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Part Eight: Children

Photos of Latin America's charming children can take your breath away. But behind many of those images are stories that shock and numbers that overwhelm. About 27.4 million children under the age of 14 in Latin America are working. In Venezuela, 32 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day; 41 percent in Peru; 44 percent in Honduras; 45 percent in El Salvador; 52.3 percent in Ecuador. Between 20 percent and 50 percent of the region's children have mothers who have not completed primary school. Such numbers define the problem. The solution comes in a variety of efforts, making small inroads, connecting cause and effect, empowering the people affected. As Jesuit Fr. Jesus Orbegozo said, "The poor aren't the problem. The poor are the solution."

When he was 5, Javier started carrying meals to his father who worked as a miner high in the moon-like Andes mountains. He would often linger, scrabbling through the waste rock outside the mine entrance to see if he could find some ore-bearing chunk that the miners had overlooked.

Within a few years, he was working in earnest, hauling buckets of water and pushing wheelbarrow loads of ore. He didn't start first grade until he was 9, and even then, he went to the mine after school, often staying long into the night.

By the time he was in his teens, he says, he was paying his own way more and more. "My father could only provide food. I had to buy my own clothes," he said. Javier was a statistic--one of some 250,000 children and adolescents working in small mines in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, where workers use only rudimentary tools to chip away at veins of gold.

But life has changed in Santa Filomena, the mining camp where he grew up. The straw mat shacks that are home to about 400 families still blend easily into the dusty, rocky landscape, but a prefabricated high school now stands above the community. And Santa Filomena's youngsters are in the classroom instead of underground. A sign at the mine entrance announces that minors are not allowed inside.

The change came about slowly, through a combined effort by the International Labor Organization and a Peruvian nonprofit group called CooperAccion, with funding from the U.S. Department of Labor. It's a success story. However, millions of kids throughout Latin America continue to work in mines, on the streets and in other places where agility, docility and cheap labor are prized.

Worldwide, according to the International Labor Organization, about 246 million kids under age 14 are working, including about 27.4 million in Latin America. Some of them also attend school; some don't.

"There's child labor in almost all sectors of the economy," said Elena Saura, the International Labor Organization's interim subregional coordinator for South America. "The greatest concentration is in agriculture, but children also work in construction, fireworks manufacturing, mining, brink making, markets, processing coca leaves, harvesting coffee, collecting garbage, domestic labor and the sex trade."

The sight of youngsters--some barely past toddling--selling candy on city street corners is so common that passersby become inured. While on the surface it may appear to be light, harmless work that gives a poor family a much-needed boost, it actually springs from a series of causes, and leads, in turn, to a web of consequences for the child, his or her family and the society in which they live.

The elimination of child labor is equally complicated.

With nearly half the region's population living in poverty, in many families all members are expected to contribute something to put food on the table. Many working children argue that they have a right to work to help their families, and that instead of trying to eliminate child labor; the law should protect them and defend their rights.

Thirteen-year-old Katy said that she started working when she was a toddler, carrying items for her mother, who ran a small dry goods shop in their house. "It was like playing," she said. By age 5, she was helping her mother in the shop. Three years later, she started helping an aunt who sold clothing and fruit. Her aunt now has a clothing shop in a commercial district of Lima, Peru, where Katy helps with sales.

Fiorella, 12, helps her mother in the family shop. Thirteen-year-old Pilar started working at age 6, helping her mother sell candies, soft drinks and ice cream. Karen, 14, began selling frozen fruit treats at age 7. She now helps in the family business, selling audiocassettes and CDs at a market stall.

The girls are all neighborhood leaders of MANTHOC, a Peruvian organization of working children and adolescents that began in the 1960s as an offshoot of a movement of Catholic working people. When asked if they enjoy working, they answer, "Yes," in chorus, without hesitation.

There are similar organizations in other Latin American and Caribbean countries, as well as other parts of the world. The movement is spearheaded by the children themselves, with adults playing a supporting role.

Katy, Karen, Fiorella and Pilar say that working has enabled them to help their families and has taught them responsibility. They insist that they should be allowed to work if they want, as long as the jobs aren't dangerous and they don't neglect their studies.

"The drive to eliminate child labor is based on an idealized concept of childhood that comes from northern industrialized countries, which hold that childhood is incompatible with work and that the only possible relationship is childhood-school-play," said Gladys Vergara, who heads the association that supports the kids who run MANTHOC.

"It's not child labor that needs to be eliminated--what needs to be eliminated is poverty. The problem is a structural one in the entire country, and change is needed not just for them, but for their families. When adults don't have jobs, the kids are the ones most affected. And they don't just sit by and do nothing--they go out and work," she said.

But while poverty is one factor, it alone does not explain the prevalence of child labor.

"Often, the child's income is insignificant," the International Labor Organization's Saura said. "And although the argument of poverty is often used to justify child labor, in families at the same [low] income level, some give priority to child labor, while others give priority to education and protecting their children."

Still, she acknowledges that one important element in reducing child labor is ensuring that adults have decent work. A public service TV ad in Colombia suggests: "Don't hire children. Hire adults and pay them a decent wage."

Physical and emotional hazards

The risks from child labor range from physical stress on still-forming bones when children must carry heavy loads--such as those Javier and his friends in Santa Filomena used to haul--to exposure to extreme temperatures, cuts and burns from working without adequate protective gear, and illnesses from scavenging through trash.

Supporters of the working Children's movement agree that kids shouldn't do dangerous work.

Some kinds of work--street vending, pushing loads of produce in markets or washing car windows, for example--are at least visible, although they are dangerous. Other jobs are virtually invisible, placing children at the mercy of unscrupulous employers who virtually enslave them.

In Paraguay, where the phenomenon known as "criaditas," or "little maids," is widespread, rural families send their small children to live with relatives or godparents in cities. The people who take the children in usually promise that they will raise them as their own and give them an education, but more often than not the children turn into unpaid domestic servants, denied the opportunity to attend school.

Similar practices are common in other countries. Unfamiliar with the city and without friends nearby, the children spend most of their time in the house, which becomes their workplace. Because they receive no wages--the families consider their remuneration to be their food, clothing and perhaps schooling. Some cannot even send a letter home. As a result, many lose touch with their families.

Sexual harassment of teenage domestic workers is common, and rape is not infrequent Frustrated by their bondage, some girls simply leave their employers' homes. Others are thrown out after becoming pregnant. Studies by the International Labor Organization have found that it can be a short step from domestic work to the sex trade.

Working on the street--selling candy or other items or washing car windows --can also lead to prostitution.