The Politics of Street Children in Chile
This article asks, “What do street children represent to Chile, a country considered the economic model for Latin America?”. It traces a trajectory whereby structural violence inherent in the neoliberal agenda first imposed upon Chilean citizens during Pinochet’s authoritarian regime (1973-1990) transforms socially vulnerable street children into deviant and undesirable “criminals-in-making.” Despite good intentions, state institutions label and socialize street children as “criminals-in making,” a status that jeopardizes their future citizenship. This perverse “continuum of violence” results in the social suffering of street children whose lives are embedded in multiple forms of violence structural, institutional, symbolic and everyday ­ that are destructive to them. Finally, this paper suggests street children are the public secret of neoliberalism.