Mexican Rubbish Dumps

For many years, our vets have been treating injured and overworked horses and donkeys on the Mexican rubbish dumps. One such facility is in Nezahualcoyotl (Neza), which has a population of over one million people. In recent times there has been a significant decrease in working horses from 2,000 to 700. Unfortunately, this has taken its toll on those continuing to collect rubbish from the streets of Neza.

 

We are often asked why vehicles are not used to collect rubbish. The answer is simple; the streets are very narrow and only passable by horse and cart.

 

Typical working day...

 

In the early hours, life starts for the horses working the narrow streets. As drivers ring their bells, residents exchange a few pesos and the carts are filled and often overloaded.

 

Due to the excess volume of traffic, the return journey to the dumps is rarely without mishap. On arrival, drivers pay an entry fee to deposit the rubbish.

 

This is when the danger increases; horses have to negotiate deep decaying rubbish, often treading on broken glass and sharp objects. Major injuries include deep lacerations and puncture wounds to lower limbs and severe wounds along the spinal column caused by overloaded carts.

 

In such cases, the mobile clinics have to work extremely hard to treat the injured animals as effectively as possible, because returning back to the streets of Neza is often the highest priority of the drivers.

 

If you would like to find out more, visit the Countries section, which contains more information about our work overseas.