Trash

“You live day to day and hope you don’t get sick. Your life is the hook you carry, there in your hand, turning the trash.”

Raphael understands that without the trash he would have no way to live. He identifies his life as the hook in his hand, which allows him to sort through the refuse more efficiently. Illness is a constant danger, and uncertainty from day to day is the norm.

“He can be mean, it’s true—but then again he’s taken more beatings than me so maybe he’s grown up faster.”

Raphael’s description of Gardo shows that they live in a world of normalized violence. Even if Gardo has been beaten more, Raphael has still been beaten and can speak of beatings cavalierly, as if they are a common occurrence. Raphael also views violence as an accelerator toward adulthood.

“With the right key you can bust the door wide open. Because nobody’s going to open it for you.”

After finding the key, Raphael has new options in his life. He does not yet know the depths of the mystery or the level of danger he will soon experience, but it is clear that the appearance of something new excites him. He will find it increasingly hard to accept his status as a dumpsite boy as more possibilities open to him. Jun-Jun and Gardo will experience similar revelations.

“You don’t see many police in Behala, because in a shanty you sort out your own problems.”

The people in Raphael’s shanty cannot rely on the police to help solve their problems. The presence of the police—especially as the novel progresses—is usually a threat. The most brutal actions in the novel—Raphael’s torture, the caging of the children in the prison—are all performed by law enforcement personnel.

“Raphael is my friend but he’s like a kid, always laughing, playing, thinking everything’s fun, thinking it’s a game.”

Gardo is the same age as Raphael and is also a kid. But he sees playful behavior as childlike. The instincts for play and lightheartedness and the desire for fun do not appear to exist for him. Given what Raphael has said about Gardo’s numerous beatings, this mind-set may be a result of the violence he has experienced. 

“Not dealing with the fact that if the police think you’ve got something, they won’t stop till they’ve got it from you.”

Gardo is aware that the police are a danger. Furthermore, he knows that the police are not above planting evidence on people to get the result they want. If the police have already decided that he and Raphael have the bag, they will be pursued and punished as if it is true. He sees Raphael’s refusal to acknowledge this as naive and dangerous. 

“This tiny child—as soon as it can crawl it will be crawling through trash.” 

When Father Juilliard sees babies in the shantytowns, he thinks of their futures. They are babies who are born in trash. They will grow up in trash, learn to walk in trash, and eventually scrape out their livings—if they can avoid sickness and death—on the dumpsites. He sees the difficulty the country faces when its infants are born with no reasons to think they can aspire to more.

“I wondered if he was thinking the obvious thought: And what use is an education to me?”

Father Juilliard watches Raphael thinking about the use of school. The boys stop coming when they are 10 years old. They have to work and earn money to live. Formal education is not going to help them survive. This is echoed later in Olivia’s remark that Behala taught her more than her time at the university.

“‘Who taught trash like you how to read?’”

In the police station, the cops insult, threaten, and torture Raphael. They are ostensibly there to protect Behala’s citizens, including Raphael. But the fact that they call him trash and are astonished that he is literate indicate just how naive it is for the dumpsite people to expect help from the police. They will not help protect Raphael’s human rights if they barely see him as human.

“‘They let me go. I did not give it up.’”

Raphael speaks to the statue of the soldier after being released from the police station. He is proud of himself for keeping his secret about finding the bag the police are looking for, even though he thought it might get him killed as the police dangled him out the window. He believes that José Angelico helped him be strong. Raphael struggles emotionally after his torture, but he has been strengthened by the experience, which will show in his newfound bravery during the rest of the novel.

“I also think José was with me, because I know the dead come back.”

Raphael never says why he knows the dead come back. He gives no accounts of being visited by ghosts. Later, during the Day of the Dead, it is clear that Behala is a place where the dead are honored. Spirits living on is a reality to those in the Naravo Cemetery near the end of the book.

“I think charity work is the most seductive thing in the world, and I’d never done it before.”

Olivia finds herself falling in love with the children of Behala, who smile despite their difficult circumstances. Despite an abundance of education, she realizes that it is only in Behala that she begins to learn things that will allow her to make a true difference in peoples’ lives. The feeling of doing good only makes her want to do more.

“I was looking at a boy who could not have been more than eight years old, wearing only shorts. He was smiling at me. In his lap sat a younger boy, sleeping.”

Olivia sees the boy in a cage in Colva Prison. She doesn't know what he has been imprisoned for, but it is hard for her to imagine him committing a serious crime. His smile is disarming and unsettling for her, as is Gardo’s later insistence that life in the prison is not as bad as it looks. She also has no idea when, or if, the boys will ever be released. The prison is so bad that she eventually says she is glad to have gained the perspective, even though it is emotionally brutal for her.

