Havana’s Treasure Hunters
HAVANA TIMES – As the sun sets, the hunt begins. Alcides, 68, drags his jolongo (cloth sack) through the streets where garbage piles remain for weeks without being collected. His hands, protected by patched-up gloves, pull out repairable sneakers, wheels from children’s toys, and rusty tools.
“The wheels get turned into carts for the market; the bags, once washed, look new,” he explains. He is not alone. Sometimes entire families, even with children, follow the same routine at dusk. Everyone comes well prepared: headlamps illuminate their work, sacks stitched together from scraps store the findings, and unwritten codes mark off territories.
Jesús, 70, specializes in cans and bottles, washing the containers with bleach near the kiosks. “I live off this,” he confesses, while waiting patiently for the shopkeepers to throw out the beer cans. His dog sniffs around the bags for food. For him, the trash is a free supermarket, from which he earns his living. This is how an economy based on what others consider useless takes shape.
What the city discards, the treasure hunters turn into merchandise. Metals are among the most sought-after items: copper and aluminum are melted down in clandestine workshops to make other objects such as frying pans and cooking pots.
Next on the list are beer bottles, highly prized for sale in the informal market. Then there’s the clothing and footwear collected, repaired, and sold as “new” after a thorough washing. Even perfume bottles get reused and sold as “original” in street stalls.
The hierarchy in the work and the distribution of areas is clear. Veterans avoid the containers in central locations, where competition is fiercest, preferring restaurants or markets where they can find more valuable waste. Some have been in the trade for decades. Others blend in, dressing “well” to disguise their participation in the search.
Historical Roots: Havana and its Trash
Cuba’s waste crisis is nothing new. Guanabacoa, once famous for its springs, now has streams turned into open sewers. Signs reading “Please do not throw waste into the water” mock the sanitary collapse. Official data admits that Havana produces thousands of tons of waste daily, with a chronic shortage of containers.
The Recycling Paradox
While speeches about “environmental awareness” are promoted, the treasure hunters operate in a gray zone. Some obtain licenses as “raw material collectors,” but most work in the shadows: private buyers pay better than state entities.
In this way, these people become links in a perverse chain: they live off the waste that can’t be managed. Their ingenuity—turning perfume bottles into “originals” or melting cans in workshops—reveals nothing more than a creative adaptation to their environment and reality.
Alcides, Jesús, Lázaro, and all those who remain anonymous are neither heroes nor victims. They are survivors of a Havana where the real “treasure” lies not in the trash, but in the ability to reinvent oneself.