A View from the Dump

It's a Bizarro image of the consumer cornucopia that comes from new Wal-Marts and CostCos along the shore.

by Bruce Schimmel

One of the loveliest views of Puerto Vallarta, a beguiling tourist trap on Mexico's Pacific coast, comes from atop a small mountain. It offers a panoramic vista of a quaint city set in a bay, where humpback whales play.

Though it's not a perspective that you'll want to savor. The locals call this place "La Basura," meaning literally, "the sweepings," for it is a mountain made of trash. It is the city dump. And as a connoisseur of cities and their refuse, I've come to discover what it's made of.

From here, you can survey some of this mountain's sources. Its garbage arrives from Puerto Vallarta's old city, where American expats live easily and cheaply — feasting on dividends from former corporate careers. Its trash comes from the rising hotel district, whose walled enclaves swell with honeymooners, and which periodically explodes with kids on spring break. Its garbage comes from the denizens of big cruise ships, who swarm the city for silver bracelets, cheap booze and pricey Viagra — available without a prescription.

Every discarded bag, box, bottle and bone from an estimated quarter-million locals and tourists comes to La Basura daily, making a mountain whose view sweeps you off your feet and whose smell knocks you on your butt.

Yet despite the stench, there are people who live here. They subsist on the city's refuse. Called "the Pepenadores" — translated as "the garbage people" or "the recyclers" — they number about 500, or roughly 100 families. They spend their lives digging for anything to be salvaged, sold, reused or restored.

Puerto Vallarta's refuse colony is a smaller version of Mexico City's more infamous big dump. And if consumer goods are any measure, La Basura's quality of life might be higher: Their garbage is arguably better. The shacks that crown its summit are built of fresh debris, gleaned from the port's ongoing building boom.

Like new condos downtown, these shacks face the Pacific, as if its breezes could clear the air. But that never happens. On top of La Basura, it always smells like hell. The air is acrid, thick with a bitter gas that burns your mouth, eyes and nostrils — scorching without needing to be lit.

When it's hot and still, the fumes funnel through the heap. But even a brisk breeze offers no relief. Instead, the wind drives a sticky silt, the color of taupe, into every pore — until you feel like your skin is suffocating.

La Basura's khaki-colored dust blankets everything, creating a ghostly wasteland. It's a Bizarro image of the consumer cornucopia that comes from new Wal-Marts and CostCos along the shore.

Like other societies, La Basura has both mountain folk and lowlanders. Many of the dump's children live at its base, and from there, they clamber through the fresh refuse daily. It's a scene that portrays our species' basest cruelties, but that also suggests an indomitable human spirit. Seeing this, you're forced to think, think, think about who you are, and what you can do.

This isn't part of life that city fathers, anywhere, care to share. Visions of poverty don't beget frolics of spending, on which all tourist towns depend. So, I hardly expect our Convention and Visitors Bureau to offer day trips through Philly's badlands. Though I honestly wish someone would.

Because, in fact, Puerto Vallarta does offer a tour of its wretched refuse. Every Monday, a Mexican who owns an eponymous pickup joint called Andales hosts a trip to La Basura. The goal is to raise awareness and money, and is successfully doing both. For even in a cut-rate paradise, people have a need to peek behind the pretty scenery.

Because, in my experience, the scent of places where we stash our trash — however nasty — is like smelling salts for the soul.

(bruce@schimmel.com)