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'Chicas bravas' refurbish US e-waste to fill Mexican needsFRONTERAS, Mexico, Jul 26, 2010 (McClatchy Newspapers - McClatchy-Tribune News Service via COMTEX) -- Inside a low-slung, canary-yellow building next to the Asociacion Ganadera Local _ the local livestock association _ 14-year-old Jesus Beltran stared into the screen of a secondhand Dell computer monitor. School had just ended. Now it was time for homework at this tiny town's only Internet cafe, where a puddle of gray light from the monitor spilled across the concrete floor. "I don't have Internet at home," said Beltran, chewing on a wad of bubble gum as he cruised the Web for a paper he was writing on Martin Luther King Jr. Every month, mountains of working monitors like this one are destroyed in California under the state's e-waste recycling law. And that angers Robin Ingenthron, the Arizona e-waste dealer who donated the monitors. Adding to that outrage is his concern that California, by paying a bounty of $15 to $18 for old monitors, has triggered an illegal cross-border trade of out-of-state e-waste, draining the supply in Arizona. "They are paying good people to break good equipment," Ingenthron said. "They are making computers and Internet more expensive for students in the rest of the world." John Chen, executive vice president of the Tung Tai Group, a San Jose e-waste recycler and exporter, called the situation "a crying shame." "Nine out of 10 monitors that come in are working," he said. "And what do we do? We destroy them and sell them for scrap." In recent months, Ingenthron has taken his case _ via e-mail _ to Jeff Hunts, manager of the e-waste program for CalRecycle. Hunts is interested but not optimistic. "I find your ideas about re-use intriguing," Hunts wrote to Ingenthron in March. "The main 'roadblock' to considering changes is simply lack of resources. Personnel allocations to administer the program are bare-bones at best." Poor nations are hungry for America's unwanted monitors, most of which are generally in working condition. But shipping them abroad has stirred conflict because some exporters have tossed in non-working monitors, too, which are then discarded in creeks, backyard dumps and other pollution sites overseas. Ingenthron has addressed that problem in Arizona with his own cross-border experiment _ hiring and training a group of 40- and 50-something women in this impoverished ranching town who dismantle monitors that don't work, screw by screw, and recover every kilogram of scrap metal and plastic. They are known around the high desert and mountain country of northern Sonora as las chicas bravas _ the tough gals _ for their determination to find jobs where there were none, to succeed in a machismo world. "We didn't have anything to lose," said Menta Alicia Armenta Gomez, one of the group's leaders. "If we are successful, our children won't have to leave," she added, pointing north toward the U.S. border. This spring, Gomez and other chicas bravas stood at simple work benches, dismantling monitors with wire-cutters, scissors and screwdrivers, and tossing parts into plastic buckets on the floor. There was no electricity in the warehouse, but there was a surplus of grit and gumption. "The men in town don't know what to make of it, in a Mexican culture where women are just there for the men," said Alice Valenzuela, a former Silicon Valley Spanish-language newspaper publisher who helps las chicas and manages a nearby ranch with her husband, Roberto. "This is changing the dynamics a lot." Valenzuela also is dismayed that so many monitors are destroyed in California. "It's amazing what happens if you put a used computer and monitor in the hands of someone who doesn't have one," she said. "They can create a livelihood for themselves and their children. That's beyond powerful." Children in Fronteras who wanted to use a computer used to have to take a bus to a town a half-hour away. Now they plop down on plastic chairs at the Internet cafe in the town center. And that is where Jesus Beltran sat in his Green Bay Packers T-shirt, tapping at a keyboard, surrounded by a scrum of buddies. Outside in the amber afternoon light, dogs barked and pickup trucks shimmied down unpaved streets of this town of 1,500. But inside the monitor in front of him, a wider world was whipping by _ games here, sports there and yes, reading material for another paper, about Fidel Castro. "This is very useful to me," Beltran said, smiling broadly. "It helps me do a lot of things." ___ (c) 2010, The Sacramento Bee (Sacramento, Calif.). Visit The Sacramento Bee online at http://www.sacbee.com/. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. _____ PHOTOS (from MCT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): CPT-EWASTE-MEXICO-BIZPLUS For reprints, email [email protected], call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. |