my street and FAVELA babies...

[Sister Alvear]

VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN - "Nowhere does the gap separating rhetoric and reality emerge more starkly than in the contrast between the guarantees afforded children by the 1988 Constitution and the cold-blooded assassination of boys and girls who live on city streets. If there is anything that most vividly symbolizes the perversity of the contemporary wave of violence in Brazil, it is the way it has victimized children."
There are now seven million abandoned children living on the streets of Brazilian cities. Crimes against these children are characterized by extreme brutality and include torture and dismemberment. Often their bodies are left out on the streets "to serve as example for others."
Those who manage to survive another day are left worrying about where their next meal will come from and finding a safe place to sleep. A social worker has suggested that these children are subject to a process of "natural selection," in which only the strong survive to adulthood and the weak die early from disease and violence.
Street children, utterly deprived of their most basic needs, often become victims of death squads or other forms of violence born of their precarious situation. Since they often resort to theft to survive, some people have paid death squads to "clean up the streets" and get rid of such an "inconvenience."
Unfortunately, many Brazilians believe that the extra-legal killing of street children is a legitimate measure to combat criminality and violence,because they feel revolted with the unrealistic legal "solutions" provided by the state.