Génderson waits on the edge of a ravine in the Venezuelan city of Maracaibo for a machine to remove the largest amount of waste in this unhealthy place. Then, it will be his turn and he will submerge himself in the pestilence to look for scrap metal, the gold of the poor who are now accused of being gangsters.
In this oil zone, capital of the once-rich state of Zulia, dozens of young people like Génderson search every day among the garbage for some pieces of iron to sell in junkyards and get a few dollars that allow them to feed their families and, thus, gather strength to repeat the task the next day.
the sale of Scrapwhich has existed for a century in the country, has skyrocketed in recent months, for which the authorities sounded the alarms and began looking for looters who, in order to sell metals, are destroying public property and, thereby, harming the junkyard image.
Meanwhile, Génderson, who hasn’t known any other trade since he was 13 years old, now 22, goes out every day to search through the rubbish without feeling like a criminal. “You help yourself with that,” he says curtly.
Against the mafias
In Maracaibo, the sale of scrap metal went from being a modality to a perversion. This is how the mayor of that city, Rafael Ramírez, considers it, who makes a difference between the usual urban collectors and those who steal material from public or private facilities.
Even those who only search through the garbage are creating a problem for the city because, he explains, so many gather during the cleaning of ravines carried out by the Mayor’s Office that they end up interrupting or prohibiting the continuity of these works. Due to this, the days are being guarded by the police forces.
On the other hand, there are those who remove manhole covers or dismantle railings on public roads, putting people’s safety at risk. The Mayor’s Office knows that these events occur but has not caught anyone in flagrante delicto.
The increase in the illegal sale of scrap metal is so evident in Venezuela that on April 23 Nicholas Maduro He promised to attack “with an iron hand” the “mafias” that are dedicated to their smuggling.
Asked about this measure, Ramírez says that they have not detected any organization with mafia characteristics dedicated to this sector, but he understands that there is a business “that does not mainly benefit those who take the product”, men like Génderson.
“He is not the one who should make the most profit. They must pay him for the purpose of obtaining a volume that allows him to export it, sell it, take it to someone (…) the important thing is to determine who receives that material, “she said.
To survive
In the extreme south of the country, in a poor community of San Félix, in the state of Bolívar, José, along with two of his young children, pushes a cart with difficulty for three hours to the Cambalache dump, where he searches through the garbage and under a blazing sun to find scrap metal, copper and iron.
José, whose real name was changed at his request, on an exceptional day gets a kilogram of scrap metal that he sells for about 500 bolívares (108.69 dollars), with which he will buy food for his family until, if luck continues to smile on him , get other metals to sell.
But it is not usual. There are many days in which he leaves empty-handed, without scrap metal and, therefore, without money to feed a large family.
“I have six boys and that is why I made the decision to do this to be able to survive,” the man, whose only income, apart from what he gets from scrap, is what he earns in a construction material factory, told Efe. where he works intermittently-, and that it is not enough to support his family, since the salary is low (about 30 dollars a month) and irregular.
In Bolívar, the largest mining state in Venezuela, many poor towns, indigenous communities among them, live off the scrap they can extract by looting aluminum or forestry companies in the area. All are at risk of being detained by Venezuelan authorities seeking to protect this “strategic material.”
In the first 70 days of the year, 213,547 kilos of scrap metal were seized by the Venezuelan authorities, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, which has taken action to punish those who vandalize State institutions for these purposes.
The government changed the rules of the game for scrap dealers in March 2021, when it established that all material that can be recycled will be considered strategic. With the state monopolization of the business, which has gained export momentum ever since, scrap metal became gold in a country with a lot of poverty.
