Mexico City priest brings dignity to an off-limits flock

By Monica Campbell
Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

NEZAHUALCOYOTL, MEXICO – <snip>

For more than 20 years, Guevara has trekked into this mafia-run landfill. Nonprofits with good intentions have come and gone here, attempting to create positive change. But Guevara remains the only outsider who has managed to penetrate this seemingly off-limits subculture and forge a trusting relationship with the pepenadores, as the trash pickers are sometimes known. <snip>

Guevara first spotted the opportunity to assist the pepenadores in September 1985, when an earthquake devastated Mexico City. He was invited to the dump earlier that year, to give mass during the landfill's patron saint day. After the earthquake, the pickers, horrified to find body parts mixed in the rubble tumbling from the dump trucks returning from quake-damaged areas, asked Guevara to return and give mass out of respect for the victims. <snip>

After a recent mass, Guevara and a few longtime assistants hand out small bags of food, mostly cooking oil, cornflakes, and black beans. Alongside them a doctor and nurse offer free physicals. Severe skin rashes are common year-round, blamed on toxins and gases from refuse in the dump. <snip>

During mass, Father Guevara reminds the trash-pickers that they must protest any government plan that does not include a resettlement plan that recognizes their longstanding ties to the dumps and the volumes of trash they have recycled. "Defend yourselves," he says. "You will not stand alone." <snip>

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0316/p01s01-woam.html

is currently trying to stamp out? :shrug: