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July 21, 2009
Informal recyclers murdered in Cali, but celebrated in Moravia
I am currently working on an innovative recycling project in Moravia. We are planning on building a state-of-the-art recycling facility which will help to clean up the dangerously unsanitary neighborhood and encourage local entrepreneurship.
In Colombia, informal recyclers have been cleaning up cities for decades. They walk around trash dumps and city streets scavenging for recyclable items and then sell dozens of pounds of plastic, glass and paper for a few dollars. The international practice of organized recycling has slowly begun to make headway in Colombia and city administrations are eager to modernize recycling in their cities.
An obvious challenge, howerver, is to incorporate informal recyclers into the new system. To some, informal recyclers are nothing more than dirt-poor scavengers, but to those who have taken the time to understand their operations, they are innovative entrepreneurs who have helped clean up the city and may have some good ideas about the recycling process.
The Moravia recycling facility will seek to take advantage of the experience and knowledge of the dozens of recyclers who live in the area. In order to avoid displacing these symbols of the neighborhood, it will also incorporate them into the facility and provide them with employment.
Interestingly, one of the last articles about Colombia in the Economist (their coverage has lately been lacking) was about informal recyclers in Cali, Colombia's third largest city after Bogotá and Medellin. The article summarized efforts by Cali and other cities to handle the transition to formal recycling and criticized the attitude of many local politicians who treated them like mere scavengers, rather than entrepreneurs.
The Moravia project could not be more in tune with the Economist. In fact, they even want the recycling facility to honor (through art, cultural events, etc) the history of local informal recyclers.
However, judging from what you I hear on the streets of many Colombian cities, there are plenty of people view recyclers as social undesirables. Recently, two recyclers were killed in Cali when they opened a package containing a grenade, which they were told was a bag of food.
The recycling community and their neighbors were quick to call the attack an act of 'social cleansing'. Social cleansing, typically carried out by paramilitaries and drug cartels, has been common in many parts of Colombia. It consists of eliminating 'undesirables' such as drug addicts and street children through murder and intimidation.
As always, the police were quick to discredit the social cleansing hypothesis. Acts of social cleansing give people the idea that the police is not in control, that other armed groups are enforcing their own form of justice.
Nevertheless, fears of social cleansing have been growing in Colombia after alleged paramilitary pamphlets announcing social cleansing began to circulate in nearly every major city a few months ago. Those fears became national news again last week after the Cali grenade attack and a bloody 72 hours last week during which 17 people were murdered in South Bogota, including several drug addicts.
This is a country ravaged by intense and often violent social tensions and inequality. Fortunately, however, at least in Moravia, there is a commitment from above to recognize, celebrate, and take full advantage of largely untapped entrepreneurship and social capital in poor neighborhoods. While recyclers may be under attack in Cali, in Moravia, they are a central part of neighborhood's economic development plan.
Posted by Pablo Rojas at July 21, 2009 12:29 PM
