“I had two before.
The first, male, would have already turned 10 years old.
He was born in the morning and passed away at noon.
The girl was eight years ago.
She died inside my belly, three hours before expelling her.
I couldn't see her face”, says Maritza.
"Now I'm about two months.
They won't let me make an effort or enter the crematorium”, she affirms with her hands clutching her bulging belly.
For more than a decade, Maritza has been working at the La Metálica landfill.
In the municipality of Lima, 20 kilometers from San Pedro Sula, the industrial capital of Honduras, this banana community is one of the poorest in the north of the country.
It was also one of the hardest hit by the tropical phenomena Eta and Iota, which in 2021 flooded a large part of Honduras, affecting more than 91,000 homes and leaving more than four and a half million people affected, according to the Permanent Contingency Commission of Honduras.
“The rains devastated my house, they left us with nothing.
There were many months without work”, regrets the pregnant woman.
A few kilometers from the Honduran town of San Pedro Sula is the small community of La Metálica, whose access is surrounded by kilometers of banana plantations.
This is one of the areas most affected by the floods caused by the recent hurricanes Eta and Iota.
Gonzalo Hohr
The community is known for a gigantic garbage dump that is located a few meters from the houses.
Several trucks from San Pedro Sula arrive daily to unload tons of garbage that have become the livelihood of many women in the area.
Gonzalo Hohr
Ana Rosa is 58 years old, and for the last 16 years she has spent picking up rubbish every day from six in the morning.
She is one of the scavengers from Las Metálicas.
She normally collects aluminum, copper, cans and plastic.
She has supported her husband and her four children by working from dawn to dusk in the garbage dump.
As she speaks, black scavenging birds known as 'cleaners' flap their wings around her.
Gonzalo Hohr
Martha Elena Enrique is 61 years old and is a scavenger, like her sister Ana Rosa.
Every day she walks an hour to get to the landfill where she spends her days collecting garbage for later recycling.
She says that today it is a job only for women, because before, when men also did it, problems and disputes arose.Gonzalo Hohr
Ana Rosa watches as the tractor compacts the mountains of garbage.
This activity displaces waste to make room for trucks that unload mountains of waste.Gonzalo Hohr
Hurricanes Eta and Iota flooded this area in late 2020. The water washed away plantations, livestock and homes.
Conditions are still precarious, they lack electricity and many houses are made of sheet metal and canvas.
Hurricanes and poverty, among other factors, have made the area one of the most depressed in northern Honduras.
Gonzalo Hohr
Rosa Iveth Acosta, a community leader, lived through the devastation of the hurricanes and is one of the people who fights every day to make the community prosper little by little.
In addition to the damage caused by the floods and the economic paralysis caused by the pandemic, she recognizes that the rise in food prices is now one of the biggest concerns.
Gonzalo Hohr
Rosa Iveth shows the concrete structure of her house that was left standing after hurricanes Eta and Iota.
Everything else was swept away by the waters that reached more than three meters high.
Gonzalo Hohr
Rosa Iveth shows the roof of her neighbor's house, where she says they survived in isolation for three days.
It was the highest point and was able to support the weight of many neighbors while they waited to be evicted in canoes.
Gonzalo Hohr
Dinora Ruiz is the president of the patronage and the oldest representative of the community, where a total of 145 houses were lost under the mud.
Dozens of people saved their lives on the roof of her home during the floods caused by hurricanes Eta and Iota.
Gonzalo Hohr
Maritza is pregnant.
She also works at the dump.
She has already lost two pregnancies and in the community they understand that the accumulation of organic waste, high temperatures and gas inhalation are one of the causes that cause abortions.
She is aware that her contribution to the family economy is essential, but for now she will have to get by with her husband's intermittent work on the banana plantations.
Gonzalo Hohr
Vultures, carrion birds, are known as 'cleaners' because they eat everything.
Garbage mountains give off heat, a nauseating smell and gases.Gonzalo Hohr
There is no rest for these women who carry out a hard profession.
