Extra! Extra!

If you know me well, odds are that I have made you watch Newsies (the movie musical). It happens to be one of my favorites. Yesterday morning I got to live the life of a newsie! I actually job-shadowed a child laborer who works as a newspaper seller.

I woke up at 6:30 to meet Jose on the street and pick up his stack of the day´s paper. While we waited, he and his friends were shy; they kept hiding and avoiding eye contact. When the newspaper truck finally arrived, Jose picked up the papers, yelled something at me, and started running.
Literally running.
I hardly had time to realize what was going before he was half way down the street. When he told me we were going to run to sell the papers, I thought he was kidding! But he wasnt. To cover more ground, quickly, a lot of the top sellers run. I spent the rest of the morning chasing after a nimble 14 year old boy at 14,000 feet of altitude. As if walking up the stairs didnt already put me out of breath in the mountain town. Needless to say, I was exhausted when we sold out, which was, thanks to all of our running, an hour before everyone else.´

The experience was so unique and wonderful. Jose was quiet at first, but by the end I got him talking. It was interesting to hear his story: He works in the morning every day of the week, and attends school in the afternoon. At night he studies. He loves fútball and somehow, between all of this other activities, he finds time to play. He never laughed at my spanish skills (to my face, anyways), and we could communicate pretty well. It was the curious, toothless, old men we sold to that I struggled to understand!



So, HOW exactly did I get the opportunity to job-shadow Jose? Its all thanks to a wonderful organization called CONNAT´SOP. Since being in Potosi, we have been partnering with this organization and they have provided a really interesting looked into child labor.

CONNAT´SOP is an acronymn for a long phrase that basically means union for child and adolecent laborers; its the local branch of the national organization NNATS. This union´s main objectives are 1) To display child labor as good and healthy, not harmful. 2) To work to gain rights and recogition for child laborers. and 3) To end child labor in the silver mines of Potosi (which they see as undignified and dangerous). The union, though helped by a few local organizations, is self-run by the youth members.

The use and acceptance of child labor in Bolivia is so different from in the US. In the states, we view child labor as harmful and exploitive; stealing precious childhood (a romantisized western idea) from our nations youth. In Bolivia, as in many poorer nations, the idea of childhood doesnt exist. Children work to support themselves and their families. The main western critique of child labor is that it prevents the children from recieving an education. In the US, this is pretty much true. In Bolivia, on the other hand, working opens the door for many children to attend school. CONNAT´SOP requires all of its laborers to attend school, and it provides support for them to do so. Without income from working and the support the union provides, education would not be an option for most of these children. Before you judge the cruel, youth-stealing term ¨child labor¨ be sure you take a deeper look.