“‘Seventy million would have changed the city, Miss Olivia—at that time. But no schools or hospitals were ever built, and the city stayed poor.’”

Gabriel tells Olivia the cost Behala has paid for the greed of the corrupt politicians. The government officials are charged with protecting the public interest. Instead, men like Zapanta have taken the money meant for education, infrastructure, health services, and nutrition and used it for their own personal enrichment. Having the wrong people in charge of a government can wreak disastrous consequences on constituents.

“‘I hope he never gets it back—not a cent of it. And I hope the shock kills him.’”

The gardener tells Rat and Raphael about the theft at Zapanta’s house. He helps them understand that Zapanta stole from all of them. The money would have improved the lives of everyone in Behala, but instead it was sat in the house of a greedy politician. He also makes it clear that Zapanta—with the help of the police—expects to get the money back for himself.

“I learned perhaps more than any university could ever teach me. I learned that the world revolves around money. There are values and virtues and morals; there are relationships and trust and love—and all of that is important. Money, however, is more important and it is dripping all the time, like precious water. Some drink deep; others thirst. Without money, you shrivel and die. The absence of money is drought in which nothing can grow. Nobody knows the value of water until they’ve lived in a dry, dry place—like Behala. So many people, waiting for the rain.”

Olivia’s experience in Behala does not make her cynical, but she feels that she is no longer naive. Before her time there, she could never have believed that money could matter more than love and trust. But now she sees that money—and the freedom it can provide—is what makes many of those things possible. When there is no way for people to earn enough to have choices, the drought cannot be reversed.

“Thank you so much for using me.”

Olivia is grateful to the boys, even though they bribed her, lied to her, and put her in danger in the prison, and all this resulted in her having to flee the country. Their actions show her the reality in which they live. She knows that they acted out of desperation because she now understands how desperate the world of Behala can be. They gave her a new perspective, and she considers that true education.

“I think I must have got an eye—and I’ll be honest, I hope so: I hope he’s a one-eyed prison guard now and telling his tale about how he tried to sell a little boy after a deal was made and that boy turned round and took his eye out—I hope his whole cheating face is cut right through, my gift to a filthy traitor.”

While Raphael and Jun-Jun retain their gentle dispositions during the novel, Gardo’s experiences leave him more hardened. He is more direct than the other two and is more disposed to fight. When he contemplates the injury he may have given Marco, he has no remorse: He believes that losing an eye is a just punishment for Marco’s betrayal.

“What does the country need right now? THREE THINGS: A revolution. Then a revolution. Then—when the dust has settled—a revolution.” 

In the excerpt from the university newspaper, the extent of the unhappiness caused by Zapanta and the corrupt government is explicitly presented. The corruption is so entrenched that there is no sense that one revolution will be enough to extract the rot. If this is the sentiment on one university campus, it is likely that most college students at other locations feel similarly, showing just how unpopular Zapanta is.

“We were amongst wealthy people in very fancy clothes, and we felt even greyer and dirtier, but there was nothing for it, and still nobody was worrying about us—no one seemed to see us, like we were the ghosts.”

This quote shows another strong contrast between the poor and the rich in the novel. At the graveyard, even among people dressed stylishly, the boys are ignored. It is as if they are beneath notice. The wealthier people either do not see them or are content to pretend that they are not there, much as they do with the dumpsites of Behala.

“It looked like food and drink, and changing my life—and getting a way out of the city forever.”

As Raphael looks at the $6 million, he realizes that it is freedom. It is his escape from the city but also from the life he has known. If they can make it out with enough money, he can leave the trash behind, find safety and security, and plan for his own future. Before he sees such an amount of money all in one place, he does not fully understood the powerful tool that money can be.

“Who cares who did what when the whole point was we did it together?”

Jun-Jun does not care who gets credit for good ideas, even though he knows that he had many of them. For him, it is most important that he and his friends accomplished what they did together. Without the three of them playing their roles at various times, the story could not have been resolved in the same way. Jun-Jun is sad that Gardo places more importance on who the triumph belongs to than to the fact that they helped one another survive.

“I said we should take it to Behala and put it in the trash for anyone who finds it.”

Jun-Jun says that the boys never contemplated trying to keep all of the money. Their concern is to do as much good as possible with it, for as many people as possible. Because nearly everyone they know spends their time at the dumpsite, they can give each person there a chance at a better life by returning the money to the very people it was stolen from.