Exploitation Awaits Migrant Children on Mexico's Southern Border Tracy Wilkinson - The Los Angeles Times
go to original August 2, 2014

Anderson Daniel, 7, of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, sits exhausted on a hot street in Tapachula, Mexico. He stays at a shelter for migrant children in the city. (Michael Robinson Chavez/Los Angeles Times)

They are called canguritos, little kangaroos, because of the plastic trays of candy, cigarettes and other goods strapped across their bellies.

There is Juan Gonzalez, 10, selling gum for pennies. There are Humberto Vazquez, 11, and Wilmer Hernandez, 13, shining shoes.

And a few dark-skinned girls, none taller than 4 feet nor older than 12, wrapped in colorful indigenous cloth as skirts and offering tired pastries.

The northward passage of Central American children, many without their parents, is a familiar sight along Mexico's southern border with Guatemala. Though the exodus has been dominating U.S. headlines of late, tens of thousands of youngsters have waded the Suchiate River or floated across it on inner-tube rafts annually for many years.

Some are stranded here, unable to afford to go farther — and vulnerable to abuse. Others aren't even trying to reach the United States. Their hometowns are racked by such violence and poverty that a city as scruffy as Tapachula, on Mexico's southernmost tip, is better than where they were.

Little has been done to address what diplomats, activists and the migrants themselves say is a central problem: the complicity of police and other local officials who prey on those fleeing Central America, demanding bribes or sexual favors.

Read the rest at The Los Angeles Times

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