CHILDREN IN THE BIG CITY

As with most of the third world nations the capitals of these countries are usually the center for all financial, commercial, educational and religious systems. This is also the case with Lima, a city surrounded by belts of shantytowns that through the years have become more of a bottleneck that is strangling the big city in its quest for survival.

More and more the peasants from the Andes, Indians from the jungle and families from different ethnic groups come to the big city in hopes to find better jobs, better education in order to provide for their families.

Within these migrations into the big city the children find themselves not only displaced without their natural environments, but totally threaten by a chaotic environment that obliges them to learn the laws of survival by putting them to work the streets as early as 5 years old. Their world is shattered, their innocence gone while their parents fight to survive in an overcrowded city that has no mercy for illiterate individuals, for the farmer, or for the peasant. Work becomes very difficult for the parents and they do anything for little money in order to provide food and shelter. In many cases the most important need to be provided: a loving environment for the children is missing.

These children become the children of the streets and end working instead of the parents selling candy, news papers, washing car windows at stop lights, or simply begging for some money to bring home. As a result they become street smart pressured by the need for survival.

When you look at their faces you feel their innocence and childhood no longer lives within them. No more magical moments walking through the mountains or the jungle surrounded by birds and animals.

The shantytowns that surrounded Lima in the 1970’s are no longer belts of poor people looking for a better life, they are cities inside cities bigger than Lima filled with desperate and hungry people, where the children are the most vulnerable.

It is true that Peru’s GPI rose in the last two years but it didn’t grow enough to create the necessary jobs to provide for the poor. Peru’s policies to decentralize the country into regions have not been effective at all. Intentions have been good but without the financial support little can be done. Cusco is the number one state responsible for generating most of the tourism income for Peru. The sad part is that Cusco only gets 9% back, not enough to support the region.