Basura!

Basura! Garbage! An often heard comment about Mexico is that it is dirty! Well, at times, yes. But after riding 2600 miles through the United States i am not sure we should point any fingers. The United States is 5% of the world's population and conservatively we produce 25% of the world's garbage - granted we can niggle about details but no one will deny that we are number one. Mexico has about a third of our population and produces a 9th of our waste (Forbes). The difference is in distribution. We can afford the luxury of hiding our waste - burying it, paying poorer countries to take it, remote Indian reservations desperate for the revenue. (we have more beer bottles) Mexico lacks resources to address the nation as a whole. I did see a road crew of four guys walking along the highway putting garbage in bags - they seemed to have a preference for plastic but ignored glass. I watched one guy toss a glass bottle against a distant rock, though glass is just melted sand which given time will return to sand and all the faster, now. Two things get old - diapers and roadkill. In Mexico it is mostly dogs - real splatter jobs with pieces everywhere. I saw a dead cow recently, ready to pop! ripe-ola! the occasional horse, the occasional cat, but 90% dog. And one thing you never see in the U.S.A. is diapers - little bundles of baby crap anywhere garbage is dumped - yuck!
Garbage is largely a local affair. One evening i pulled into a mini-super (convenience store) to stock up before crashing in someone's field. There was the usual line up of eight or so men, ages 20 to 60 having a beer chatting. I park my rig and assess my needs while everyone looks on then go in for dinner supplies, water, and a caugama. I walk back out and start packing things up (they are always impressed with my water and beer capacity), all the while answering questions and chatting, in the end i have a couple plastic water bottles to dispose of and look around for a garbage container. Everyone immediately directs me to the end of the porch, still i see no garbage container but then i realize i am standing on a burn pile. I toss the bottles on with the rest of the melted plastic. Why not? we don't recycle water bottles . . . this raises the issue of water but that is another discussion.
Personal spaces, like homes, and public spaces like city plazas and parks tend to be neatly kept. The amorphous public spaces, like rest areas and unpopulated roadsides, tend to become unofficial dumps. They will be posted to be kept clean but are not. Whose space is it anyhow? Not yours, not mine, not anyone locally, if we dump here perhaps the authority that posted the sign will pick it up . . . this is where diapers collect.
I recently camped at a park, Las Cascadas de Micos, in a wonderful shaded site by the cascades. Early one morning i was woken by muted chatter and the swish of brooms on the dirt. I glanced over the top of my hammock to see a half dozen muted figures making little piles of leaves and stuffing them into old grain bags. By the time i drifted back off to sleep they were gone and i awoke to an immaculate dirt floor.