Organic waste ferments in the sun and releases gases.
Gonzalo Hohr
María Magdalena Blanco is 62 years old, has been working as a scavenger for 11 years and is the oldest in the garbage dump.
She acknowledges that it is the only job she can access at her age.
Her health still allows her to work the endless hours that only end when she unloads the last truck from San Pedro Sula.
Gonzalo Hohr
Martha Elena, 61, in the foreground, classifies the garbage that has just been unloaded by the last garbage truck, together with more waste pickers.
Gonzalo Hohr
For a job that borders on inhuman conditions, these Hondurans earn about 700 pesos a week (about 28 euros).
Gonzalo Hohr
In a society like the Honduran one, marked by its strong heteropatriarchal character, the man is the one who brings sustenance to the house, but a single salary is almost never enough.
“There are husbands who don't earn enough and they have to work as peasants in the milpa, on a small piece of land where they plant beans or corn.
And then there are the collectors,” says Rosa Iveth Acosta, leader of a community in which women work as scavengers.
They earn their livelihood by separating recyclable material in dumps.
“I don't know how they can, I faint, I can't stand that smell.
They come in at eight o'clock and resist all day under the sun.
They do it because it is the help to fill the pantry, buy shoes, pay for school.
But I don't know how they can…” confesses Acosta.
"They end up hurting our backs and legs, we get pimples, we always have a cough from bacteria and contamination," Maritza acknowledges on the porch of her home, surrounded by banana and African palm crops, two of the products that support exports. from the country.
The scavengers work from Monday to Saturday, breathing putrid air for more than eight hours each day.
It ends up hurting the back, the legs, we get pimples, we always have a cough
Maritza, scavenger at the La Metálica landfill
The holidays do not exist to rest from the mountains of waste where organic waste is fermented and plastics accumulate, from which enormous amounts of carbon monoxide and dioxide and sulfur emanate.
"When the sun hits hard, the smell penetrates the houses and it is unbearable," acknowledges Acosta.
In the distance extends the crematorium that nourishes with its rubble a good percentage of the informal work of the region, piles of filth that the machines trample.
Among flocks of buzzards and emaciated dogs, infested with fleas, women with visors and gloves wander among the waste attentive to the best material they can find.
“We collect aluminum, copper, plastic, all the cans we find.
The pound is paid at 6.50 lempiras (0.26 euros), the scrap at 3 (0.21) ", says Ana Rosa, 58 years old.
“You have to work hard, without stopping.
There isn't a God's day that I don't sweat!” she exclaims as she wipes the drippings from the wrinkles on her forehead.
“I have been collecting garbage for 16 years.
With this job I have raised my four children! ”, She says, proud.
Attentive to the testimony, his sister Martha Elena, three years older, helps him collect plastic in a huge bag.
“The hardest thing is when it rains.
And the walk I do on foot.
Also my two daughters-in-law and my daughter work here,” she explains.
“Only women can collect.
Men are forbidden because they always looked for trouble and became very aggressive.
They can enter to leave the rubbish or to buy”, adds Acosta.
“This is a business controlled by
gang members
, and they don't want any problems.
Problems attract the police”, exposes a neighbor.
These Hondurans earn 700 pesos a week (about 28 euros), 1,500 a fortnight.
Not so long ago, 1,000 lempiras was enough for food for a week.
But prices have fluctuated to their disadvantage: a pound of beans, before at 12 lempiras, now costs 27. Oil went from 13 to 27, and flour, in eight, almost doubled its value.
“Gasoline went up and everything went up.
Everything except wages”, laments the head of the La Metálica community, where at the family table, day after day, the same scarce food is served on the plates.
According to the Central Bank of Honduras, year-on-year inflation reached 10.22% last June, compared to 4.67% registered last year in the same month.
“We eat beans and rice.
The meat is priceless, from time to time we eat cheese and an egg.
Those who have chickens are sometimes lucky enough to eat chicken.
But the economy is very difficult”, says Ana Rosa.
