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Child Labor

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Street Strategy Chapter 5 begins by explaining that children enter the street labor force beyond the simple idea of their family needing money. It then goes on to explain that the need isn’t why all children remain as street workers. They do it because they have the social skills needed to be successful and thrive as a child laborer and it helps them in their physical survival. We are then told the life story of Isabella. She grew up in Puerto Barrios which is located on the Southeast coast of Guatemala with two parents who ended up splitting up and she moved with her mom to the Western Highlands. There she worked with her grandmother weaving hats for a relative’s tourist shop and because she was gifted at this she was made to spend 12 to 13 hours a day on it as well as care for her younger sister. She was never paid by her grandmother and was abused so she ended up turning to her mother for help but because of the guy that was currently with her mother she couldn’t move in with her. Her mother found her a job as a servant where she worked from dusk till dawn with little pay and was occasionally hit. She ran away back to her grandmother’s and was soon kicked out for smothering chickens, accidently, while keeping them as pets. Turning to her mother for help again she was advised to leave Quiche and went looking for work in the nation’s capital. She was eleven when she got a job with her friend as a domestic servant and worked there for six months before leaving due to low pay. She bounced around the next two years as a servant, dishwasher, and ended up working for an older lady selling tortillas on a corner in front of a well-known fast food restaurant. The older lady soon fell ill and Isabella then walked from stall to stall selling tortillas where because she was well-known in the area landed a job with vendor who sold girls dresses. This job was her most

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