In a somewhat worn-down building, with a neon sign flickering intermittently in the night, stood a structure that seemed to clash with the misery surrounding it. Located at a strategic corner of Zone 3 in Guatemala, despite its decay, it still offered a refuge somewhat more dignified than the nauseating garbage dump just a short distance away.
From the outside, the neon sign said "Paradise," though the place had nothing celestial about it.
The windows, hidden behind heavy, faded curtains, let out the vibration of Latin rhythms echoing through the walls, while nervous laughter and lascivious whispers intertwined in the dense air. The atmosphere was soaked in cheap perfume, sweat, and cigarette smoke. In short, it was a brothel.
In a back room, in front of a cracked mirror illuminated by yellow lights, several women were putting on makeup and adjusting their provocative clothes.
The atmosphere was filled with a mix of forced eroticism and desperation. The occasional laughter served more as a mask to hide the misery than anything else.
Among them was Mirna, a woman about 25 years old, with an artificial beauty that caught attention. Her skin was smooth, but the thick makeup and intensely red lips made her look like a broken doll. In her arms, she held a baby, barely a few months old, thin and sickly.
Eeh... eeh...
His face was pale, with dark violet circles, and a weak cry that drowned in the noise of the room.
"Mirna, are you really bringing the kid again?" asked one of the women, a blonde with dyed hair and eyelashes that looked like fans.
With a tired sigh, she replied while trying to calm the baby: "I have no choice, Ángela. No one wants to take care of him, not even for a moment."
Another woman, with curly hair and brown skin, intervened with a serious tone: "If the boss finds out, he'll fire you, you know that? And with what you make here, you barely survive. If you end up on the street, you wouldn't last even a week... Friend, I really don't want to see you dead in some corner like so many others..."
It was a place where the law of the jungle prevailed mercilessly, and death was always lurking.
Mirna raised her gaze, her eyes outlined with kohl reflected a mix of anger and resignation. The other women looked at her, as if waiting for her to make a decision.
"You have to get rid of him," Ángela added, this time more firmly: "He's a burden, Mirna. If you keep carrying him, he'll drag you down."
She looked at the baby in her arms, her expression transformed into a mask of disgust. Tears started to gather in her eyes, but she quickly blinked them away. She stood up abruptly, adjusting her miniskirt and readjusting the child in her arms.
"I don't need you to remind me," she murmured before leaving the room.
The path was desolate, illuminated only by flickering streetlights and the dim glow of the moon. Mirna walked quickly, the heels of her shoes echoing on the worn asphalt. She reached the edges of the Zone 3 dump, where the first mounds of garbage could be seen in the distance.
The air was impregnated with a nauseating stench, but Mirna didn't seem to notice, or perhaps she had become immune to it over time.
With hurried movements, she placed the baby on the ground near a rusty container and some garbage bags. He cried weakly, with an almost inaudible voice. Mirna looked at him for a moment, as if a part of her was reconsidering her decision. Her lips pressed together and her hands trembled, but finally, her eyes hardened.
"This is the best for both of us... or maybe just for me..." she whispered softly, as if the words were hard to come out. She threw one last cold glance at the baby, her eyes empty of any remorse, before turning around and disappearing into the shadows.
Creeeek, creeeek!
Minutes later, an old and worn-out car with squeaky wheels drove through the garbage dump.
It was being pushed by two hunched figures: Don Jacinto and Doña Rosario, an elderly couple who rummaged through the trash to survive. Jacinto wore a broken straw hat and a shirt full of stains, while Rosario wore a torn skirt and a patched-up sweater.
"Jacinto, here's some cardboard," Rosario said, crouching down to pick up some soaked boxes. They were quite large, a valuable find that could mean a small fortune for them.
With his raspy voice, as he placed things in the cart, he let out a mocking laugh, "Ha-ha, good find, old lady!"
Eeh... eeeh...
Suddenly, Rosario stopped. A soft, almost imperceptible sound caught her attention: "Did you hear that?"
Jacinto looked up, frowning, "What?"
"It sounded... like a baby," Rosario whispered, walking toward the nearest container.
Carefully, she moved a black garbage bag and found a small baby, crying silently, wrapped in rags. Rosario gasped, bringing her hands to her chest.
"Jacinto, come quick!"
The old man approached, and seeing the baby, his face, hardened by years of misery, softened.
"It's a miracle he's still alive," he said, astonished.
With tears about to fall, Rosario gently lifted the baby, "I don't know who that horrible person was who abandoned him here to die, but this baby is very lucky. We're going to take care of him. We can't leave him here."
Jacinto nodded, placing a piece of metal in the cart, "If the trash gave us this gift, it must be for a reason."
In the wealthier parts of the city, finding a baby and keeping it was impossible. It had to be reported to the authorities, who would determine its situation. The legal procedures were strict, and any attempt to take a baby without following the system could result in arrest and imprisonment.
