Solid Waste Management & Privatization

This week, our class visits focused largely on the issue of trash management, a topic with great current relevance to Cuernavaca and its surrounding municipalities. Last summer, the residents of two communities outside of Cuernavaca, Alpuyeca and Tetlama, united to protest the government and force the closure of an open air landfill in Tetlama, the site which had received the daily trash produced by Cuernavaca and four other municipalities for the past 35 years. As a result of not being able to use the Tetlama landfill to store all of its trash, trash accumulated in the streets of Cuernavaca. City residents, concerned with the trash piling in the streets, demanded another system of trash management and storage. After arranging to temporarily send the city’s trash to Mexico City, the municipal government has since struggled to improve its system of trash management.

We had the opportunity this week to speak with members of the municipal government involved with environmental decision-making, visit the landfill in Tetlama, and speak with community representatives that participated in the resistance movement.

On Friday, SJGELA met with José Juan Tovilla, Secretary of Public Services and the Environment for the city of Cuernavaca. We also spoke with the municipal director of ecology and a coordinator of environmental education in Cuernavaca. They described a system of ecological inspection and vigilance in the city and discussed government efforts to improve environmental education within Cuernavaca. Workshops that, for example, teach participants how to recycle paper or how to start a compost program are open to the public and are designed to improve environmental consciousness. As well, they informed us about the current system of trash management and the government’s recent decision to contract a private company, Promotora Ambiental (PASA), to take over trash collection and treatment. They also explained the decision to create a new landfill in an area of San Antón, the colonia in which our school is located. This new landfill, they argued, would handle all of Cuernavaca’s trash for the next twenty years. Throughout their presentation, they stressed that they were representatives of a new government that had received the trash problem from the previous administration, but that they were planning to resolve it.

In our visit to Tetlama, we discussed the importance of the geological layout in determining landfill sites. Taking what we had learned from Laura Kuri’s presentation on water runoff, it was evident that the runoff from the Tetlama landfill most directly impacted the town of Alpuyeca. Hipólito García, a community leader in Tetlama who was integral in the struggle to close the landfill, told us that the people of Alpuyeca are the most affected by the negative health impacts of the landfill because they live at the bottom of the landfill. He noted that Alpuyeca has a surprisingly high rate of cancer, a result, many suspect, is the result of pollution caused by the landfill. As well, the group discussed the side effects of placing a landfill above critical water sources, leading to questions about the possibility of a new landfill in San Antón, an area with many ravines that connect to water sources for many people.

Hipólito García also spoke to us about the social and environmental resistance effort in Tetlama. He felt that government officials never enforced the regulations they had promised, that the landfill had never been properly managed, and that secrecy on behalf of the government had contributed to many frustrations within the town. Men, women, and children united in Tetlama to block a back passage to the landfill and prevent the government from forcing garbage trucks into the disposal site. He further described the struggle as one not only for the inhabitants of Tetlama, but one for other communities as well. García stated that the resistance movement was greatly strengthened by unification with other towns and activist groups.

The visit to the Tetlama—the drive through the old disposal site and our dialogue with town representatives--was very moving because although we have highlighted the consumption of Cuernavaca and its current struggle to design an effective and safe solid waste management program, trash management is a universal issue that every community faces every day. It is easy to detach oneself from the issue of solid waste disposal if trash is collected by a garbage truck and stored outside of one’s community. Seeing the trash in the old open air landfill was extremely moving because consumption and trash production are processes in which everyone engages. Many of us do not know where our trash goes or who lives around those trash disposal sites. To actually view a landfill where such trash is stored and speak with community members forced to deal with the consequences forges a unique consciousness about the impacts of individual waste production.

In class sessions throughout the week, we spent time discussing the role of social movements in democratic systems of governance. Speaking with two representatives of the movement in Tetlama and Alpuyeca provided a living example of community organization as a form of exercising citizenship. During our week we also discussed the injustices of trash management and the possibility of environmental racism in the placement of hazardous storage sites: Tetlama, for example, is an indigenous community and it was selected as a site for an open air landfill. It was evident that the social struggle in these two communities was intricately linked to the natural environment. The close location of the landfill, its inadequate regulation, and the pollution and contamination that resulted were among the main contributing factors that motivated the social resistance in Tetlama. Through organization, its citizens were able to challenge government policy to force consideration of a more just system of management.