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

network. He is aware of the stigmatization looming
over his profession, but is proud of the work
and his successful career.
This success story allows us to link with the
next item where we present the equally diverse
world of private companies that deal with garbage
and latrines in Port-au-Prince.
10. COMPANIES
The metropolitan zone of Port-au-Prince is
home to a series of companies related in one form
or another to the universe of garbage. We made observations
and conducted interviews with Clean
Rite, Jedco, Sanitec, Boucart and GS. Of these, only
the latter is dedicated to buying and exporting objects
to be recycled. The others work in collecting
domestic waste (collected in large skips left in the
streets) and garbage from public and private institutions,
NGOs and even the MINUSTAH head offi ces.
30 Alongside these activities, some of the companies
also provide latrine cleaning and pest control
services. It is also worth stressing that none
of them collects garbage in public locations and
that their areas of operation evidently tend to be
the wealthier parts of the city, far from Bel Air or
Cité Soleil. Some of the companies (like Sanitec)
employ few workers, while others (notably Jedco,
Boucart and GS) employ over a hundred. The latter
also operate in other cities in Haiti.
The companies keep offi cial records and are
supposedly inspected by the national and local governments.
In the case of the garbage collection companies
(like Boucart, perhaps the largest), inspectors
from the Ministry of Public Works accompany
the route of the trucks until unloading. As well
28 An analysis of gender relations in the generation of
money in this social environment would require a discussion
beyond the space of the present text. However it
is worth emphasizing that, as mentioned earlier in note
22, the market circuits are basically female.
29 The use of magic and oracles linked to Vodou is widely
found in trading and other activities that generate
money, whether as a form of acquiring luck or accusing
others of using lwas for this purpose. On the relations
between money and Vodou, see Jose Renato Carvalho
Baptista, “Tout mélange ankò – Dinheiro, mercados e
fé: territórios contíguos, pontes, passagens,” 2009. On
as paying taxes, they have a very close relationship
with the state waste administration bodies, principally
in terms of the management of the Truitier
dump. Some have ordered plans to be drawn up for
better administration of the site, perceiving a potential
business opportunity there. They criticize
the anarchy reigning at the dump and in particular
the poor condition of the access roads, which wreck
the trucks and explains why the garbage is sometimes
dumped in prohibited locations, although nobody
declares this fact publicly. 31
A number of these companies were founded in
the mid 1970s. The oldest, Sanitec, was created in
1974 by a chemical engineer, a former professor at
the Faculty of Medicine and Pharmaceutics, who
later became the Minister of Public Works. Like
various other companies, at the outset it was a
family business essentially dedicated to pest control.
Afterwards it transformed into a private company,
added other investors and broadened its services
to include garbage collection (today owning
a fl eet of four trucks).
The largest private company operating today
is Boucart, created in 1977, initially also a family
pest control company. According to its owners, it
was the deterioration of the public service infrastructure
following the collapse of the Duvalier
regime in 1986 that prompted it to enter the garbage
collection business, consolidated from 1993
onwards (this chronology matches the history of
other companies from the area, such as Jedco, created
in 1995).
Several companies (Jedco, Boucart and Clean
Rite) also provide latrine and septic tank cleaning
services. This work may be performed either with
machines or manually, using a workforce of bayakous.
In the latter case the service is more expensive
and conducted at night (“it’s not something you
the presence of magic in people’s daily lives, see Flávia
Freire Dalmaso, “A magia em Jacmel. Uma leitura crítica
da literatura sobre Vodu haitiano à luz de uma experiência
etnográfi ca,”2009.
30 It is interesting to note that almost all the companies
visited declared working for MINUSTAH, as if this
were the most important item on their business curriculum.
31 During the period of fi eld research, the access road
to Truitier was being reformed by the Ministry of Public
Works in a project fi nanced by the IADB.
GARBAGE | 51