Gigengack R

Language: Spanish
References: 13
Page: 329-339
PDF size: 319.28 Kb.

ABSTRACT

This article recounts the story of the Bucareli boys, a group of street children in Mexico City who were also known as the banda of metro Juárez. Documenting the “Buca” boys over a period of three years allowed me to formulate three insights about the internal power differentiation in terms of leadership, gender, and age. These insights are valid as well, I think, for the other 15 bandas where I did fieldwork. First, it is important to place the dynamics of leadership and gender relations in an age perspective. Second, as structuring principles of street life, leadership, gender and age have an inherently evanescent character, due to an interplay of constraints that are both internal and external to the banda. My third suggestion concurs with Liebow in that homelessness creates a world of paradoxes and contradictions. Power differentiation among relatively powerless people is a contradiction in terms; and the dynamics of leadership, gender and age disclose paradoxical social ties within the banda. These can be particularly harrowing in the relations between street kids and the young adults posing as surrogate fathers and mothers.
This ethnographic analysis of “crazy-making homelessness” is relevant for mental health. The kids’ story-telling about leadership and gender relations veiled their fragility, since in these tales they attributed themselves a power which they did not have in reality. More than mere symptoms of psychopathology or a manipulative personality disorder, these stories testify to the creativity and resilience of these young people. The illusory power of the choros, the bullshit tales about street children, enables them to live in apparent harmony under the conditions in which they live.

REFERENCES

1. Liebow E. Tell them who I am: The lives of homeless women. New York: Penguin Books; 1995. (1993).

2. Gigengack R. The buca boys from metro Juárez: Leadership, gender and age in Mexico City’s youthful street culture. Etnofoor 1999;2(1):102-124.

3. Gigengack R. Young, damned and banda. The world of young street people in Mexico City, 1990-1997. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Amsterdam; 2006.

4. Polsky N. Hustlers, beats, and others. Londres: University of Chicago Press; 1985. (1967).

5. Hecht T. At home in the street. Street children of northeast Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1998.

6. Goffman E. Asylums. Londres/Nueva York: Penguin Books; 1991. (1961).

7. Gigengack R. De symbolische constructie van straatkinderen: Jongens en meisjes van Plaza Garibaldi (Mexico-stad). Amsterdams sociologisch tijdschrift 1997; Jaargang 24(1):24-71.

8. Fleisher M. Beggars and thieves: Lives of urban street criminals. Madison: Wisconsin University Press; 1995.

9. Gigengack R. De biodiversiteit van asfaltjungles: Straatkinderen in Mexico and Peru in een vergelijkend perspectief. En: Anne G (eds.). Uit de Zevende. Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis; 1998.

10. Aptekar L. Street children in the developing world: A review of their condition. Cross Cultural Research 1994;28 (3):195-224.

11. Ennew J. Parentless friends: A cross-cultural examination of networks among street children and street Yyouths. En: Nestman S, Hurrelman K (eds.). Social networks and social support in childhood and adolescence. Londres: De Gruyter; 1994.

12. Connolly M. ‘Adrift in the city: A comparative study of street children in Bogota, Colombia, and Guatemala City’ in homeless children: The watchers and the waiters. Nueva York: The Haworth Press; 1990.

13. Cohen A. The symbolic construction of community. Londres: Routledge; 1993. (1985).