Source: Correio Braziliense, 24/06/2009

Family maintains an improvised library with remains of the Esplanade, where works by Jorge Amado and Machado de Assis share space with Allan Kardec and even Sarney Those who need the garbage to survive are trained to find the best in piles of dirt and bad smell produced daily across the Esplanade. Sometimes, this wealth is apparent, the result of the waste of those who decide, for example, to throw away works by Machado de Assis or Jorge Amado. Other times, it depends on the perception of artisans, able to see in old newspapers, used cans and empty bottles the raw material for earrings, necklaces, bags, lampshades, mandalas, pencil holders, table stands, cups etc.

The family home of Francisco de Assis Almeida, 58, is a showcase of the pearls found in the garbage of the National Congress and ministries (the subject of a series of Correio reports starting on Sunday). For 12 years, Assis has lived on garbage. He picked, selected and negotiated the usable portion of the leftover bureaucracy. Today, he is part of the direction of the Central of Cooperatives of Collectors of Recyclable Materials of the DF and heads a cooperative of Recanto das Emas.

Since the time he started living on the Esplanada garbage trade, Assis has practically set up a private library, in addition to donating some recurring finds in the Esplanada containers. Constitution editions, for example. One of them, Assis keeps it at home, the others passed it on to their children's school. If there is a bureaucrat who no longer sees value in the Magna Carta, the same is not true of Assisi, who has become a voracious reader stimulated by the works despised in the buckets of the government and Congress.

Collection

It is part of the collection of the collector, for example, Tale of school and other short stories by Machado de Assis, and Tieta do agreste, by Jorge Amado. In addition to the works, Assis rescued an entire collection from the official waste with the biography of characters such as Frei Caneca and Visconde de Mauá. The inserts are from 1969, but are in perfect condition.

The family also keeps at home a copy of Agenda 21 (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) that mobilized politicians in 1992, when representatives from 179 countries participated in Eco-92, a subject that later left the agenda - the which should explain why some of the copies of the document ended up in the trash. The reproduction kept by Assis is full of notes from the technicians who once studied the subject. About the original griffins, the collector made his observations.

The Esplanada garbage is also ecumenical. It contains both the Gospel according to spiritism, by Allan Kardec, as well as an edition of the New Testament. And that the president of the Senate, José Sarney (PMDB-AP), does not know, but one of his books, Speaking of well-being, was discarded. To soothe the senator, the work now rests in peace on a shelf in the house of Assisi where his wife, Maria Aparecida Faustino, dusts the dust from the library every day.