Mexico is a sui generis country. All the times Mexicans try to live together in
the here and now; this is something
impossible to happen because we do not share the same concepts of humanism,
experience, science, religion, etc. Our extremes are a caveman and a Nobel
Prize winner in Science. How to have a
grammar that allows us to communicate has been the problem. Science is far behind in the community to
permit a bridge to have a human consensus.
I found a post to illustrate my point.
What he describes happens in any city of Mexico. According to the following article our assumptions are very different from what it is; “The
map is not the territory.” We think
people want to learn and particularly how to improve triathlon performance, but
they do not have the intention by culture.
In 1988, the World Bank estimated that 1–2% of the
global population subsists by waste picking.[9] A more recent study from 2010 estimates that there are
1.5 million waste pickers in India alone.[10] Brazil, the country that collects the most robust official statistics
on waste pickers, estimates that nearly a quarter million of its citizens
engage in waste picking.[11]
Vázquez,
J.J. (2013) Happiness among the garbage: Differences in overall happiness among
trash pickers in León (Nicaragua), The Journal of Positive
Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1–11.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2012.743574
Imagine you are an itinerant individual living in
absolute penury in a third-world country. You survive by going through other
people’s garbage and extracting your food for the day as well as other
essentials like clothing and footwear. You live your life hand to mouth and
what your hand finds are the things others have discarded. You recycle what you
can for money, and this considerable effort earns you about $3 a day.
By downward social comparison, almost anyone seeing a
person living in these conditions would assume the individuals engaged in this
activity would resent their life circumstance and view their life as anything
but happy.
But this study shows this is a false assumption.
Not only are
these people not depressed, they are optimistic, have good relationships, and
many of them play sports and read. The
majority of them are happy with their lives.
Talking trash
In theory we separate organic and inorganic trash (though the pependores
throw it all in the same truck. We're TOLD it gets separated at the landfill,
but I have my doubts). At least we have regular garbage pickup. One truck comes
through early in the morning, picking up whatever is piled in the streets (some
of my neighbors don't seem to have caught on to the idea of garbage cans yet...
oh well, rats need to eat too). Around 10 in the A.M. a guy walks down the
street with a clapper bell... I half-expect him to be yelling "bring out
your dead, bring out your dead"... and the morning garbage parade starts
down the street. Regular trash pickup doesn't mean door-to-door service. The
guys stop in the middle of the block, and you lug down the stuff (a good reason
to take the trash out regularly). About 5 we'll have the afternoon trash
parade. Not suprisingly, we're running out of landfill space. The pependores
themselves do a lot of recycling . Dumpster diving is practically unknown
here... I managed to snag a ratty old sofa (a temporary acquision) only by
happening on it in the short interval between the time my neighbors tossed it
in the street (a rarity, most people sell their crapped out furniture to guys
going by with a horse and cart, who resell it to upholsterers who resell it
back to whomever tossed it in the first place). It's semi-reupholstered and one
leg is a construction brick, but it's only temporary... it'll go to the guy
with the pony one of these days. The pepindores re-cycle a lot of your trash on
the spot... the good stuff is pulled aside and neatly piled on the truck, or
hung from the side (last week, one truck had three almost complete bicycles and
a VW front seat tied to the front grille) while the rest... organic and
inorganic... gets unceremoniously tossed in the hopper. Recycled at the
landfill? Who knows? There are rumors that all garbage men are rich... I don't
believe it, but they aren't exactly the poor dump-dwellers of everyone's Latin
American tragic photomontage either. Mexico City's garbage-men have an
excellent union, thanks to a semi-gangster organizer about 30 years ago who
only stole enough to support his three wives in palacial style, while
negotiating good contracts for these guys that included the rights to recycle,
along with decent housing and futbal fields. They may live AT the dump... but
they don't live IN a dump. And... this is probably the only place in the world
where the big national parade highlights the finest equipment of the Army, the
Navy, the Marines, the Air Force, the Police and the Garbage Men... who are
cheered and applauded wildly. Everybody knows their garbage men, and likes them
a lot better than the neighborhood cop. So... what are our popular garbage men
picking up these days? DISPOSABLE DIAPERS! 13 % of all Mexico City trash is
disposable diapers... 46% is organic waste, that can be composted, 6.4% is
plastic (recyclable, at least in theory), 5% is glass (easily recyclable) and
2% is plastic bottles... also recyclable. But what do you do with poopy
diapers? Good thing the birth rate is dropping!
The closer we are from the “garbage culture;” the
least we would like to practice triathlon or to improve it. We follow leaders, or Gods if you wish, and
the closer to the sport culture the better chances we have to succeed as an
athlete. It is in the family, the state,
the country and the world; it depends where we were born or want to belong to.
I leave you with Joe Newton:
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