Millions of Mexican Minors Work to Survive or Risk Lives to Escape Peter Watt - The Conversation
go to original July 22, 2014

‘At Gran Familia, we had everything but freedom’ (Andrés Garcés)

The recent rescue of 458 children and 138 adults from the Gran Familia refuge in the city of Zamora in the state of Michoacán is another grim illustration of the plight of many unprotected and vulnerable minors in Mexico.

Among the victims were children who had been reported as having disappeared. Many were held against their will, forced to work and sexually abused. Residents slept on the floor among rats, insects and other pests. The sanitary conditions in the home were reportedly so bad that the authorities had to fumigate the building following the release of the residents.

Mexico’s politicians and mainstream media tend to represent cases like the Gran Familia in isolation. But if the news emerging from Michoacán is disturbing, it points to a generalised context which is even more unsettling.

The scale of this latest rescue is highly unusual – but the poor conditions and abuses suffered by children in Mexico and Central America are signs of much wider structural problems.

Read the rest at The Conversation

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