Cachineros

[Martin Hash]

In Peru everyone has a job otherwise they don’t eat, and there’s amazingly few beggars & no homeless people camped on the streets. There’s not even any graffiti, or black people nor white people for that matter: it’s amazing how law-abiding homogeneous culture, customs & traditions is for society. One of the ways they keep people working is that garbage in Lima is a public service, and is picked up every day. However, there is still private pick up by cachineros, what we would call junk collectors. They drive ubiquitously small, 3-wheeled trucks with loud-speakers on the top slowly traveling the neighborhood streets announcing “Catre! Fierro! Botella!”(frames, iron, bottles). Their trucks are loaded down with rusty barbecues, dilapidated ironing boards, broken appliances & old mattresses which they take to the la cachina, which has evolved into the place you’d also go to buy stolen items.

Junk Collector.jpg

Mattress-laden cachinero

It’s gotten so that I peer out the 2nd-story window of our Lima apartment when I hear the cachinero: I try to figure out what they’ve got in the back of their truck. Other people seem to be equally interested because when I’m out walking, I see people look at them on the street as they drive by. Even with all that attention, I got a picture of a cachinero truck after it had just been rear-ended by an SUV. I guess the driver didn’t see the odd, slow moving vehicle blaring noise from a loud-speaker in time.

Accident.jpg

Collision