A young man, 18, performing with broken glass in the streets of Mexico City
In Mexico City, street children do what they can to make sure they are fed. There are various avenues by which they obtain money. Most people expect to see children walking the streets selling newspapers, fruit, or gum, as that is what children have been doing for more than 100 years, and there are plenty who do it to this day. They often also perform in some way, such as blowing a flute or beating a drum in traditional clothing. Some children, teenagers in particular, resort to self-inflicted pain in order to evoke sympathy from passersby, whether they be tourists or upper-class Mexicans. They do this because they learn that, as they grow up, they cannot profit as much off of their childhood innocence and cuteness which has enabled them to get money solely by begging. Younger children can often elicit the giving side of passersby as they look abandoned and helpless, but as they grow older and approach adulthood, they are expected to be in school or the in workforce of the formal economy.
For a lot of these older street children, though not all, they have been in the streets for as long as they can remember, and they have relied on their cuteness to acquire money for food, but as they age past what I call the cap of cuteness, or the point at which their income diminishes and they need a new way that is more age-compatible to get people to give to them, they turn toward dangerous activities in hopes of being infantilized and seen as a suffering stranger in need of protection. This is occasionally expressed by teenage boys throwing down a tarp filled with broken glass on the ground in the streets or in the Mexico City metro to writhe around on and cut up their backs, which symbolizes the systemic violence of homelessness shattering their childhood, as well as the desperation to hold onto the pity they received before they had to resort to this method.
The Value of Childhood Innocence
Much like the younger-looking children, the ones who are perceived as older have to strike that nerve in onlookers that makes them feel like they need to save the children. A younger child is much easier to imagine as helpless than one who is old enough to work in accordance with child labor regulations in Mexico. By a certain point, the child is thought to be able to provide for itself, but as a young boy willingly scratches some nasty scars on his back and draws some blood, the helplessness comes back into the framing by showing their desperation and need. They are so desperate for the means of survival that they put their own bodies in harm’s way to obtain what they need. They have lost the means by which they can subtly ask people for help by looking abandoned and helpless in the streets, and have developed a method of getting money that exposes the harsh realities of living in the streets to people who have not experienced such conditions.
Something important demonstrated by the change in attitudes toward impoverished children based on their age, or the cap on cuteness, is that different stages of childhood are valued differently by the public. People see younger children as needing to have a ‘real’ childhood and to be economically useless (i.e. being protected by parents or guardian, being provided for, not having to work) [1]. This changes as the child grows into the age at which it is legal to work, and starts to be seen as being more capable of economic productivity. We see this change in the United States as well, as some children start to get chores around the house and they receive an allowance from their parents.
However, in the case of street children, they have neither the ability to be economically useless, nor the allowances from their parents, so in this context it is more about how much people are willing to give to younger children as opposed to older children. Younger children are more likely to receive money because they are thought of as needing to be protected, whereas older children are seen as more capable of protecting themselves. They turn to dangerous activities such as dancing on glass in order to damage themselves and show to others that they need protection as well. They suffer the pains of poverty daily, so they add some extra physical pain with the glass in order to make their damage more obvious to people. It shows a failure to protect and even the perpetuated abuse of these children,[2] which is why it can evoke sympathy, if not horror, and cause people to give them money.
Rat Children
Begging is aimed at those with disposable income, such as tourists or upper-class Mexicans in the city, who are always in close proximity to those who are living in the streets. These people see kids on the streets and view them as “rat children” because they are stuck living in the streets or the sewers and do not fit with their expectations of what a child should be. These children end up in this position for various reasons, including abandonment, running away from abusive family, running into a setback in the process of immigration, and becoming orphaned. Many children on the streets turn to substance abuse in order to cope with the horrifying conditions they live under and the things they have to do to survive. It is frowned upon by those who do not understand their situations, but sniffing inhalants like glue is a sizeable part of street child culture. It works as a sort of cooperative mechanism, as children work together to obtain the substances, they learn about them from the more experienced street children and the use is even required as a stepping stone in order to be accepted by some groups.[3] Groups like this are useful because it provides them with a solidarity network that helps them get what they need, even beyond the inhalants. This sort of camaraderie becomes a necessity for some because it is so difficult for them to get food and deal with the solitude that is homelessness.
The reduction of these children to being “rats” is really appalling as they, by no fault of their own, have been bestialized solely because of their circumstances. They grow into a context that is considered more “adult” when they start having to fend for themselves, and can no longer be considered children. However, then they are automatically stripped of their humanity for what they do to survive, be it prostitution, drug dealing, or performing. They are perceived as invasive pests to the way of life of the middle-class and upper-class Mexicans in the city for the homeless presence in their neighborhoods. They sometimes have to resort to prostitution or drug dealing to acquire money, which presents to the wealthier folks as a significant rise in criminal activity in their communities. While this does seem to be the case, there is another force at play here, which is the gentrifying presence of wealthier people driving costs up and encouraging efforts to push the homeless out and into worse situations than they were in previously.
Symbolism of Broken Glass
Something else that is signified by the broken glass is the violence some of these children have faced in their families, whether it is structural violence, like the conditions that have made them impoverished, or abusive family members. The glass represents a resignation to suffering as a result of a broken family. This suffering is something that they can use for money, as they are in the position of what Leslie Butt calls the “suffering stranger,” a trope that is used by numerous international aid organizations to get onlookers to be stricken with emotions and give money to alleviate the suffering of the subject of the images.[4] These are older children who are expected by some factions of society, who are not very sympathetic to their struggles (e.g. upper-class Mexicans living in the same area), to be a bit more independent, experienced, and prepared to get by in the city, however, many have not received education as they have spent much of their lives in the streets, so concerned with having basic needs met in the short-term that the long-term benefits of going to school are not at the forefront of their minds. They have often grown so accustomed to street performing and know that it does work to fill their stomachs sometimes, that even as their incomes decrease with age, they only really know one way of life – that of performing in the streets for survival. If something is successful in tugging at the heartstrings of people who have some cash to spare, they will stick to it until it stops working and adapt as needed, and that is what they have done with the broken glass technique.
[1] Viviana Zelizer, "From Useful to Useless and Back to Useful? Emerging Patterns in the Valuation of Children,” Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994 [1985]): 208-228.
[2] Patricia Holland, “Crybabies and Damaged Children,” Picturing Childhood: the Myth of the Child in Popular Imagery (London: I.B. Tauris, 2004): 143-177.
[3] R. Gigengack, "The chemo and the mona: Inhalants, devotion and street youth in Mexico City," International Journal of Drug Policy 25, no. 1 (2014): 61-70. [4] Leslie Butt, “The Suffering Stranger: Medical Anthropology and International Morality,” Medical Anthropology: Cross Cultural Studies in Health and Illness 21:1 (2002): 1-24.