De symbolische constructie van straatkinderen: Jongens en meisjes van Plaza Garibaldi (Mexico-Stad)

This article takes the reader to Plaza Garibaldi, a famous square in Mexico City, where many poor and street poor dwell. The ethnographic material was gathered by extensive field work conducted from 1989 through 1996. It focuses on, and provides a contextfor, banda or street poor youngsters employing ‘survival’ activities (such as begging, prostitution, petty delinquency and hustling, and also legal pursuits). A highly differentiated reality turns out to lurk behind the concept of ‘street children’. On Plaza Garibaldi alone, more than 50 categories of poor children can be distinguished, 15 of which are discussed in more detail. The boundaries between and within the categories are defined by diverging life situations and lifestyles, while the (street) poor themselves actively identify and reinforce the differences, expressing them through finely tuned distinctions.
The theoretical insight grasped from the material is that the phenomenon of street children can be understood as ‘ordered chaos’. This approach leaves room for power dimensions. Street children as well as many other agents try to impose their order on the youngsters’ life situations, which may therefore be subject to frequent and rapid changes. Street children also constitute a symbolically constructed bedlam. The meanings of ‘street children’ are not only shaped by the media or by charity organizations; neither are they only deconstructed by social scientists. Poor and street poor, adults as well as children, appropriate the concept too, and adhere their own meanings to it. In this orchestrated cacophony, chaotic and paradoxical noise interferes: shifting meanings, blurring and manipulated boundaries, evil that counts as good, and the difference of indifference.