Latin America: half a million children among the trash

Otilia from 4 years old, accompanied to all her siblings and her mother to dig through the trash, they went from early morning until nightfall removed all visibility.

They lived in a makeshift tent made ​​of cardboard, wood and zinc tables, a few meters from the fence already fall of one of the sides of the main garbage dump. To feed during the day, they “fished” the bags of leftover food that came from the fast food outlets in the town. Dozens of children were the same as dogs and vultures that live there. In this environment Otilia left her childhood, where also dies at the age of 13 years of an infection that advanced with the passage of weeks and was never taken care. From the city, she only knew the dumpster.

In Latin America just like Otilia about 500 thousand children leave their childhood and adolescence in landfills. The Subcontinent with its 11 thousand municipalities home to some 12,000 public landfills, which have become lawless areas controlled by the groups that sell these resources. In landfills child exploitation is more than evident. Local governments, do not ignore this reality but do little or nothing to stop it. For them it is a problem of many, but not the priority. Encourage the child labor is one of the most vile, cruel and cowardly those who profess the human subjugation. Manipulating supposed feelings of affection, protection, paternalism or maternalism with the hidden purpose of profit is unacceptable. For these modern slavery, human life becomes simply a use value.

There are many ethical questions that territorially require urgent answers : Can Latin America grow as a subcontinent ignoring the fact that in its 11 thousand municipalities is practiced child slavery?. Where are those subcontinental laws that decidedly curb those who deliberately stealing childhood and adolescence to half a million children?. If these future castrating act in the present with impunity against those who should be part of the next generation of leaders, who can be expected to account for the life of non-human?

Are there many social policies to protect the children?. What a caring society we profess as there may be children with future vs. children without the right to life?. Can we ignore that we have thousands of children digging in the trash on the street or into the sewers, working in mines or dedicated to beg?. It is time that the elephants of the subcontinental politics, stop acting like an ostrich and pull out the head from the small hole where they have and look at their sides.

By Lenin Cardozo / Mariana Jaramillo | ANCA24