Some of the Proniño people have followed Luis during two weeks with a camera. Here are a few of Luis’s statements:
They came one time, and did not want to take me. My family does not want me. I do not have a mother. I do not have a father. I have a little sister.
My mother died. I do not know my father. My grandfather and grandmother – they died.
I was five years old when I first started living in the street, now I am sixteen. I have been suffering in the streets, getting beaten up by people for so many years. In the past, the police have beaten me with clubs. Sometimes children disappear from the street. What happens to them is – they are beaten and raped, and they show them bad things. It is not right, it is just not right. They kill them and they put them in a bag, or they burn them.
I sleep on cardboard in front of an office building in the downtown, or at Los Pasos in front of Punta Mesapa. Those places. And also in the park. It scared me – the first time I slept on the street.
It makes me cry when people ask about my mom – if she is alive or not. When they say, “Don’t you have a mom?” Or when they treat me bad – when I ask for something – some money – and they tell me to go ask my mom – and it makes me remember that I do not have one. And then I begin to cry because they curse at me and talk about my mother.
I tried to kill myself because I do not have a mother or a father. I started crying and I took a glass and cut myself here – across the neck. I was upset with life – no mother, no father, no grandparents – or anyone.
I first started using resistol (glue) when some guys threatened me with a knife. I did not want to. They told me I had to. I took four puffs and then I got crazy and then I fainted. And ever since that I have been using glue.
They (other street children) died using the glue. I would see them and think they were dead. I would go up to them and poke them with my finger – but they were hard and stiff because they were dead – they died from too much glue.
Some people are afraid to touch me because they know I am dirty and from the street, but at Proniño they are not afraid to touch me, they know that I am human just like they are.
