Cardboard train wreck in Buenos Aires

In 2001, Argentina faced an economic crisis that would last until the present day. It was at this time that thousands of workers, then excluded from the formal labour market, invented their own work in the popular economy, scouring the streets of the capital to collect cardboard and other materials to sell to recycling centres.
Faced with the scale of this movement, the companies managing the Sarmiento, Mitre and San Martin railway lines opened the "Tren blanco" : these trains, stripped of their usual furnishings, were chartered to allow "callejeros" (street workers) to take their "carros" (giant carts and dollies) from the most working-class districts of Buenos Aires to the shopping districts that generate the most waste.

Since the closure of these trains in 2006, the hard work of the cartoneros (more than 150,000 throughout the country today), like the economic crisis, has not ceased.
Faced with constant insecurity, this once informal profession has begun to institutionalise itself, with the creation of a federation (FACCYR), a union (UTEP), cooperatives (e.g. MTE with more than 18,000 workers), and associations to help workers and their families. These structures have made it possible to set up "centros de reciclados" (sheds) in various parts of the capital and other cities in the country, which will act as intermediaries between cartoneros and buyers.

On 10th December 2023, the anarcho-capitalist president-elect, Javier Milei, took office. One of his first measures was the deregulation of imports, which caused the price of cardboard to drop by 50% in just one month, making life even more difficult for callejeros.