Nanette Burton Mongelluzzo: Begging Under the Influence of Violence Nanette Burton Mongelluzzo - Psych Central
go to original July 31, 2013

The photo here is of a woman I met in central Mexico. She is a street beggar. I will call her Ana. Begging, as well as panhandling, and homelessness are poorly understood. When people live on the margins others assume they know why and judgments leap into conversations. I figure, within everything that can be observed there is a story waiting to be told. I am open to stories, as they paint a more accurate picture of life, a lifetime, or an event than assumptions offer.

When I lived in Mexico it was common to hear Americans talk about the beggars. They lumped them all together; the young, the pregnant mother, the elderly woman, the disabled man, the blind, and the double amputee. They assumed most beggars had begged throughout their life. Another assumption was that beggars come from families or generations of begging. A further assumption was that beggars were pimped out by pimps who collected those who looked shockingly pitiful and distributed them on street corners throughout the town. He would later return and take the majority of the alms they collected.

I had decided to study the elderly women beggars of a small colonial Mexican town in central Mexico. I focused in on women who were elderly (over the age of sixty). I wondered why they wandered the streets alone. I wondered where their family was and why they were not somewhere cooking the comida or preparing fresh tortillas.

I wanted to understand if begging was a clear choice.

Read the rest at Psych Central

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