Rosalia's Story

Rosalia is an active member in the community garden project. She is one of a number of women who passionately wants to change the horrible condition of the environment around them in the dump. These women are organizing to get the government to come clean up the trash and dead animals around the neighborhood.

We arrived (in Panfilo Natera) in 1991. Before now, it was a municipal dump. When it got hot, strong stenches of dead dogs came. It still smells today. The authorities don't do anything about other people throwing trash or dead dogs. Before, we didn't have electricity or water either. With time, buses arrived with water to put in our water holding tanks. There were many houses made of pallets and cardboard because the people were poor and never earned enough. They (the government) never paved the streets and they still aren't paved today. The cholos (gang-bangers) robbed often because there were many of them. When it rains, it makes ruts in the streets. All of this is what we have had in Colonia Panfilo Natera up until the present year.

This year we are paying for our land for a second time. They want three thousand pesos(three hundred dollars) for it (in all). There was a man named Chacon (that we were paying), but he died and never gave us titles (to our land) or took our money for the mortgage to the bank. Now that we have the services (running water and electricity), the land has been sold to another man and the bank has returned to collect the money (for the land) from us, asking for more than we paid before. It is very expensive. When everyone in the colonia received the services, this new owner suddenly came to get payments for the land. Well, some people are paying and others won't until they see some documentation or the title for the terrain.