Improvised landfill behind the municipal cemetery in Jocotepec. Photo: Courtesy.

Héctor Ruiz Mejía – Stymied by  the decision of the City Council of Ixtlahuacán de los Membrillos  to allow it to continuing dumping garbage in the town’s GEN sanitary landfill, the municipality of Jocotepec has  scrambled for other sites, including clandestinely dumping garbage into ejido land. 

Ixtlahuacán objected to the one thousand tons of garbage being tricked into its territory every day from Lakeside and the Guadalajara Metropolitan Zone (ZMG). So it closed its landfill, setting off tremors throughout the affected municipalities.

Clandestine garbage dump, which is about one ton of garbage, located on the ejido of San Luciano. Photo: Courtesy.

This led to desperate Jocotepec City Hall to clandestinely dump about a ton of garbage in the ejido of San Luciano, as reported by an anonymous source, as well as another ton of garbage on a lot located behind the municipal cemetery of Jocotepec. Semanario Laguna  did directly observe these areas.

But the clandestine dumping has not solved the problem in Jocotepec as  the streets of the municipal seat and the towns have filled up with garbage due to the lack of collection,  prompting María Luisa of Jocotepec to complain that,  «it is starting to smell bad, there is a mosquito infestation».

The collection crisis has also prompted desperate people from around the municipality to dump their household trash on Jocotepec’s streets. One resident, Guadalupe, told Laguna that ,  «they come in nice cars, we know they are not from here, and  they just leave their bags of garbage on the  street corners», she complained. 

The problem has overwhelmed the municipal authorities  so Jocotepec president José Miguel Gómez López posted a video on the official City Hall sites urging  the community not to take out their garbage, saying, «we have a problem with garbage collection, this could take days».

Although the mayor stated  in the video that work is being done to solve the problem, during the third regular town council session on November 4, no comment was made on the matter, nor has there been any official position on the matter.

Meanwhile, the desperate measures taken by the City Council have begun to generate concern among the town population, since the garbage disposal  has been a problem for about three years and the people of Jocotepec still don’t know what to do with their garbage. 

Translated by Patrick O’Heffernan