"Missus, I saw you first! Why you not buy from me?”
She was about 11, selling wares on the street. I had just bought some llama finger puppets—from a different girl.
She tugged my sleeve.
“It’s not fair, Missus,” she wailed. “It’s not fair.”
Cuzco,
Peru, boasts an elegant main square, picturesque cobblestone streets
and a thriving tourist trade. But children selling trinkets are a stark
reminder that not everyone is prospering. Instead of going to school or
playing with friends, they try to earn enough soles for an evening meal.
About
3,000 of Cuzco’s children are considered at risk. Some are easy to
spot, like the girls selling puppets. Harder to see are the ones farmed
out to other families as domestic workers. “Because they are invisible,
they are exploited, mistreated and abused,” Clara Silva says.
Silva
coordinates Huch’uy Runa, a holistic program that cares for 200 of
Cuzco’s at-risk children. “These children suffer moral and material
abandonment,” she says. “Some are orphans, and some come from families
that have been destroyed. Many are abandoned and live alone on the
street—the hardest thing they can suffer.”
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© 2013 Augsburg Fortress, Publishers
