The visit took place a few days after the protest by some of the families in La Chureca had come to an end. Organised by the Movimiento Comunal (which grew out of the Sandinista neighbourhood defence committees of the ‘80′s) they were refusing to let the council rubbish trucks into the dump in protest against the bin men going through the refuse and taking out the valuable stuff (tins, plastic bottles, metal and even paper) before the trucks get to La Chureca, thereby depriving them of the materials they sell for recycling. They said that the Mayor, Dionisio (Nicho) Marenco, should increase the bin men’s wages so that they didn’t have to augment them by ‘prepping’ the refuse. Nicho replied that even if he did increase their wages it was impossible to ensure the bin men didn’t extract recyclable materials. El Nuevo Diario said the protest was politically engineered by the government in order to discredit Nicho, formerly one of Daniel Ortega’s right hand men, who had been very public in some critical comments he made of the new government’s style. The newspaper said the government was holding the population of Managua to ransom over an intra-party feud which caused rubbish to pile up in the streets.
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