When cyclones swallowed poverty
"With the pandemic we were left without a job, and then the catastrophe came," says Maritza.
In 2021, tropical cyclones Eta and Iota, which struck two weeks apart, leveled the community and submerged it three meters under water.
“Those rains cannot be forgotten, remembering hurts a lot.
Everything was flooded.
I had copper material, cans, of great value.
The waters drank up to my house, my
ranch
, I lost everything”, recalls Ana Rosa.
“We were left homeless, only with the clothes we were wearing.
That day I had spent a lot on food and I took it with me.
I distributed it among the people who were crying, all wet.
I hugged them because the cold was wild, with the blankets I warmed them, ”she continues recounting the scavenger.
It is estimated that Eta and Iota affected 40% of the country's population, causing damage only comparable to Hurricane Mitch in 1998, which claimed 14,000 lives.
Eta and Iota are estimated to have affected 40% of the country's population, causing damage only comparable to Hurricane Mitch in 2020.
“We did not expect the catastrophe because the governments did not warn.
There is hardly any communication here.
When we were notified of the emergency, there was no way out, the water entered from all sides,” says Dinora Ruiz, president of the La Metálica board of trustees and the oldest representative of the community, where a total of 145 houses were lost under the mud.
When the raging waters that crossed the Maya Canal, fed by the Chamelecón River, burst its retaining walls, the current swept away the houses, the roads, the plantations, life.
After the passage of the first cyclone, only the roof of Ruiz's house remained firm, which gave shelter to 36 families.
"The roof was rotten and we couldn't move, we spent three days without eating or drinking water up there," says Acosta.
The community leader remembers that during the first night someone ordered them to be silent so that the cattle would not hear them.
“The cows were looking for a place to climb to save themselves.
"If they had reached the ceiling we would all have drowned," she says.
The next day, his corpses were floating in the streams of garbage.
Figures from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) estimate that the damage caused by tropical storm Eta and hurricane Iota was approximately 52,000 million lempiras (approximately 2,100 million euros).
The land was destroyed, the crops were lost, the banana trees, rotten, had to be cut off by the roots.
“Before the flood I used to say that our lives were made because my husband had planted palm trees and was already producing.
But the rains ripped it out and we were left with nothing.
Everything is gone,” laments Acosta.
His community was isolated for months, inaccessible due to the mud that covered everything.
The community is still waiting for help that is slow in coming.
“All the support received was from outsiders, from associations.
The Government does not approach, they arrived one day and, as we say here, they greeted with someone else's hat.
They say they have no funds, they never have.
We feel completely abandoned,” says the leader.
“We thought that when Xiomara Castro came to power the price of things would drop, that life would be made a little easier, but we are getting worse and worse,” complains María Magdalena Blanco.
She is 62 years old and has been working as a scavenger for 11 years.
“It's the only job I can have.
Being elderly, I don't find anything else”, she says between the buzzing of the flies and the squawks of the buzzards that make her voice difficult to hear.
“We call them the
World Cleaners
because they eat everything”, explains this woman, one of the oldest in the garbage dump, with an attentive look at the scavenging birds.
“One has to resign himself to working like this to eat, life is hard and the basket is very high.
And being honest in this country is hard”, confesses Blanco.
Like the rest of her companions, she does not finish her day until the last garbage truck arrives, among which the days, her health and her life go by.
“The doctors told me that the asthma that I suffer from was what caused the death of the previous children.
When I got pregnant, my husband didn't let me work anymore,” confesses Maritza.
It has not yet been possible to review the status of her pregnancy.
“I think I'm two months old, I don't know well.
I am waiting for my husband to collect his fortnight to go to the health center”, she affirms.
And, with a half smile that hints at a glimmer of hope, she acknowledges:
―If all goes well, as soon as I have the baby I will go back to harvesting.
We need the money and my work at the dump to get it going.
You can follow PLANETA FUTURO on
,
and
, and subscribe
to our 'newsletter'
here
.