Position in the organization: Secretary, FACCyR. President of the Cooperative of Work 18th April, member of FACCyR.
Proposed position: President, Vice President, Treasurer
Seconders organization from the region: Unión de Clasificadores de Residuos Urbanos Sólidos (UCRUS-PIT CNT)
Alternate seconder organization: Association des Marchés d’Economies Locales et Individuelles Organisés de la Récupération (Amelior)
Profile:
My roots define me and I want to take advantage of this candidacy to tell things that perhaps not everyone knows. Since I can remember, I worked alongside my father. He raised my five siblings and I, taking us to rural school in a horse cart while we sold kerosene and gathered things to sell. Seeing that daily sacrifice to be able to eat and never go hungry made me who I am and never stop working. At the age of nine, he already knew how to prepare the horse and cart to go to school. When we returned, together with my brothers, we carried rags and bones. We were discriminated against for helping our father.
When I turned fifteen, in 1996, I had the first of my eleven children. During those years, before the cardboard boom in Argentina, they taught me to travel by train the 30km that separate me from Capital Federal to get better recyclable material. I tried to work on other things but the system kicked me out. I was a domestic worker in a Country, closed neighborhoods of the upper classes, and I suffered abuse, abuse, psychological, verbal and physical abuse. I decided to never work for someone who makes me feel this way again. Yes, in the streets we suffer: violence, discrimination, cold and hunger. But in resistance and in our companions we find strength.
We began to be more and more. Hundreds, thousands of new recyclers traveling on trains to the big city after the economic crisis of 2001. Until private companies wanted to prohibit us from entering common trains. We fight a lot to sustain our work, our sources of income. Our first achievement was the special train services to transport our material. Already in those years, more than twenty years ago, I participated in the working groups with companies, the Ministry of Labor, and the police, carrying the voice of all our fellow recyclers. In 2008 we organized a very important camp in a luxury neighborhood of the City of Buenos Aires so that the train would not be suspended and we were brutally repressed by the police. But despite the blows, we managed to open a dialogue table with the City Government to achieve our recognition and we met the Cooperativa Amanecer de los Cartoneros and Sergio Sánchez.
Then everything changed, for the better. Since those days I was formally elected as a delegate by my base colleagues. The Cooperative began to grow and so did our conquests. We were gaining more and more recognition. Salaries, trucks, uniforms, social work, contributions to our future retirements, recycling centers that we dreamed of, as well as our two MRFs. The residents of the big city stopped discriminating against us to recognize our environmental work. Amanecer de los Cartoneros already had more than 4,000 members and our working conditions were even better than other jobs in a dependency relationship.
But I was missing something, I was missing a lot. If in Argentina we are 100,000 cartoneros (waste pickers)…. What was happening with the rest? In each achievement of our Cooperative I felt that we could achieve more things. We decided to replicate our Recyclables Management model in other territories where conditions remained the same as when we began. We founded the Cooperativa 18 de Abril in 2014 (of which I am president), where more than 500 recyclers work, and we also achieved negotiations for recognition with the local government. I participated as Secretary of the Union of Workers of the Popular Economy, our union. I traveled through different provinces of the country supporting organizational processes of recyclers, visiting Cooperatives, encouraging assemblies in garbage dumps.
In 2022, when my colleague Jackie Flores takes over as Secretary of Urban Solid Waste and Circular Economy in the Ministry of the Environment of the Province of Buenos Aires, Sergio calls me to participate with him in the International Relations Team. At this stage they already know me. Without leaving my basic work in cooperatives, I also participate in the AIR and as International Secretary of the Lacre Network. I know that my voice is that of my colleagues, and that my strength is that of a woman who faced the violence of the world.
Motivation:
I am convinced that the voice of the AIR must be that of a grassroots waste picker, someone who lives the work day by day, who still walks the streets working alongside his brothers and sisters, who still continues to fight for those who least have. Because this system hits the poorest. Those of us who are organized and have tools and resources are comfortable. But those who are alone are the ones who suffer the most.
For this reason, from Argentina we always fight for all the recyclers who are still missing, to reach the least expected places and be able to build organization. We need to build collectively and leave selfishness aside. We leave our heart, soul and body in this fight against exclusion. Until the last recycler in the world has access to his rights as a worker and as a human being, we will not stop working, whether we are elected leaders or not.
We need leaders who really get to know the needs of our bases. May they know the need for our brothers and sisters to have a plate of food on the table every day. May they not lose the axis of humility, nor forget their roots.
My application is that of my organization. You already know the thousands of cartoneros that make up the FACCYR, our achievements in public policies and the impact on improving the lives of our colleagues. We want to share our learnings and fight side by side for our recognition. Being in international tasks requires having our feet on the ground and continuing to work alongside our bases, since, if we only dedicate ourselves to traveling, we lose contact with the reality of those whom we must represent. The division between bases and leaders strengthens the enemy. They want us disunited, they want us taking photos with our oppressors. We are going for a construction of all recyclers and for all recyclers.