Child Exploitation and Prostitution

Children are the cheapest labor around. These homeless children live very near the central market in the city of San Salvador (the capital city of El Salvador), specifically in different urban parks, such as Plaza del Trovador, San José and Hula Hula and on the Celis Street. The merchants abuse of the fact that these children are malnourished, are hungry and anxious to get their hands on more drugs, to exploit them. They will be obliged to carry large crates, bags full of trash, or sweep the floors in exchange for some money. Sometimes, these children even tell jokes or play entertaining games inside buses, just to receive a few coins in return for their services.

Once in a while they also become involved in petty criminal actions. They might subtly slip their hands inside people’s pockets or at the market steal some food. Consequently, when caught they are seriously punished by the authorities, sometimes even causing the death of one of these minors. These children do not have any sort of legal defense they can recur to.

Possibly the most denigrating type of work they incur into, particularly the little girls, is to have to offer their services as prostitutes. When night falls, they will go to specific areas, where they are practically raped; they will do this just to fill their bottles of glue and hope their suffering will go away.
The poorly paid jobs at the market, as well as entertaining passengers on buses, theft and prostitution are the sort of things that give these children some income. Very humiliating tasks with little income, which in the majority of cases, will be invested in drugs.