Aline Deschamps

Street children is a worldwide phenomenon that may climax in Cochabamba. A city with a dancing tone, contrasting with its status of national poorest region - in a Bolivia itself on the fringe of development. Children ? When their faces share the wrinkles of worried adults. When their voice tone sound so low and grievous, that silence speaks for them.
A stolen childhood.
Most of them are mentally and sexually abused during their first years, in their household, by their own family. They escape into the street. There, they encounter their peers, their new and only siblings. Welcome to a new family.
First joys rapidly vanish. From sleeping on top of each other, stealing food together to sharing tricks, drugs, bodies, scarifications and pain. The cliffa - the glue they are sniffing, is an escape to their daily life and a slow killer for their spinal cord. After a few years, none of them can walk properly. Death becomes a constant reality.

At that point, the street stops being a playground and turns into a dead- end. They remain despised by the community, rejected by the institutions and marginalized by the rest of society.

Prostitution is a reality on how girls survive.

Sexual work represents a reality for 40% of street teenagers. 44% of the girls had been raped before, at an average age of 13 years and 8 months.
Rosemarie, along with her neighbors of the Plaza, offers her body usually for taxi drivers for a mere 30 Bolivianos ( about 4 dollars)
"If you take the two of us, we’ll make a deal for 50".

The consequences are tragic: exploitation, sexual abuse, spread of HIV and other STDs, and a vicious circle of a new generation of street children

A sort of glue which acts as a very addictive drug for street kids, making them high, cutting their appetite, and destroying their nervous system.

11 am, under the rain and a litre of 90 degree alcohol in one hand. The road towards recklessness begins.

Despite their tights, tensions caused by psychosis eventually explode.

Often in times of drunkenness, fights reach a level of violence that leaves a public as accustomed as passive.

Eating in a local restaurant is a rare priviledge for these children. And they're often despized and feared by the custommers surrounding them.

Ricardo. After he got beaten up by the local police.

Inside the house of a woman who raise children in order to later put them on the street and use them as a source of personal income.

Nightime is their favourite time. No one to judge, yell at them, or chase them. Surrounded by dogs, they pick up plastic bottles to recycle, earning a few cents a night.