Shine-A-Light

Life on the Street

Over the course of modern history, children have often lived on the street. Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo made their readers aware of street urchins in Paris and London, but we also have 19th century descriptions of street urchins in almost every major European city, in New York, and in Bogotá. After the Russian revolution, thousands of children fled their homes to live on the road; called besprizornye, they were a concrete reminder of the failures of the new Soviet system. Thousands of homeless teenagers, often called “gutter punks” roam the United States even today.

We should not believe that youth homelessness in Latin America is a new or isolated phenonemon; in fact, children are often forced onto the street during times of social and economic tummult. However, in Latin America youth homelessness is more acute, affects more children, and is more chronic than in many other historical moments.

In the early 1990s, the United Nations lamented the presence of 40,000,000 street children in Latin America. While subsequent research has indicated that this number is exaggerated -- especially if we define “street child” as one whose primary residence is on the street -- it points to the phenomenal social problems of children in Central and South America. The street has become a perverse “safety net,” the last resource for children fleeing poverty, abuse, and marginalization.

The street as a tool for survival

Latin American organizations that work with street children have learned that the street is not so much a place to which children flee, but a tool that they use to survive. Though we may find it hard to believe, the street provides access to material and emotional resources necessary for personal development, resources that are scarce or unavailable in the giant slums that surround all Latin American cities.

Careful research in Brasil has shown that street children almost never die of starvation; in fact, their caloric intake is often much higher than children that remain in the slums. This food comes from several different sources:

Begging from restaurants, grocery stores, and pedestrians.
Theft.
“Dumpster Diving,” particularly in restaurant garbage cans.

In fact, the problem with a street child’s diet is not caloric intake, but the content of the food; it is often high in fats, salt, and simple sugars. For this reason, though starvation may not be an issue for street children, malnutrition is.

Regardless of the quality of the nutrition that one finds on the street, one fact is fundamental: for a child, food on the street is more filling and better tasting than the food he or she eats at home in the slum.

According to a study by El Caracol, street children in Mexico City can make as much as four times the minimum wage by working as fakirs -- laying on top of broken glass, eating fire, etc. In Venezuela, a young street vendor earns twice the minimum wage. In Medellín, children working in the drug trade become rich overnight. This research, as well as the experience of Shine a light staff and fellows in a dozen countries, proves a counterintuitive point: Street children have money.

In the poorest of Rio de Janeiro’s favelas or Lima’s pueblos jóvenes, the visitor will always see a forest of television aerials. Poor children suffer the same consumer propaganda as the rest of society, but they have no way to buy the consumer goods that they see. By living on the street, they have access to Nike sneakers and Tommy Hilfiger jeans, whether by theft or by saving the money they earn from informal work and begging.

Though these consumer goods are soon destroyed by the harsh life of the street, this money also provides satisfaction to wishes and needs that are impossible to realize in the slum.

The street is a dangerous place, but in many cities, the slums are even more dangerous. In Medellín, gangs agressively recruit every boy in the neighborhoods that they control. The boys are given a choice: to become gang soldiers (some days 100 young men die in gun battles in the city), to leave the neighborhood, or to die. These children jam the streets of downtown, desperately seeking a place free from gang recruiters. Similar phenomena occur in Rio, São Paulo, and Lima.

For other children, the street is a safer place than their homes. Almost every street child will tell a story of abuse at the hands of a stepfather or uncle; in many cases, these stories are merely effective ways to charm spare change from a pedestrian, but in many more, they are true. Once again, the street provides a resource unavailable in the slum.

Street children also point to other resources available on the street, but not at home:

The love and companionship of the gang
The fun of drugs and sex
The freedom from rules and parents

In the end, however, the premise is the same: the street is an effective tool for survival, a place that somehow seems better than the poverty and violence of home. This insight has been fundamental for Latin American organizations to provide innovative, cost-effective solutions to youth homelessness.

Life on the Street

The fact that the street is better than home does not mean that it is a pleasant place, and neither street children nor the programs that help them suffer from this delusion. In fact, the misery of the street only serves to highlight how much more miserable life in the violent slums must be.

Conditions on the street vary from country to country and city to city, but some characteristics are constant across national borders.

Vigilante violence. In the early 1990s, the press drew international attention to the murder of street children in Brasil. Though conditions have improved in that country, they have grown much worse elsewhere, including

In the small city of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, vigilantes have murdered at least 300 children in the last three years.
Colombian street gangs often force new members to murder a street child as an initiation rite.
In Argentina, youth violence of all kinds, including against street children, is on the rise.
In Perú, many social service agencies no longer do street outreach, fearing for their lives among increasingly violent youth.

Disease. Street children often live in sewers, dumps, and trash cans, where rotting filth provides some heat on a cold night. Poor nutrition and inadequate first aid expose their bodies to opportunistic disease. Drug abuse makes them vulnerable to death by exposure. Prostitution and promiscusous sex put them at high risk for STDs.

In 2002 a group of doctors provided free, confidential, and anonymous tests for HIV to street children in Mexico City. Though this was not a controlled study and cannot be taken as statistically accurate, more than 50% of the children tested positive for HIV.
In the Guatemala city dump, where many children are born to other children, informal research by the NGO Camino Seguro suggests that infant mortality is over 40%.
According to the NGO El Caracol, the life span of a street child in Mexico City is 21-22 years.

Drug abuse. Traditionally, street children in Latin America huffed glue, but today drug use has become more varied and even more dangerous.

In Colombia, children smoke bazuko (a bi-product of cocaine production ) or patrasiado (a bi-product of bazuko production). These drugs are highly addictive and extremely damaging to mental processes.
Along the new heroin smuggling routes, especially in southern Mexico, street children have begun to inject drugs.
Crack has become a major industry in Brazil. Street children, who often work as runners, are addicted at a high rate.
In Mexico, one of the primary causes of death among street children is to be drunk or stoned, to walk into a busy road, and to be struck by a passing car.
Inhalent abuse continues; when glue is unavailable or illegal, children huff paint, pvc cleaner, and other industrial solvents.

Sexual exploitation. Both boys and girls have learned that they can find both money and a place to sleep by selling their bodies. Prostitution and survival sex have become pandemic among street child populations; this industry is often run by organized crime or even by the parents of the exploited children.

In Brazil, Costa Rica, and Honduras, sex tourism has become a major source of income in some cities. Internet sites publicize the best places to buy sex with children.
International sex traffickers seduce Brazilian and Colombian women with promises of work abroad, then sell them to brothels in Europe, North America, and Asia.
In Chile, the cars of rich men cruise the streets of poor neighborhoods every night, searching for both both and girls.

Solutions on the street

We have designed this website so that NGOs can learn from their most successful peers, so that prospective volunteers can find organizations they want to help, so that researchers share ideas with each other, and so that foundations can find effective organizations that meet their funding priorities. Through these links, you can:

Sort organizations by geographical location

Find organizations that serve street children in a number of fields, from street education to community development and from gender issue to dance

Read about the best practices Latin American NGOs

Learn about the philosophical background of social services in Latin America

See the ways in which Shine a light projects promote best practices and internacionalize local solutions.

Research the conditions of life on the street in a dozen countries, and learn from the experiences of activists in those countries.
Find researchers with experise in the fields that interest you.
In collaboration with researchers, Shine a Light publishes "Essays to Understand the Street", a monograph series on the issues that are most important to children living on the street and the organizations that serve them. These essays attempt to bridge the gap between academic researchers and grass-roots social service agencies.

Should you have any further questions, or if we can help your work in any way, we invite you to write SAL Executive Director Kurt G. Shaw.