During my stay here in Buenos Aires, like most foreign visitors, I've merrily traipsed the thin veneer of economic stability the city — and the country at large — seems to be experiencing in recent moments. Wary of the 1999-2001 financial crisis which brought Argentina to its knees, I often wonder if the equivalent of $4 for an amazing bottle of wine is just too good to be true. Can three-fourths of a charred cow carcass really cost less than a car wash and a Big Gulp? Argentina is one of the few places left in the world these days, where the American dollar still has considerable clout and God knows I've been riding that cow into the ground.
But again, the veneer is paper thin. As I languish in outdoor cafes, my cortado freshly frothing, an alfajor melting nearby; constant reminders that the veneer is not only flimsy but translucent, abound. Every day, for example, Buenos Aires' unofficial, city-wide recycling initiative goes into full swing. From my curbside perch, I witness thousands of denizens descend on the piles of garbage bags sitting on the sidewalk's edge to carefully open them up for a peek at their putrid contents. Amidst a mid-day lunch in the chic Palermo Hollywood neighborhood, cartoneros, as these freelance sanitation experts are referred to, pull large, rickety carts fronted by donkeys. These carts pull past luxury cars and menus detailing three-course ejecutivo lunches in fancy script. You see them in the less well-off neighborhoods, too, but the contrast between suit and tie and soot and twist-tie is the most acute.
Recyclable materials such as cardboard, plastic and glass bottles and paper are meticulously picked out of every bag. Whole families get into the act. Ma and pa pad the cart with the day's finds while big sis and little brother help burrow through each bag; all sans gloves. After a long day of hunting for hidden treasures, the soiled and tired family sells whatever they haul in to recycling plants for next to nothing. Meanwhile, the donkey-pulled cart, a fuzzy reminder of an old world economy, struggles up the street past the many shiny benchmarks of the new one.
For many of the cartoneros, freelance recycling is the only work available to them. The Argentinian financial crisis was peaking just six years ago. The mayhem drastically devalued the Argentinean peso, thus decimating the savings of most of the country's large, and fairly affluent, middle class. The crisis more or less did the same thing to the job market; leaving thousands of Argentines unemployed.
Every time I pass by a group of cartoneros, I admittedly can't help but watch; from a respectful distance of course. Not that it's fascinating to see people desperately eking out a living, it's just fascinating to know that a city like Buenos Aires depends solely on the cartoneros for their recycling efforts. While recycling is, of course, low on the country's priority list (and understandably so) without the cartoneros and the few supermarkets who take only two or three types of glass bottles, there would be no recycling in the city at all. At least, that was initially an assumption of mine.
While nursing a J&B on the rocks at a San Telmo watering hole one night, I had wandered aloud to Lucas, a local, whether or not porteños recycle at all (or at least want to) or if they deposit their recyclables in the trash, purposefully for the benefit of the cartoneros. Sort of like charity through refuse.
''They don't care,'' Lucas said with a knowing smirk and the wave of his hand.
I guess I was right. Fortunately, though, the government doesn't turn a completely deaf ear to the cartoneros' plight.
''Do you know about the train?''
''The train?''
''Yes, the old white, freight train that very early in the morning takes them from outside the city to the station with all of their carts and everything."
"The government gives them a train?"
"Yes, and it is free for them," Lucas said in a tone that seemed to indicate that they were receiving an adequate consolation prize.
Makes sense, I suppose, since the cartoneros most likely could scarcely afford the cost of public transportation. The obvious question continued to poke around in my brain, though, and finally, after ordering another J&B, it just came out: Wouldn't the cartoneros be better served with money, jobs or even free food instead of a rickety old train?
"Hmm," he said as he sipped from a glass containing some deep, red Malbec, "maybe."
The train seemed like a semblance of a bone the government threw at the hundreds, maybe thousands, of families engaged in active trash-picking. In other words, what the government offers the cartoneros is a subsidy, albeit a broken down one with rusted wheels and no seats. You could say it's akin to governments improving infrastructure to better facilitate interstate commerce. Much like the old adage about the superiority of teaching a man to fish versus just giving him fish, it seems as if the the rickety old train is essential to the cartoneros getting their work done and Buenos Aires getting its recycling done. Still, it is not a good sign of an economy if most of the people who spend their days picking through trash used to be the ones happily creating the trash in the first place.
While the capital still has a large homeless segment of the population and unemployment is still mighty high, the proliferation of the cartoneros seems to be the most visible reminder of the crisis and maybe a harbinger of a crisis to come. Yet they still have a thankless, but important job to do which might explain their necessarily invisible presence among the general populace.
Before permanently closing up shop on my apartment rental, I took notice of the various plastic and glass bottles occupying the minimal counter space in the kitchen. Snappy blue, personal recycling bins just don't exist in Buenos Aires. The supermarket wouldn't take them and if I tried to ask Luisa, my landlord, for suggestions I would have been utterly confused and exhausted. Feeling somewhat guilty, I slid them all into a garbage-filled plastic bag and put them in a room outside in the hallway where they awaited there turn at the curb.
Recycling, by definition, isn't supposed to be easy. It's much easier to throw all your garbage into one bag and not waste another second thinking about your waste. That job belongs to the cartoneros. I took some comfort in the fact that at least they were getting paid for their services, even if it was a meager sum, and I admired that they weren't after monetary handouts. Still, I made sure to place all the bottles and paper near the top so they wouldn't have to look so hard. It was the least I could do. The bag life looked difficult enough as it is.
