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Urban underground: Mexico City Street Kids
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For the first time ever most of the world's people are now living in cities, but as the ranks of the world’s cities swell many are literally falling through the cracks. In Mexico City, one of the planet’s largest urban areas, there are thousands of young people living in gangs, beneath highway overpasses or hidden in makeshift subterranean shelters. This is the story of one group, the "Mushroom Roundabout Gang", and of their struggle for survival in the face of parental abuse, violence, and drugs.
For the first time ever, most of the world's people are now living in cities, but as their
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ranks swell, many are literally falling through the cracks.
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Take Mexico City, one of the planet's largest urban areas with some 28 million people.
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Hidden in this urban jungle is an underworld of young people and their babies living under
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highway overpasses in the sewers underground.
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In this episode of 21st Century, we take you into their hidden world.
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How do they live?
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How do they get there?
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And what are their chances of ever being secure away from the city streets?
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Light has fallen on Mexico City streets.
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Jose and his gang are still at work.
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If you work from the early morning until night time, you might earn 200, 300 pesos.
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A little more than $20 a day.
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Like some 100 million people around the world, Jose is homeless.
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I've been out on the streets since I was little, since I was eight years old.
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It can be very old.
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It's a hand-to-mouth existence, one that turns ugly for thousands of street kids because
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of violence and drug abuse.
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At 25, Jose is older than all of the others in his gang.
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Some are still teenagers.
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Then there are toddlers and babies, like Jose's daughter, Dalila.
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I don't want her to go through what I've been through.
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These kids are bound together by their struggle for survival, by the intoxicating freedom
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of a life with their own rules, by the new families they create.
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They call themselves the Mushroom Roundabout Gang.
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The name is taken from these mushroom-shaped fountains where many of them take shelter
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at night.
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Each gang member has his or her own story of surviving abuse and abandonment.
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Jose was abandoned by his mother.
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What's missing for all of us street kids is the love of a father or a mother or a brother
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or an uncle.
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Esther ran away from home.
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My mother will hit me just because she felt like hitting me, because I didn't know how
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to wash my clothes.
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Her partner Carlos was also abused.
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Physical abuse isn't easy for an eight or nine-year-old boy.
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I left home because I didn't want that.
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Now Carlos is helping Esther raise her two kids.
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With more young women and girls on the street than ever before, there are also more babies.
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A second generation of street children in the Mexican capital.
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A second generation at risk.
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There are lots of guys and girls in the streets who do drugs.
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I've done crack.
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I've done cocaine.
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And there it is, Activo.
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Activo is a cheap drug of choice for Mexico's street children.
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It's a chemical solvent used to clean pipes.
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Sniffed regularly, it's a powerful hallucinogenic used to stifle hunger, to forget pain and
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to escape reality.
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Betty and Edgar have found their escape in the sewer.
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They're sniffing solvent for breakfast.
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A social worker, David, comes to check on them.
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We try to make them aware of the fact that the use of drugs is getting in the way of
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their ability to take decisions.
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Should they need someone to talk to or urgent help in case of a drug overdose, he leaves
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a hotline number.
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But right now, they're feeling invincible.
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We are warriors, warriors from the mass from round about.
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I used to take drugs because I felt alone, because I had nobody to share my life with.
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But now, Jose has found someone to share his life with.
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Her name is Irma, baby Dalila's mother.
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They've moved from sharing cramped quarters with six others to living inside their own
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abandoned fountain.
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She got pregnant.
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I told her, you've got to keep the habit, you're activo.
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And I've got to keep my habit for the baby you are carrying inside you.
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So far, Jose has managed to stay drug free.
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It's not easy to quit.
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You feel really strange and depressed.
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You start sweating and feel like everything is closing in on you.
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The street is horrible.
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I saw my friends dying of drug overdose, and I couldn't help them.
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Abandoned by her family, Anayeli, now 17, started living on the streets when she was
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six years old to escape abusive foster parents.
