LOMAS DE ZAMORA, BUENOS AIRES PROVINCE, ARGENTINA — A broken television. The remnants of meals. Plastic bags oozing garbage. Emilia Torres dodges piles of trash every morning on her way to work.
It didn’t always look like this. A little more than a year ago, the same dirt road Torres walks was nearly spotless, the grass mowed, the dirt streets swept. Now, garbage clogs drains, exacerbating a long-standing flooding problem and potentially harming health.
Torres and other residents blame the mess in El Paredón on government cuts. In February 2024, the national government ended Potenciar Trabajo (Empowering Work), a program that subsidized community cleanups.
President Javier Milei’s administration replaced Potenciar Trabajo, which aimed to land workers in permanent jobs, with programs it says will be more efficient than those managed by local organizations and governments.
But the change also did away with the workers and resources of local cleaning cooperatives. Residents like Torres now navigate garbage-filled streets in an area already grappling with polluting industries nearby.
More than 70% of Argentina’s urban population has daily waste collection. In the barrios populares, the unofficial communities that have grown up across the country, the deficiency in waste collection generates the accumulation of garbage on street corners or vacant lots. More than a third of them are exposed to a micro garbage dump, while 14% have a garbage dump less than 500 meters away, according to a 2024 report by TECHO, a nongovernmental organization that seeks to improve habitability.
The local cleanups, run by local cooperatives which employed residents, were a welcome solution, but the lack of government funding has hobbled the El Paredón collective and the loss has rippled through the neighborhood.
“It makes me very upset,” Torres says. “After keeping it clean and seeing how the environment had improved, seeing all this garbage hurts.”
The Ministry of Human Capital, which funds social programs, declined Global Press Journal’s request for an interview. The ministry offered a press release that said Potenciar Trabajo had not met its goal of creating temporary jobs that led to permanent positions. According to the release, only 1.3% of the 1.4 million people enrolled throughout Argentina had obtained a permanent job.
The government replaced Potenciar Trabajo with Volver al Trabajo, which invites workers to participate in training, job search services and internships organized by the Ministry of Human Capital. The government also created Acompañamiento Social, a program aimed at people over 50 or mothers of four or more minors that provides workshops on education, health, nutrition and rights; training to promote socio-productive enterprises; retirement resources; and nutritional assistance.
Potenciar Trabajo participants were paid half the minimum wage for labor in their communities and for academic work. Their payments increased regularly, in line with the minimum wage, until Milei took office in December 2023. Payment amounts for those participating in the new programs have remained the same, even with Argentina’s cumulative inflation rate rising to 186% between then and February this year.
Walter Córdoba, social welfare secretary of the Unión de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras de la Economía Popular, a union that represents workers unable to enter the labor market, disputes the government’s claim that Potenciar Trabajo did not work. Córdoba says that by saying the program was inefficient, the ministry is ignoring the jobs generated in cooperatives — jobs that are now lost.
Rocío Rojas owns a small store that sells food, snacks, cleaning products and other items in El Paredón. She laments the end of the local cleaning program.
“We don’t have a place to dump our garbage,” she says. “Many neighbors throw it here around the corner.” She says she had to raise her floor because the drains are clogged with garbage and cause flooding.
On top of worrying about the trash heaps, residents fear that summer flooding could threaten health and spread chemical pollution.
In 2019, the Autoridad de Cuenca Matanza Riachuelo, the government agency charged with cleaning the basin on which El Paredón sits, documented high levels of chromium and lead in the soil. They also found residents with enough lead in their blood to require medical attention. Flooding would likely spread and expose these pollutants.
Even small piles of trash can be a source of contamination and disease, due to the presence of highly toxic chemical substances, says Jorge Herkovits, researcher and professor of ecology and environmental medicine at the University of Morón.
The Autoridad de Cuenca Matanza Riachuelo found that diarrhea, dermatological conditions, coughs and difficulty breathing were the most frequently reported health problems in El Paredón. But the agency reported that “no association was found between health problems mentioned and exposure factors.”
Eva “Pamela” Duarte is a representative of the Mesa de Trabajo y Cooperativa Campo Unamuno, a neighborhood improvement group. She believes more investigation is needed.
The end of Potenciar Trabajo has changed the street life in El Paredón, Duarte says. “I used to see people sweeping, cutting grass. Now, there is no one on the street.”
The Municipality of Lomas de Zamora, where El Paredón is located, has acknowledged that the end of Potenciar Trabajo has led to problems. In mid-2024, it launched Comunidad Lomas Limpia to promote waste collection and street sweeping.
But residents say these measures aren’t enough.
“Sometimes they come once a week. Sometimes more than a whole week goes by, and they don’t come,” says Yesica Villafañe, who’s lived here for eight years. “When the cooperative was there, they cleaned and took the garbage away every day.”
