Even the casual visitor to Mexico’s capital city will notice an abundance of children working for a living in the streets as windshield cleaners and street performers at stop lights. Many are accompanied by their families, but others are completely alone. Mexico City’s La Jornada newspaper reports that poverty and hopelessness in the capital have led many families to abandon their children in the streets.

With severe psychological damage, anemia and addictions to various drugs, as well as histories of abuse and violence, close to 3000 children are attended to in the 30 public and private institutions which assist minors who are abandoned in the street or at risk of being abandoned. In the majority of cases it’s the parents, immersed in precarious economic situations, who abandon them.

The Insitute for Assistance and Social Integration (Iasis), part of the Mexico City local government, says that in 28 of these institutions they assist children who are completely alone and helpless due to family poverty.

La Jornada reports that many of the children have suffered physical deterioration as a result of living on their own. While many have been abandoned, others are living in shelters because they were present when their parents were arrested for various crimes such as drug sales, theft kidnapping and murder.

This picture of apparent urban chaos and societal breakdown is a sharp contrast to what the Mayor of Mexico City was bragging about last week.

Via / La Jornada

Image via www.noticaribe.com.mx