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It still hurts, knowing that I am alone in the world.
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It's hard for me.
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The pain is still there, but at least Anayeli has broken her addiction to street life.
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She's now living in a shelter together with dozens of other girls who have been abused
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or abandoned.
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Maria Ma Estrada is the shelter's director.
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You have to consider that they've been raped, fucked by their uncles.
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Sometimes they come from a whole family of drug traffickers.
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But here they see there are other options in life.
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Here Anayeli is able to study.
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She's even earned a scholarship to finish high school at one of Mexico's oldest and
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most prestigious schools.
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But opportunities like this are very rare.
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There are only about 100 girls in Anayeli's shelter.
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Compared to an estimated 10,000 children living on the streets of Mexico.
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Many more, if you count people like Jose, no longer a child, but still homeless.
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If a kid has been on the street for a long time, it's very difficult that they will follow
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rules.
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They are used to doing whatever, so it's hard for them.
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These kids are tough cases.
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As tough as they may be, the stereotype of street kids as hardened criminals is as inaccurate
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as the idea that they are completely helpless.
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They're smart.
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They know how to get by.
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They can go to one shelter for breakfast and another one for lunch.
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Antonio Zirion, an anthropologist who focuses on marginalized groups in Mexico, believes
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the number of young people living in the streets is on the rise.
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Despite aid programs that deliver food, clothing and shelter, as well as practical advice.
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What's needed are training programs, guaranteed jobs, incentives so that they know that their
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efforts will be rewarded.
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It's the kind of support Jose and Irma could use.
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They're working hard, trying to save some of their money.
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And once a week, on Saturdays, Jose and Irma collect 100 pesos, about $10, so that they
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can spend the night in a cheap hotel.
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Once a week, they get a taste of what it's like to sleep in a proper bed, to bathe and
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to watch television.
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These are the first steps to separating from life on the street.
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But without much of an education, Jose wonders how he will get a steady job to support his
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family off the streets and out of danger.
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For social workers in large urban areas like Mexico City, following up on individual cases
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week after week, month after month is extremely difficult.
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On the street, things change every day.
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People appear, then disappear.
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We went back to visit the members of the Mushroom Roundabout gang a few weeks after our first
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visit.
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One had been run over by a truck.
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Another spent time in jail.
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Esther and Carlos with their two children moved to a shelter for the winter.
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Betty and Edgar are still on drugs and are still living in the sewer.
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Jose is trying to keep his young family together, living in the street and studying whenever
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he can.
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He's determined to finish the eighth grade.
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I am finishing one book so I can register for the test.
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That is why I am working really hard.
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But for Jose and thousands like him, whose childhood has been lost to violence, abuse
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and homelessness, the tentative journey back into the fold of society is daunting.
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They know the odds are against them.
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I need a place to live, but that is not easy because I need a job first, then rent a room
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and finally put my family there.
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At times I wish I could speak with my mother or with a father who would help me to do well,
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but it is impossible.
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And meanwhile, another generation of children in large cities around the world are growing
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up on the streets, under bridges, out of sight, underground.
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- Idioma/s:
- Niveles educativos:
- ▼ Mostrar / ocultar niveles
- Nivel Intermedio
- Autor/es:
- United Nations (Naciones Unidas)
- Subido por:
- EducaMadrid
- Licencia:
- Reconocimiento - No comercial - Sin obra derivada
- Visualizaciones:
- 1923
- Fecha:
- 26 de junio de 2007 - 17:00
- Visibilidad:
- Público
- Enlace Relacionado:
- 21st Century Television Series
- Duración:
- 13′ 28″
- Relación de aspecto:
- 4:3 Hasta 2009 fue el estándar utilizado en la televisión PAL; muchas pantallas de ordenador y televisores usan este estándar, erróneamente llamado cuadrado, cuando en la realidad es rectangular o wide.
- Resolución:
- 320x240 píxeles
- Tamaño:
- 75.41 MBytes
