The Current Conditions of Street Life in Colombia

Essay written in June, 2002

Gabriela García Márquez once wrote that he did not understand why literature teachers spoke of Magical Realism. He insisted that he only wrote about the reality of Colombia, which had nothing to do with magic or with miracles. The life of street children in Colombia attests to the truth of this, since their lives are far from being fairy tales in any sense of the word.

In order to understand the actual situation of street life in Colombia, it is necessary to know about the civil war in the country. There are, at least, 5 independent groups who are responsible for the violence: The Colombian military, FARC (Leninist guerrillas), the ELN guerrillas (whose ideology is based on the ideas of Che Guevara), the paramilitaries (rightist guerrillas), and the drug lords. To complicate the picture still further, many of the armed groups do not want to win the war because the conflict is good business – it is easier to kidnap people when the situation is chaotic, the war facilitates the drug trade, and the US government provides a lot of funding as long as the conflict continues. The conflict, therefore, continues because war is better than peace for those who have the power and the arms.

Various dates have been given for the origin of the civil war in Colombia: 1899, 1948, 1960… For many years, violence in the countryside resulted in a wave of rural-urban migration. This, however, changed in the 1990´s, when both the guerrillas and the paramilitaries forced the peasants to leave the countryside. The guerrillas wanted to intensify the conflict in the cities and were able to do so after the arrival of large numbers of refugees from the countryside. The paramilitaries wanted to eliminate those who provided support to the guerrillas – farmers, trade unionists, lawyers working for human rights – and were then also able to rob the land from those who had fled the countryside.

No-one knows exactly how many refugees from the countryside are living in the big cities – probably up to four million. The majority of these are mothers and children. These children are hardly prepared to enter the school system and are unfamiliar with urban life. Because these families live in absolute misery, many children go out on the streets to sell what they can or to beg or to escape violence in their homes and in their communities. Many end up as street children.

The violence in Colombia is not only a rural phenomenon. In Medellín, urban gangs that are remnants from the narco-imperialist days of Pablo Escobar have become divided and now ally themselves with one or another of the many armed groups. Some communities are under the control of the paramilitaries while others are under the guerrillas. The government has abandoned these communities and the only law that prevails is that of the gangs. In addition, there are frequent fights between rival gangs and violence is encouraged. In some municipalities, the gangs forcibly recruit members and children are forced to join them. Although there have been some attempts to deal with this problem, it is easy to understand why there are so many street children in Medellín -- it is the only way these children can escape from the violence and the gangs.

Some children travel long distances to escape. When I was in Barranquilla, on the Caribbean coast of Colombia, I met some street children who were 8 years old and who spoke with Bogotá accent. I asked them where they were from. I had been correct: they were from the capital. I then asked them how they managed to be in Barranquilla as I knew that it was a 24 hour bus ride from Bogotá and that it was dangerous to travel by land because of the war.

“We hitchhiked.”

“How long were you travelling for?”

“I don’t know- 7 or 10 days.”

“And why did you come here?”

“To see the sea, of course.”

In many countries, there are street children who travel, but the number in Colombia is particularly high. According to reliable sources, 70% of the street children in Cartagena come from Medellín or Bogotá. Both boys and girls learn to travel when they are very young – very often at the age of 6-7 – and many have been travelling for years. Although they are aware of their environment and understand the politics and ecology of their country, it is very difficult to assist them because they never stay in the same place long enough.

Because they fear being kidnapped, middle class Colombians fear travelling by land. The guerrillas and the paramilitaries put up roadblocks and kidnap whomever they are able to. Street children are the only ones who can travel and get to see their beautiful country. I met one boy who travelled from the Amazon River as far as the Caribbean Sea, another who went to California, yet another who went to Cádiz, Spain and a girl who got as far as Brasil. Although we use the term street children, it would be more accurate to label these children as “highway children.”

The violence against street children continues to increase. In Medellín, there are gangs of rich children who kill people living on the streets. In Bogotá, there are death squads- although fewer than in the past. Many paramilitary members refuse to let children travel or simply kill them because they could be “future subversives.”

There are more very young and adolescent girls living on the streets in Colombia than in any other Latin American country. It has been estimated that up to 25% of the street population is feminine. As can be imagined, they suffer from a great amount of sexual abuse and are even used by the drug cartels to transport drugs. All the NGOs in Colombia working for children agree that services for these girls are either poor or non-existent.

While it is clear that Colombia is a nightmare in this respect, one must not forget what Gabriela García Marquez has written at the beginning of this essay. Colombia is a difficult country to understand, but it is also full of wonders. In the middle of the war, for example, The Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro – three weeks of different theatrical productions in 13 different theatres – held in Colombia attracted 130 theatre companies from around the world and almost all the tickets were sold out. 2000 spectators per night went to see plays by Chekov in Russian!

The sophisticated intellectual culture which exists in Colombia has had a beneficial effect on the types of programmes that have been developed to assist street children. The best of these integrate art, philosophy and politics into their programmes: Taller de Vida uses theatre, music and documentary video production to help refugee children; Benposta is perhaps the best example of direct democracy in the whole of America; The Circo para Todos is a professional circus school for street children; the ACJ uses art as an incentive to keep children off the streets; and the Colegio del Cuerpo is an incredible ballet corps for refugee children.