déchets. stigmatisations, commerces, politiques ... - Viva Rio en Haiti

ers, mainly young men and children who keep a
look out for objects they can sell, especially metal
or plastic, as they walk about during the day.
5. COMMERCIAL CIRCUITS
The two main circuits for marketing objects
considered garbage in other contexts are those
involving metals and plastic. In both cases most
of these discarded items were not originally consumed
in the area; they were washed down via
the Rockefeller and Delmas canals, especially on
rainy days, after being thrown away in the upper
regions of the city. The objects also include containers
used in the markets or parts used in the car
and bus (tap tap) repair garages, or in the small
metal workshops located in the area (especially
in the J. J. Dessalines and H. Truman Avenues surrounding
micro-regions 1 and 2).
The most diversifi ed circuit and the one involving
the most people and money is metal. Especially
on the large roads bordering micro-regions
1, 2 and 3, in the area around the Rockefeller
canal and in the Pont Rouge zone (micro-region
5), there are dozens of purchase/sales points that
can be spotted by the presence of scales (vandè
pa pèz) (photos 16, 17 & 18). Both aluminum and
iron are traded. Very rarely copper is traded too,
a precious metal whose sale is banned since it is
presumed to have been stolen from public elec-
14 Traditionally in the Haitian rural world the lakou is
simultaneously a family and ritual space, the place of
residence of the extended family, and the place of their
saints (the Vodou lwas) and the ancestors (traditionally
the family’s dead reseted in the lakou). On the urban
lakous, see the research (conducted in the same area of
Port-au-Prince) by Louis Herns Marcelin, “La Famille
Suburbaine à Saint-Martin, Port-au-Prince,” Mémoire de
licence, Faculty of Ethnology, Université d’Etat d’Haïti,
Port-au-Prince, 1988.
15 The fi gure of the restavek is a concentrate of the
relations between family, social hierarchy and history
and the paradoxes of post-slavery Haiti: these are
children coming from the rural branches of extended
families sent to live in a regime of semi-slavery
with their relatives from the cities, even in extremely
poor regions, as we were able to observe during our
fi eldwork.
16 Although the book does not specifi cally discuss garbage,
on the social life of objects see Arjun Appadurai,
tricity cables. Prices oscillate between 5 and 15
gourdes per pound for aluminum and approximately
5 gourdes per kilogram for iron. 19 As in all
Haitian markets here too price formation is determined
by evaluations of the quality of the products
and by the nature of client relations (pratik)
between sellers and buyers. 20
The metal purchase/sale points are managed
by men, usually young. Some are the actual owners
of the scales and the business. Others function
as points in a network controlled by intermediaries
who own various scales. As with everything in the
social geography of the markets in Port-au-Prince,
the localization and control of the purchase/sales
points involve questions relating to the politics of
occupying spaces. Clearly some points are considered
better than others. The most commercially profitable
are those located in the busiest streets or in
those where the trader can arrive and depart pushing
brouettes (wheelbarrows), not possible, for example,
in the narrow passageways or small alleys.
Some scales owners, both those who control
one or two and the bigger dealers who own a larger
number, have a long relationship with the world
of garbage, previously employed by other vandè
pa pèz owners and some starting out as kokorat,
for example.
The area’s biggest intermediaries use iron depots
to store the material prior to sale, transported
later on rented trucks, vans or tap taps. In all cases,
the fi nal sales point is the GS company located
The Social Life of Things. Commodities in Cultural Perspective.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986.
17 The transformation of donations into merchandise
can be identifi ed in various other transnational contexts:
some, such as salaula in Zambia, are immediately
reminiscent of the Haitian pèpè (see Karen Transberg
Hansen, Salaula. The World of Secondhand Clothing
and Zambia, Chicago University Press 2000).
18 Truitier is the only offi cial waste dump managed in
theory by SMCRS. Reform of its management structure
is currently being elaborated by the government in coordination
with NGOs, international cooperation agencies
and private companies.
19 At the time of the research, 40 gourdes were equivalent
to one US dollar.
20 The fi rst ethnographic descriptions of client relations
in Haitian markets, founded on trust and cultivated
over time (for example, Sidney Mintz’s “Pratik:
Haitian Personal Economic Relationship,” 1967), fully
apply to these urban trade circuits linked to garbage.
GARBAGE | 45