The Parallel Universe (Niños De Rua)

Without a family they were abandoned by or they abandoned voluntarly, street children, 100 million all over the world, live in a universe of their own with their principles and rules and above all they haven’t any form of economic exchange with the society that produced them and then threw away like rubbish.

Maybe for the fact they have no value as goods that, in Brazil, where they are called ninos de rua, they are systematically eliminated. From 1983 to 1995, 6033 ninos de rua have been killed by vigilantes organized in death squadrons. To be executed it’s sufficient not to have paid the fare of the bus linking the suburbs of Belford Roxso and Duque de Caxias.

Only 8 persons were condemned for all those crimes, this means that when child product refuses to be considered like that, society, which is based on economy, feels to be menaced and reacts with homicidal aggressiveness

It’s in Bucarest nevertheless the phenomenon of street boys assumes the features of a real parallel universe. Since they can’t materially live in the street, owing to the very cold climate which would kill them at the first winter night spent in the open, these boys, everybody has abandoned, have created a world of their own taking shelter underground. The pipes of the hot water running underground provide a comfortable climate which lets them survive in the cold nights of the north winter and besides the isolation, also physical, from the society they keep away from, protects them from undesirable aggressivenesses.

Late in the morning the sewer boys in Bucarest come out of the manholes[1] to get, somehow, just what they need to survive one day more.

A strange solidarity links the boys one another, but what distinguishes them from all the other product children is the absolute refusal to enter any form of economic relation with the society they have left[2]

The phenomenon of the ninos de rua is spreading about also in Italy and already in 1997 there were some hundreds of them in the city of Bologna.

[1] Above all the ones around the Gare du Nord.

[2] ” Many girls as old as I am ” – Mia of nineteen years of age says to a journalist of the Corriere della Sera who went down inside the sewers to interview those boys – “give themselves. Also my sister is a prostitute. She gives herself for next to nothing if you want to have fun…… I also could do the same because I’m not so unattractive, but I don’t feel like, the sewers where I live are cleaner than brothels. I give my cunt to those I like, when I want to….”.