Catadores - Brazil's rubbish collectors by Tim Hirsch

Although there have been attempts by the municipal government to work with the organisedcatadores, it is an uneasy relationship - just last month, this area was the scene of ugly clashes with police as the authorities came to clean up the area and the catadores accused them of taking away material that they had collected and depriving them of their livelihoods.
Admittedly the area is unpleasant - I dodged a couple of dead rats as I walked through it. But according to another catador, Sergio Bispo, the problem would not arise if the catadores were given proper spaces in which to work: "If we spent a month on strike, the country would stop - I think the world would stop. Because the municipal governments in the big cities don't do selective collection, they wouldn't cope. It's us catadores who do it, with our handcarts, carrying stuff on our backs, on our heads, in bags. So the country would stop if we went on strike, one day it will happen, but not yet."