The picture is from 2004. The kid lived on the streets and had the street vendors as friends. Before the pic was taken he was seen throwing rocks at the police and he ended up being hit badly by a rock thrown by the cops. More like child learning how to be the street thug hell eventually grow up to be, because he knows the cops wont do nothing to a kid in front of everyone else. Think age: David vs. Goliaths by Buzz on 30/09/2011 “Once again, this kind of photo doesn’t seem to need context, but context still changes everything. The picture originally comes from photographer Evandro Monteiro, and was taken during a police action in Sao Paulo, Brazil. In addition, while we look at an image like this and recognize what it inspires in us all, we still rather assume the kid was just joking around. The boy probably didn’t know what he was doing at the time; he was just making funny faces at the cops until his panicked mother could sprint in and sweep him away. But then here’s another image of the riot kid from Monteiro’s portfolio that implies otherwise: “So not only was he actually standing out in that street, alone, hurling rocks at the police (which is way more impetus than they need in Sao Paulo to beat some ghetto kid to death,) but he was so overcome with rage afterward that he stripped to the waist, slammed his jacket to the dirt, puffed out his chest and dared them to make a move. This was not a joke, or a childish prank. This was life or death. “Literally. “The photographer has this child tagged as a ‘street boy.’ That’s not a generic descriptor. In Sao Paulo ‘street child’ refers to a specific type of young homeless in the city. There are thousands, if not millions of them in Brazil, and they’re largely considered pests. Roughly 20% of police homicides in Sao Paulo are minors. In fact, the street children are so reviled that in some places, local shopkeepers and low-level politicians actually put out bounties on their heads to the tune of about $50 per kid. As a result, masked death squads rove the streets of Brazil at night, eliminating children. “And while that knowledge is incredibly awful, and gut-churning, and heart-dropping, and just makes you want to burn this whole miserable species to the ground and hope that nature knows enough to start from scratch this time, it also drastically magnifies the importance of this image. “This is not the same as a white, English-speaking child playing at revolutionary because he’s got the implied protection of society. This boy is not joking, and he is not safe. If he’s really a ‘street child,’ then those cops he’s challenging are the men that might make half a week’s pay for murdering him, and would face little to no reprisal for it. And if he really is a ‘street child,’ then he is utterly alone up there: It’s unlikely any of the other people in those photos have a vested interest in whether he lives or dies. “And he simply does. “Not. “Care.”
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 06:58:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015