who we are - photo-report

Guatemala

Guatemala is the country of Centre America where the phenomenon of street youngsters, with which we are engaged, was born.

In the following we present, in synthesis, the situation of:

• Guatemala

The street youngsters

The street girls and boys live in precarious conditions, in groups in continuous movement, where they are often defeated. Sometimes they are violated, murdered or destroyed little by little by the solvent that they inhale all day long to forget hunger, cold, humiliations, fear.

But at the same time these yougsters,  not subdued, experience together with their companions the values of solidarty and friendship and share with them the hope of a better life. They find this hope in themselves, in their intense and obstinate will of living, in their rebellion and in their whish, sometimes obscure, of a world in which persons are more considered and in which there are more solidarity and friendship.

In the following the aspects of their street life are detailed:

• the street

• the signs

The street youngsters immensely need to be approched, regarded, recognised as people and loved; they ask also to be helped to realize their dreams.

Usually they refuse to enter an institution which deprives them of their freedom and prevents them from deciding about their life. Moreover the institution submits them to the adults, separates them from their boy friend, their girl friend, their children.

They can recognize themselves only in a project built by themselves,  so the dream was born, together with them, of a self-operated movement by the street children, to improve their life conditions and defend their rights.

The MOJOCA (MOvimiento de los JÓvenes de la CAlle)