Street Children Prey To Hunger, Disease, Gunfire

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - At the age of 6 he was on the streets, and from then on life was an exercise in pure survival.

``I've seen lots of kids killed. Lots of kids robbed. Lots of things,'' says Marcos, who at 15 is one of the more seasoned of Brazil's millions of street children.

``Lots of kids who died innocently,'' he continues, somehow managing to sound wary and cocky at the same time. ``Some killed by the police. Lots who died instead of those who should have died.''

For street children in the gray, endless suburbs north of Rio, death is a fact of life. It can happen by accident. It can happen because of hunger or disease.

Or it can happen because someone thinks there are too many ragged, pesky children around, too many petty pilferers and beggars, and decides it's time to take the law into his own hands.

According to government officials, social workers and human-rights activists, the killers of children often belong to death squads hired by merchants to get rid of thieves.

The government estimates more than 7 million Brazilian children spend most of their time in the street. Many of them peddle, beg or scavenge for a living; many steal.

``You own a store and you spend your whole day being robbed by kids,'' said Tania Maria Salles Moreira, a prosecutor in the suburb of Duque de Caxias, outlining the shopkeepers' rationale. ``The logical thing is to hire someone to do something about it. You could ask the police, but people are accustomed to doing it this way.''

By combing newspapers from three Brazilian cities - Rio, Sao Paulo and Recife - the Brazilian Institute for Social and Economic Analysis logged 457 killings of children last year, more than one a day.

From 1985 to 1989, 1,081 children under 18 were killed in the state of Rio de Janeiro in circumstances suggesting death-squad activity, according to a Rio group called Center for Alliance of Marginalized Populations.

Typically, the victims in Rio are shot as they sleep, or forced into a car, taken to a deserted area, killed and then deposited in clandestine graves.

By the time a street child becomes a hired exterminator's target, the child is already part of a tragic story in a country where the gap between rich and poor is greater than almost any other.

According to government figures, 12 million Brazilian children between the ages of 5 and 17 have

quit school, or never attended. Seven million between 10 and 17 are working. Thirty percent of those under age 5 are malnourished.

Most street children come from fatherless families in teeming shantytowns called ``favelas.'' According to Volmer do Nascimento, coordinator of the National Movement for Street Boys and Girls, some leave home after beatings by stepfathers.

But Nascimento said most are not abandoned; rather, they head for the streets out of hunger and return home from time to time. ``They eat better in the street than they do at home,'' he said.

Marcos, the 15-year-old, talked about his life after a lunch of rice, beans and bologna at a day refuge run by the movement in Duque de Caxias. The building is just inside a favela built on a garbage dump, where naked toddlers play in narrow, muddy alleys and teen-agers employed by drug traffickers keep a lookout for police or rival gangs.

For the past two months Marcos has been living with a family in the favela nearby. He can read a newspaper haltingly and dreams of being a mechanic. But his current project is to get enough money together to go back into the street, this time selling popcorn.

Another who dropped in for lunch was Orlando, 13, who said he sometimes makes as much as $4 a day selling peanuts.

``Some people treat you well and others badly,'' he said. ``The other day a woman saw me coming and held her purse tight against her, like this,'' he said, illustrating the movement.

``They do it because we're not well-dressed and we get dirty a lot,'' said his friend, 14-year-old Andre.

More than 200 children registered at the refuge - who include favela residents as well as those sleeping on the streets - are entitled to counseling, lunch and two snacks.

Despite the brief respite the refuge gives, the culture of violence is never far away.

Several weeks ago a 14-year-old boy sitting with friends on a curbside a couple of blocks from the refuge was killed by gunfire, and one of his companions was wounded. The shots came in classic death-squad style - from a passing car with no license plates occupied by four hooded men.

As in so many cases, the likelihood that the perpetrators will be brought to justice is slim. Of 919 homicides committed in Duque de Caxias last year, only 231 resulted in charges being filed.