Published September 4, 2007

The people in Cateura tell me they are lucky because they have steady
income working as recyclers at the landfill. They are organized into
several syndicates which operate like trade guilds where they set
prices and establish turf. The only way I could gain access to Cateura
is by being shepherded by one of the syndicates who insisted on telling
me how bad the working conditions are. The syndicates sound rehearsed
when they tell me about working in the sun without clean water,
inadequate healthcare and very poor educational opportunities (the
syndicates are funded by one of the many NGOs working in Asuncion).

But when talking to the people who actually sort the trash from the
recyclables, you get the impression that they are really happy. Life
at the dump is much better than life in the post-soy countryside. It's
easier they say, more secure, and their children have opportunities
they could never have in the filed.

Their happiness shows. The recyclers leap to their feet when the
trucks or wagons come with garbage. They swarm them with smiles and
eagerly gobble the trash into piles and wait for the landfill operators
to come around and weigh their loot.

Project

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Food insecurity can result from climate change, urban development, population growth and oil price shifts that are interconnected and rarely confined by borders. It’s an issue of global importance,...
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Soybeans, rows and rows of soybeans all around. In western Paraguay the fields that were once thick rain forests are now soybean plantations.
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