Your trash is my treasure

For the most part, city dumps continue to be the receptacle of all our waste, materials and food. Everything brought to the same place, tossed, and mixed together.

Most garbage is compressed and buried without any prior sorting. An increasing percentage gets recycled: aluminum, copper, plastics, glass, paper, cardboard and wood. A tiny percentage is reused, acquiring new value, turned into treasures, unearthed from the mounds of detritus. Waste that can be eaten, resold, reused, or that is simply used as decoration, a memento.

The trade of the scavenger, of the garbage picker, is as widespread as it is ancient. It takes special training to identify and separate, it takes the sensibility of a detective, developed over years and taught from one generation to the next.

These garbage pickers have developed a certain level of immunity or resistance—many of them since childhood—to many of the microorganisms in our environment.

Communities of scavengers who live in garbage dumps form micro-cities with autonomous socioeconomic structures. They have codes for communal living, and each person's earnings are based on his or her skills. They can earn over 300 pesos a day, and are always hoping to "win the lottery"—finding "a suitcase filled with cash" among the refuse, or at least a gold bracelet…

Mexico City, 1979. Studied film at the Centro Universitario de Estudios Cinematográficos of the UNAM and has taken several photography, filmmaking and video courses. His work has been featured in group shows in Mexico, the United States, Brazil, Spain and France. His solo shows include Top Shots, Los hijos de la Revolución and Viaje a Tamaulipas. He has received the Fonca's Jóvenes Creadores grant (2009-10) and was awarded second place in the Nat Geo contest Enmarcando la Vida (2007). He participated in the XV Bienal de Fotografía en Mexico and the Bienal do Mercosul 2012. He is the founder of the Lente 30-30 agency. His work has been published in Biodiversitas magazine and in the books Construyendo Tamaulipas and Postales tamaulipecas. He is currently working as a photographer for the Tamaulipas state government.

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