Urban violence: street children

“I feel this horrible depression when I see that
other people want to help me. I start thinking about
a happy, close family that I don’t have… If my own
family don’t love and support me, why should anyone
else care? That’s what depresses me the most .”

Flor Salas is 16 and has been living on the streets of downtown Mexico City since she was 10. Her home is on a corner sidewalk of a major street, and consists of a small sofa, two planks and a sheet of plastic.
She sleeps inside with six other children; two more children sleep on mattresses outside.
Violence has followed Flor throughout her short life – first within her family and then on the streets. Two years ago, she had a violent fight with a girl who was seeing her boyfriend. Flor was two months pregnant at the time, and lost her baby. Her almost perpetual state of sadness is deepened by the complete indifference of her family. “They don’t even know if I’m dead or alive,” she says.
Approximately 15,000 children live and work on the streets of the Federal District of Mexico City, according to a national government study. Another study carried out by UNICEF and the municipal government showed a 20 percent increase in street children between 1992 and 1995 – an annual growth rate of 6.6 percent Children can be seen at ‘work’ every hour of the day and night. In the city’s subway stations, they sing, beg and shine shoes for coins. They sleep in the passageways covered with newspapers, dazed and sluggish after inhaling
‘mona’3 to ward off hunger and fatigue.
At night, crowds of boys and girls stand on the corner of Metro Hidalgo and Alameda waiting to sell themselves to any and all customers. In the old part of town, at Candelaria and La Merced, the fresh faces of 11 - to 14 yearold girls are mingled with those of aging and haggard sex workers.
Most street children have fled abuse, desperate poverty and neglect within their own families. Like Flor, they have desperately and naively hoped to find sanctuary and freedom outside their homes, only to encounter rejection, exploitation and violence.