End of Light: The Landfill Workers of Central America
In 2011 I began a photo project documenting the lives of landfill workers in Pitillal, a small indigenous town a few kilometers outside of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. On this first visit to Pitillal I arrived walking high above the dump, looking down on the thousands of vultures who were, in turn, looking down on the hordes of workers etched in a claustrophobic landscape of black and white.
For the next two weeks...
more »End of Light: The Landfill Workers of Central America
In 2011 I began a photo project documenting the lives of landfill workers in Pitillal, a small indigenous town a few kilometers outside of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. On this first visit to Pitillal I arrived walking high above the dump, looking down on the thousands of vultures who were, in turn, looking down on the hordes of workers etched in a claustrophobic landscape of black and white.
For the next two weeks this place would become my life as I documented the workers there. Since the project’s inception in that tiny landfill of Pitillal, I have continued the series to the present day, traveling to Mexico and Guatemala City, and other destinations in Latin America.
As often is the case, two and sometimes three generations carve a meager living by retrieving recyclables from the endless convoys of sanitation trucks and horse drawn carts. There are no government safety codes or workers’ rights laws to protect their willingness for hard work and a chance to get ahead. I witnessed the conflicting tides of life’s forces, engaged dawn to dusk, watching workers’ taut leathered faces as they clinched twisted steel hooks and labored through the mounds of trash, wrapped in private suits of dignity and honor.
I talked to and courted the lost and the broken, the meek and forgotten, the young and the old, in this paradox of what has gone bad, this soul of decay. In this dark archeology of humanity, this insular world of need and disconnect, and in spite of the overwhelming social and economic injustices occurring at these landfills, I witnessed a profound balance of pride and dignity achieving a singular grace, which gives testimony to the vitality and perseverance of the human spirit.
David W. Lynch, Mexico City, 2014
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