In Zone 3, where misery prevailed, social rules were almost nonexistent.
Orphans were outside the system, condemned to exist in a world without law or order, where only those who followed their instincts survived, even at the cost of others' lives.
In this horrible place, if no one took them in, death was an inevitable certainty.
As they returned home, Rosario looked at the baby in her arms with a warm smile, "We'll call him Elián," she said with an unusual warmth in her voice, "Elián Cárdenas Velasco. He'll carry both of our last names."
"Ha-ha, how wonderful, finally, the Cárdenas surname has an heir!" Jacinto exclaimed, his eyes almost closed with joy.
From the moment Elián arrived in their lives, it was as if they had won the lottery. Their small home, once empty and gloomy, was now filled with laughter and warmth. The elderly couple, who had never been able to have children, fully dedicated themselves to taking care of Elián, providing him with everything they could, even when food was scarce.
Instead of leaving him without what he needed, they preferred to go without food.
They often wondered if this was the true meaning of having a grandson, since they were too old to be considered parents of a child barely a few months old.
Despite all the love they gave him, they also taught him to survive in such a dangerous place, showing him where to go, where not to go, and how to act in different situations. At first, Rosario refused, but Jacinto convinced her, assuring her that if Elián didn't learn the harsh reality of the garbage dump, it would consume him. Fortunately, Elián learned quickly.
He adapted quickly to the work of collecting scrap, and over time, began to care for them, cooking or finding better clothes among the debris of the dump.
Time passed in the blink of an eye, and in the flash of an eye, twelve years had disappeared...
Cough! Cough!
Elián, now 12 years old, was boiling water in a rusty pot inside his grandparents' hut. The fire barely lit up the interior, revealing the metal walls and the compacted dirt floor. His hands trembled as he soaked a worn rag. On the floor, Jacinto and Rosario lay covered with blankets, both pale and coughing.
"G-grandpa, the water's almost ready," Elián said in a trembling voice.
"Eli-" Cough! Cough!
Jacinto tried to speak, but was interrupted by a violent coughing fit that left bloodstains on the rag covering his mouth. With effort, he managed to say a few words.
"Elián... listen," he began with a trembling voice, "You're strong. You're going to survive, because you've always done it. Your luck isn't as bad as you think."
Rosario, still clinging to consciousness, took Elián's hand gently, "You're the best thing that's happened to us. Finding you was our salvation. Without you, we would've given up on this cruel life years ago."
Elián couldn't hold back the tears: "Don't leave me, please..."
Jacinto managed a weak smile before exhaling for the last time. Rosario followed shortly after, leaving Elián in devastating silence.
The lives of his beloved grandparents, who had cared for him since he was a baby, vanished in the blink of an eye. It happened so quickly, so cruelly, that Elián couldn't understand how human beings could be so fragile. How were such delicate creatures supposed to survive in such a merciless world?
This thought was only possible because Elián didn't know any world beyond the dump. For him, all humans lived among the trash, risking their lives every day.
Elián hated with all his soul that strange illness that took his grandparents.
Everything happened so suddenly. At first, only a few people were reported sick, but it didn't seem serious. However, within a couple of days, dozens began to die, then hundreds, almost all elderly. Sadly, no doctor dared to enter the dump, so no one knew what the illness was or if it had a cure. The only way to avoid it was to stay locked up, not go out.
But the days passed, and after a week, with no other options, his grandparents had to go out to search for scrap, as their food had run out. Unfortunately, during that outing, both fell gravely ill and ultimately succumbed to the relentless embrace of death.
...
The next day, Elián found himself kneeling in front of two mounds of dirt, marked with simple wooden crosses. On one rested Jacinto's favorite hat, and on the other, a rusty ring he had given to his grandmother Rosario when she was ten years old. Gently, he buried them, making sure no one could take them.
"Thank you for everything," he whispered with a broken voice, "I promise I won't disappoint you. You saved me from certain death when you adopted me, and because of that, I'll do everything I can to keep living, no matter the cost. Because in the end, the life you gave me is the most valuable thing I have in this world!"
With tears running down his face, he slowly stood up and walked toward the vast mountains of garbage rising in the distance. He knew he had to find scrap to keep living.
From that moment on, his life became a constant struggle against the dangers surrounding him. After all, a 12-year-old child, alone and unprotected in a place like that, was an easy prey for criminals and lunatics. However, Elián always found a way to dodge them or show them that messing with him was no easy task.
The years passed quickly, so quickly that it seemed time slipped through his fingers like sand in a closed fist.
Elián, now a 16-year-old young man, had grown up in an unforgiving environment. His skin was tanned by the sun, and his hands, rough and cracked, showed the tireless labor in the trash. He wore tattered clothes, but his eyes burned with fierce determination. The garbage dump, with its mountains of waste and the distant echo of thousands of lives lost in oblivion, remained his home.