Somos Buzos (We Are the Trash Divers)

Somos Buzos (We Are the Trash Divers) is a feature length documentary about a community of people called buzos who live around a smoking dump that crouches outside the city of Santiago in the Dominican Republic. These buzos, or "trash divers," build their houses from garbage, feed their children with rotten food, and make pennies by scavenging and selling metal, plastic, cardboard, and glass. They cannot read or write, and most are prevented from attending school. The film follows one buzo, Pablo Esteban, as he struggles to keep his children in school and away from the toxicity and feral violence of the dump.

The dump offers little and takes a lot: for the pennies they scrape together each day the buzos risk injury, infection, food poisoning, violence and more. The children suffer the most, from constant malnutrition to chronic illnesses, to lack of birth certificates and education. The film interviews the nefarious mayor and other unscrupulous local officials, all of whom spread the blame instead of taking action. The local media, international missionaries and aid organizations attempt to highlight the problem to little effect, until embarrassed officials call in the military. 100 Fires watches as the city, rather than provide the buzos with jobs or an education, escalates its efforts to remove the trash, and the buzos, from sight.

Documentary film by Isabelle Carbonell.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Dominican
• Republic
• Cienfuegos
• 100
• Fires
• Living
• from
• Landfill
• Somos
• Buzos
• Trash
• Garbage
• Refuse
• Dump
• Isabelle
• Carbonell
• Cabronell
• documentary
• filmmaking
• KICKSTARTER
• We
• Are
• the
• Divers
• The