2023-08-07 19:30:50
Guatemala’s largest landfill, on the Las Vacas river basin, in the capital Guatemala City, on March 21, 2023. JOSUE DECAVELE/REUTERS
From a distance, we can only make out small spots of color, which line the banks of the Las Vacas (“cows”) river, north of the capital of Guatemala. And it is by approaching that we understand that these gigantic multicolored clusters are none other than plastic in all its forms. This dantesque landscape begins at the exit of the largest open-air landfill in Central America which, for seventy years, has accumulated over 44 hectares the waste of the inhabitants of the capital of Guatemala and the fourteen municipalities of its outskirts. Despite the city’s best efforts to carve curves in this mountain of garbage, the garbage is rushed to the edge of the cliffs and falls into the tributaries of the Las Vacas River, especially in the rainy season.
About thirty kilometers from the capital, this waste joins the Motagua River, the country’s most important watercourse, which crosses it for 486 km to its Caribbean coast, to the east. According to estimates by Guatemala’s Ministry of the Environment, the river transports nearly 8,500 tons of waste each year – a figure considered underestimated by NGOs – crossing nearly 100 municipalities that most often use the land. near its banks to deposit their garbage in clandestine landfills.
“Immense harm”
At the mouth of the river, on the Honduran coast this time, we find this sea of plastic that floats between the waves and washes up on the tourist beaches of Honduras. The situation is certainly not new, but it has only worsened in recent years, so much so that Honduras threatened its neighbor to take the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in September. 2022. Nine months later, and after several bilateral meetings, Honduras withdrew its complaint. A disappointment for the mayor of the seaside town of Omoa (in the Cortès region), one of the most affected by these plastic discharges and who was counting on international justice for his city to be recognized as a victim of pollution.
“The damage we are suffering is difficult to quantify but it is immense, considers its mayor, Ricardo Alvarado, reached by telephone. Fishing, which used to be an important activity, has declined enormously due to plastic. We now live from tourism but, to avoid scaring away tourists, we spend 100,000 lempiras every month [3 707 euros] to collect the plastic, transport it and bury it ten kilometers away. » The city councilor, who has held this position for thirteen years, says he has never done the calculation but wonders “How many schools, libraries, clinics weren’t built because of the money spent cleaning the beaches? »
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