Without following any map, you wander through the streets of Sucre, in Bolivia. A course blurred by the simple inertia of letting oneself be carried away on a Sunday afternoon from which it seems little can be expected. It is not good to arrive for the first time in a big city like this on a Sunday. Bad for the tourist longing to enter cathedrals, museums, or markets. Everything closed. Good for the traveling curiosity that leads you to sneak in like a voyeur into the lives of Bolivians. When you have already exhausted the places marked in the guide, when all that remains is to navigate with your eyes and feet the street stalls where cakes, DVDs, socks, and bunches of herbs mix in an unusual commercial orgy, then it happens, Simón Bolívar Park appears, changing your face into a mask of disbelief and fascination. Horses to ride, mechanical bulls with a real attitude, a huge tin plane to climb into without expecting takeoff, bouncy castles, preachers to be wary of, an attempted replica of the Eiffel Tower, a photocall made of plastic flowers where the adolescent cholita and her boyfriend can be immortalized, pedal boats on a circular river, multicolored cotton candy paraded by elderly women…
And so it goes.
Time remains suspended in a temporal limbo while you devour the festive atmosphere of the park with your eyes. You resist as best you can the urge to participate in each and every one of the attractions that so catch your attention. In the end, Sunday in Sucre traps you and the closure of churches and museums suddenly becomes your ally. Your gaze jumps from one scene to another, eager to analyze in detail and carefully file it away in your memory. You smile silently, involuntarily.
Until the magic breaks and the harshest of realities punches you in the stomach. It takes you a few moments to realize that there is something strange about some of the children walking among the small cars. They have a serious air, a twisted expression, and a slightly aged look. When you look closely, you immediately notice that the little boy who seems to be helping his little sister drive the remote-controlled vehicle with a controller is actually on his workday.
Children under the orders of a sinister woman, going round and round the same square walking behind toy cars where other children like them are riding, but happier and more fortunate, at least during this Sunday time. Children who are the human motor that makes a carousel turn, provoking smiles of excitement, but not in them. Children who hammer loose parts into place and fix electrical faults.
[heading_entrance title=”” text=”The white city turns black. Children working for children“. Nothing more to add… Or much to protest.” custom_class=””][/heading_entrance]
