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Basura Aqui (Más Allá de Esperanza)
Trash Here (Beyond Hope)

30 kilometers beyond the town of Esperanza (Hope), Dominican Republic:

"...the stench of the Baté reached us before the vehicle shuttered to a halt. A scrappy band of girls, clad in appallingly tattered clothes, gathered as we alighted from the truck bed to study us with trepidation and curiosity, as though we had just arrived from some distant alien world. My gaze turned to an adolescent covering herself with a shredded white dress. With her arm firmly against her side, she clutched the broken straps of her ragged apparel. Her eyes connected with mine. The pupils appeared as two openings of an abyss that even the intense light of the sun overhead could not penetrate. She averted her stare.

Guided by a local man who introduced himself as an advocate for the rights of the 2,000 Haitian refugees surviving in this festering assemblage of wood and tin, we surveyed the area. Motionless bodies, enervated in the relentless heat, slumped against the gnarled trunks of old trees swathed with a fleeting shade. In these hellish conditions, where the corrugated tin roofs of crudely-constructed shanties transform abodes into airless ovens, the trees provided the only respite from the merciless beat of the burning orb above.

Beyond the reach of the shade, haggard dwellings drooped in the fetid air as if languishing for some relief of their own. Without protection, the makeshift structures seemed to be, much like their occupants, in a slow state of decay. Rust enveloped the flattened tin cans and scraps of metal that constituted their tenuous walls. The plywood doors were rotted and warped. As a breeze began to stir the dust, the aching rows of untidy shacks creaked and groaned.

The straps of her white dress still in hand, the adolescent girl silently passed our group. Drawing open a dumpster lid, now hinged to her home, she slipped inside and was gone. The door swung back in place. Written on the front of the door, in bold lettering, were the words "BASURA AQUI."

...The rights advocate gave a grave look. "These are forgotten people...."