and many times people take it to consume,” he acknowledges, especially non-perishable food, which cannot be on the shelf of a supermarket. but “for consumption it is still available,” he points out.
“There is a large group that is dedicated to that. That’s why I say, our parish borders the strip of the Reconquista River, with the Camino del Buen Ayre, and all the neighborhoods that we have here, that we serve, are close to what the CEAMSE is,” he details.
The parish as the center of life in the towns
The life of the parish and the life of the community are not parallel paths, but intertwined. The same families that go to the garbage dump have children who go to catechism classes in the chapels, at the educational center, at the club. And the adults are part of the men’s or women’s groups of the chapels. There is a “back and forth” with them, the priest points out.
“The kids themselves tell you: today my brother, my dad or my mom was in the garbage dump or is working. They say it very normally, because in our neighborhoods, the towns, changa is like hard work, so to speak, and part of that changa is the cardboard, that recycling.”
“Sometimes we see that parents go out with their cart to do work, and sometimes their children go with them, because many times it is the time they have to be together, work together.”
“It is part of the reality of the neighborhoods and our towns,” he insists. However, the other side of that reality is the dangers they face while working at the garbage dump, which include “getting hurt, cutting yourself on something there, or your health itself, which is also affected because you want to.” or not, you are in the garbage dump, with all that that implies: the poisoning, the burning, the odors, the dirt.”
“While there, cutting yourself with something, even a small cut, that small cut implies a much larger infection,” he warns. “So it is a very delicate issue,” he explains, although “thank God, the neighborhoods all have their first aid rooms, obviously with how precarious it is to be in a room in a town,” he clarifies.
“The health issue is complicated,” he points out, and many times people become accustomed, “unfortunately, to being in constant contact with garbage, the dirt it implies, the illness for them, for their family.”
“Unfortunately, for now, it is a source of work, today people work there and sometimes their income is that. And there is more and more garbage, one realizes that it continues to grow, it does not end,” he warns. “There is more and more waste, both materially and humanly. And this doesn’t look like it will happen very soon.”
“We are in a disposable society, materially and humanly as well. There are more and more things, but with less duration. It happens with the elements and it happens with the people: this person retired, or did not finish studying, or does not know, and that’s it. I change you, or what often happens with jobs: I hire you for three months on a trial basis and when the three months are up, well, thank you, here comes the one behind you,” reflects the priest.
Added to poverty: prejudices
Getting a job is difficult, and outside the neighborhood this gets worse. “When one of them can go out to look for work outside the town, they automatically ask for their resume” and “when you say that you are from La Cárcova, Villa Curita, Independencia, 13 de Julio, Barrio Nuevo, it is very difficult for them to accept you” .
“That fear, the prejudice, is still there: you have the face of a neighborhood, you have the face of a town, you have the face of a criminal. One talks about discrimination, but here that happens every day, unfortunately it happens every day,” he warns.
The situation has also worsened in recent months regarding income, because state aid through plans has been “falling away.” In the parish, this translated into a lack of volunteers because people “don’t have money to live” and they have to “go out and do jobs.”
This situation brings other problems: “People in line for food have already started fighting, because they are afraid of going without food,” he points out. “They see a long line and they start pushing each other, the fight starts.”
On the other hand, “(drug) consumption is growing a lot, much more is sold, it is an area free of weapons and consumption. So it’s very heavy,” he says.
For this reason, from the parish “we try to accompany each other,” he highlights. “The parish is enormously large, it has a lot of life: the club, the school, the chapel, the ‘three C’s’ as we always say, the organized community, education, trade school, from the smallest to the largest. The chapel is always open and is always a reference for the neighborhood. We are not oblivious to the reality of the neighborhood, it is incredible what has been achieved in these ten years,” he concludes.
Juliet Villar
I am a journalist, with a degree in communication from the National University of La Matanza in Argentina. I have work experience in non-governmental organizations. Since 2016 I have been dedicated to Catholic journalism, first at the Argentine Catholic Information Agency (AICA) and, since 2022, as ACI Prensa correspondent for Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia.