1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,400 For the first time ever, most of the world's people are now living in cities, but as their 2 00:00:05,400 --> 00:00:10,640 ranks swell, many are literally falling through the cracks. 3 00:00:10,640 --> 00:00:17,600 Take Mexico City, one of the planet's largest urban areas with some 28 million people. 4 00:00:17,600 --> 00:00:23,360 Hidden in this urban jungle is an underworld of young people and their babies living under 5 00:00:23,360 --> 00:00:27,800 highway overpasses in the sewers underground. 6 00:00:27,800 --> 00:00:32,920 In this episode of 21st Century, we take you into their hidden world. 7 00:00:32,920 --> 00:00:33,920 How do they live? 8 00:00:33,920 --> 00:00:35,960 How do they get there? 9 00:00:35,960 --> 00:00:53,840 And what are their chances of ever being secure away from the city streets? 10 00:00:53,840 --> 00:01:03,280 Light has fallen on Mexico City streets. 11 00:01:03,280 --> 00:01:17,800 Jose and his gang are still at work. 12 00:01:17,800 --> 00:01:25,280 If you work from the early morning until night time, you might earn 200, 300 pesos. 13 00:01:25,280 --> 00:01:31,040 A little more than $20 a day. 14 00:01:31,040 --> 00:01:36,800 Like some 100 million people around the world, Jose is homeless. 15 00:01:36,800 --> 00:01:41,040 I've been out on the streets since I was little, since I was eight years old. 16 00:01:41,040 --> 00:01:45,760 It can be very old. 17 00:01:45,760 --> 00:01:53,760 It's a hand-to-mouth existence, one that turns ugly for thousands of street kids because 18 00:01:53,760 --> 00:01:56,640 of violence and drug abuse. 19 00:01:56,640 --> 00:02:02,040 At 25, Jose is older than all of the others in his gang. 20 00:02:02,040 --> 00:02:04,960 Some are still teenagers. 21 00:02:04,960 --> 00:02:11,960 Then there are toddlers and babies, like Jose's daughter, Dalila. 22 00:02:11,960 --> 00:02:16,720 I don't want her to go through what I've been through. 23 00:02:16,720 --> 00:02:22,520 These kids are bound together by their struggle for survival, by the intoxicating freedom 24 00:02:22,520 --> 00:02:29,000 of a life with their own rules, by the new families they create. 25 00:02:29,000 --> 00:02:33,320 They call themselves the Mushroom Roundabout Gang. 26 00:02:33,320 --> 00:02:38,160 The name is taken from these mushroom-shaped fountains where many of them take shelter 27 00:02:38,160 --> 00:02:41,840 at night. 28 00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:50,160 Each gang member has his or her own story of surviving abuse and abandonment. 29 00:02:50,160 --> 00:02:55,920 Jose was abandoned by his mother. 30 00:02:55,920 --> 00:03:02,040 What's missing for all of us street kids is the love of a father or a mother or a brother 31 00:03:02,040 --> 00:03:06,360 or an uncle. 32 00:03:06,720 --> 00:03:09,480 Esther ran away from home. 33 00:03:09,480 --> 00:03:13,360 My mother will hit me just because she felt like hitting me, because I didn't know how 34 00:03:13,360 --> 00:03:17,400 to wash my clothes. 35 00:03:17,400 --> 00:03:23,480 Her partner Carlos was also abused. 36 00:03:23,480 --> 00:03:27,400 Physical abuse isn't easy for an eight or nine-year-old boy. 37 00:03:27,400 --> 00:03:31,600 I left home because I didn't want that. 38 00:03:31,600 --> 00:03:37,120 Now Carlos is helping Esther raise her two kids. 39 00:03:37,120 --> 00:03:43,240 With more young women and girls on the street than ever before, there are also more babies. 40 00:03:43,240 --> 00:03:48,080 A second generation of street children in the Mexican capital. 41 00:03:48,080 --> 00:03:54,200 A second generation at risk. 42 00:03:54,200 --> 00:03:57,920 There are lots of guys and girls in the streets who do drugs. 43 00:03:57,920 --> 00:03:58,920 I've done crack. 44 00:03:58,920 --> 00:04:00,440 I've done cocaine. 45 00:04:00,440 --> 00:04:05,440 And there it is, Activo. 46 00:04:05,440 --> 00:04:10,520 Activo is a cheap drug of choice for Mexico's street children. 47 00:04:10,520 --> 00:04:13,920 It's a chemical solvent used to clean pipes. 48 00:04:13,920 --> 00:04:20,600 Sniffed regularly, it's a powerful hallucinogenic used to stifle hunger, to forget pain and 49 00:04:20,600 --> 00:04:30,880 to escape reality. 50 00:04:30,880 --> 00:04:36,360 Betty and Edgar have found their escape in the sewer. 51 00:04:36,360 --> 00:04:40,840 They're sniffing solvent for breakfast. 52 00:04:40,840 --> 00:04:48,640 A social worker, David, comes to check on them. 53 00:04:48,640 --> 00:04:52,720 We try to make them aware of the fact that the use of drugs is getting in the way of 54 00:04:52,720 --> 00:05:02,000 their ability to take decisions. 55 00:05:02,000 --> 00:05:06,880 Should they need someone to talk to or urgent help in case of a drug overdose, he leaves 56 00:05:06,880 --> 00:05:10,720 a hotline number. 57 00:05:10,720 --> 00:05:17,960 But right now, they're feeling invincible. 58 00:05:17,960 --> 00:05:31,440 We are warriors, warriors from the mass from round about. 59 00:05:31,440 --> 00:05:38,400 I used to take drugs because I felt alone, because I had nobody to share my life with. 60 00:05:38,400 --> 00:05:41,520 But now, Jose has found someone to share his life with. 61 00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:45,800 Her name is Irma, baby Dalila's mother. 62 00:05:45,800 --> 00:05:50,640 They've moved from sharing cramped quarters with six others to living inside their own 63 00:05:50,640 --> 00:05:59,640 abandoned fountain. 64 00:05:59,640 --> 00:06:00,640 She got pregnant. 65 00:06:00,640 --> 00:06:04,600 I told her, you've got to keep the habit, you're activo. 66 00:06:04,600 --> 00:06:12,720 And I've got to keep my habit for the baby you are carrying inside you. 67 00:06:12,720 --> 00:06:17,600 So far, Jose has managed to stay drug free. 68 00:06:17,600 --> 00:06:18,600 It's not easy to quit. 69 00:06:18,600 --> 00:06:21,760 You feel really strange and depressed. 70 00:06:21,760 --> 00:06:37,000 You start sweating and feel like everything is closing in on you. 71 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:39,120 The street is horrible. 72 00:06:39,120 --> 00:06:49,800 I saw my friends dying of drug overdose, and I couldn't help them. 73 00:06:49,800 --> 00:06:54,080 Abandoned by her family, Anayeli, now 17, started living on the streets when she was 74 00:06:54,080 --> 00:07:02,240 six years old to escape abusive foster parents. 75 00:07:02,240 --> 00:07:06,320 It still hurts, knowing that I am alone in the world. 76 00:07:06,320 --> 00:07:11,160 It's hard for me. 77 00:07:11,160 --> 00:07:15,880 The pain is still there, but at least Anayeli has broken her addiction to street life. 78 00:07:15,880 --> 00:07:20,600 She's now living in a shelter together with dozens of other girls who have been abused 79 00:07:20,600 --> 00:07:23,600 or abandoned. 80 00:07:23,600 --> 00:07:26,760 Maria Ma Estrada is the shelter's director. 81 00:07:26,760 --> 00:07:34,640 You have to consider that they've been raped, fucked by their uncles. 82 00:07:34,960 --> 00:07:39,960 Sometimes they come from a whole family of drug traffickers. 83 00:07:39,960 --> 00:07:43,880 But here they see there are other options in life. 84 00:07:43,880 --> 00:07:45,640 Here Anayeli is able to study. 85 00:07:45,640 --> 00:07:49,720 She's even earned a scholarship to finish high school at one of Mexico's oldest and 86 00:07:49,720 --> 00:07:56,360 most prestigious schools. 87 00:07:56,360 --> 00:07:59,160 But opportunities like this are very rare. 88 00:07:59,160 --> 00:08:04,600 There are only about 100 girls in Anayeli's shelter. 89 00:08:04,600 --> 00:08:11,280 Compared to an estimated 10,000 children living on the streets of Mexico. 90 00:08:11,280 --> 00:08:16,920 Many more, if you count people like Jose, no longer a child, but still homeless. 91 00:08:16,920 --> 00:08:24,080 If a kid has been on the street for a long time, it's very difficult that they will follow 92 00:08:24,080 --> 00:08:25,080 rules. 93 00:08:25,080 --> 00:08:31,080 They are used to doing whatever, so it's hard for them. 94 00:08:31,080 --> 00:08:37,600 These kids are tough cases. 95 00:08:37,600 --> 00:08:42,880 As tough as they may be, the stereotype of street kids as hardened criminals is as inaccurate 96 00:08:42,880 --> 00:08:47,240 as the idea that they are completely helpless. 97 00:08:47,240 --> 00:08:48,240 They're smart. 98 00:08:48,240 --> 00:08:50,440 They know how to get by. 99 00:08:50,440 --> 00:08:55,320 They can go to one shelter for breakfast and another one for lunch. 100 00:08:55,320 --> 00:09:01,240 Antonio Zirion, an anthropologist who focuses on marginalized groups in Mexico, believes 101 00:09:01,240 --> 00:09:09,040 the number of young people living in the streets is on the rise. 102 00:09:09,040 --> 00:09:19,320 Despite aid programs that deliver food, clothing and shelter, as well as practical advice. 103 00:09:19,320 --> 00:09:30,680 What's needed are training programs, guaranteed jobs, incentives so that they know that their 104 00:09:30,680 --> 00:09:41,000 efforts will be rewarded. 105 00:09:41,000 --> 00:09:45,560 It's the kind of support Jose and Irma could use. 106 00:09:45,560 --> 00:09:54,800 They're working hard, trying to save some of their money. 107 00:09:54,800 --> 00:10:01,640 And once a week, on Saturdays, Jose and Irma collect 100 pesos, about $10, so that they 108 00:10:01,640 --> 00:10:03,840 can spend the night in a cheap hotel. 109 00:10:03,840 --> 00:10:27,120 Once a week, they get a taste of what it's like to sleep in a proper bed, to bathe and 110 00:10:27,120 --> 00:10:45,440 to watch television. 111 00:10:45,440 --> 00:10:57,280 These are the first steps to separating from life on the street. 112 00:10:57,280 --> 00:11:02,600 But without much of an education, Jose wonders how he will get a steady job to support his 113 00:11:02,600 --> 00:11:09,200 family off the streets and out of danger. 114 00:11:09,200 --> 00:11:15,240 For social workers in large urban areas like Mexico City, following up on individual cases 115 00:11:15,240 --> 00:11:21,440 week after week, month after month is extremely difficult. 116 00:11:21,440 --> 00:11:26,760 On the street, things change every day. 117 00:11:26,760 --> 00:11:32,240 People appear, then disappear. 118 00:11:32,240 --> 00:11:37,320 We went back to visit the members of the Mushroom Roundabout gang a few weeks after our first 119 00:11:37,320 --> 00:11:40,560 visit. 120 00:11:40,560 --> 00:11:44,000 One had been run over by a truck. 121 00:11:44,000 --> 00:11:48,680 Another spent time in jail. 122 00:11:48,680 --> 00:11:55,920 Esther and Carlos with their two children moved to a shelter for the winter. 123 00:11:55,920 --> 00:12:02,120 Betty and Edgar are still on drugs and are still living in the sewer. 124 00:12:02,120 --> 00:12:08,200 Jose is trying to keep his young family together, living in the street and studying whenever 125 00:12:08,200 --> 00:12:09,640 he can. 126 00:12:09,640 --> 00:12:13,720 He's determined to finish the eighth grade. 127 00:12:13,720 --> 00:12:16,840 I am finishing one book so I can register for the test. 128 00:12:16,840 --> 00:12:21,040 That is why I am working really hard. 129 00:12:21,040 --> 00:12:26,000 But for Jose and thousands like him, whose childhood has been lost to violence, abuse 130 00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:32,760 and homelessness, the tentative journey back into the fold of society is daunting. 131 00:12:32,760 --> 00:12:39,480 They know the odds are against them. 132 00:12:39,480 --> 00:12:47,560 I need a place to live, but that is not easy because I need a job first, then rent a room 133 00:12:47,600 --> 00:12:54,600 and finally put my family there. 134 00:12:56,600 --> 00:13:01,600 At times I wish I could speak with my mother or with a father who would help me to do well, 135 00:13:01,600 --> 00:13:07,360 but it is impossible. 136 00:13:07,360 --> 00:13:12,680 And meanwhile, another generation of children in large cities around the world are growing 137 00:13:12,680 --> 00:13:19,720 up on the streets, under bridges, out of sight, underground.