Photo: Jackson Fager
Imagine a country that has a large percentage of child workers in the field (some as young as six years old) doing many different types of labor, while government pushes for legislation that would give those children rights? It’s happening in Bolivia.
VICE travels there to find out how bad the problem has gotten and witness first-hand what’s happening to the generation of children who are dropping out of school in order to help their families. These kids are earning menial money and some are getting even getting taken advantage of, because there are no laws to prevent it. They met two young kids who work at a cemetery before school, as they strive for a better life.
If you watch some of these kids’ demeanor in the interviews, they seem grown up at the ripe age of 16 already, especially if they’ve had jobs for almost a decade.
The cameras even traveled into the depths of Cerro Rico mines in Bolivia, where they found a few kids working inside. It’s quite illegal to have under age children employed, much less in very dangerous environments like the one’s inside these caves, but the practice still continues. There have been incidents of caves folding, workers exposed to bad air quality and numerous deaths, yet their wages outweigh the risk.
Just picture yourself entering the work force at eight years old? This is how most of these kids came up. Survival of the fittest for real.
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