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Essays Stories of Civil War in El Salvador
Essays Stories of Civil War in El Salvador
Child labor in Venezuela
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Recommended: Essays Stories of Civil War in El Salvador
I come from a world where hope is a luxury and struggle is a birthright. My home country, El Salvador, saturated my young mind with images of extreme poverty, violence, and the bleak absence of any meaningful future for my generation. My earliest memories are replete with gunshots, gang fights, and police persecutions. The sight of dead bodies strewn about the streets was commonplace. The authorities charged with protecting children like me looked away in deference to their role as puppets in a government abounding in corruption. One day my mom accompanied me to school on the bus. Shortly after we boarded, a group of gang members wielding guns poured onto the bus. Seconds later, one of the men seized my neck and howled, "Give me all your money or I will kill this kid," His grip squeezed out my last breath as I struggled to hold tightly onto my mother's hand. Her eyes brimmed with tears, as we both faced my imminent death. The men swarmed the helpless crowd and snatched what little money was offered. I will always remember my mother handing over her wallet, which I knew was empty. That exchange embodies the irony of life in my home country: people with nothing …show more content…
Watching me suffer with prolonged hunger, while maintaining my gratitude for the simple things in life, spawned in my parents a deep motivation to move on. Despite having nothing to eat, I felt thankful and was always happy to attend school, reveling in the peaceful moments of my childhood. Recognizing this unique quality, my parents promised that they would one day take me to a place where hard work could lead to a better future. In a world where our demise seemed inevitable, my parents managed to realize this dream by emigrating to the United States just before I tuned eight years old. Although they left me behind with my grandmother, they promised to find a way for me join them in the
Geoffrey Canada gives his readers a rare opportunity to look inside the life of a ghetto kid and what they have to go through just to survive. He also provides answers to the many questions asked of why certain things happen the way they do in the Bronx. He used his childhood experiences and turned them into a unique tool when helping the youth of today. Now that he works as a youth councilor he sees that the problem in the slums has gotten dramatically worse with the emergence of guns. It used to be about pride and status, now any thug with a gun can be feared in the community. This, to Canada is a major problem because guns gives kids a sense of power, a strong feeling that is often abused and results in someone, even an innocent person dead.
Does your home have a lock on your door, a telephone and working appliances and plumbing? Do you dodge bullets in your sleep, have 13 people living in one apartment or wash your dishes in the bathtub because the kitchen sink hasn’t worked for months? Do you wash your clothes in the bathtub because the laundry room is too dangerous to do your washing? Do you live in an environment with no role models, where the gangs control everything and you can’t trust anyone? You may think these are strange questions for people who live in America in the late 20th century, but some people’s answers to these questions may be very different from yours. Those people are the one’s living in the “other America”. Alex Kotlowitz tells us “the story of two boys growing up in the other America” in his book There Are No Children Here.
Medina states, “Gang rule is absolute and young people are extremely vulnerable to forced recruitment into the gangs. Adolescents are continually intimidated and subjected to violence, pressurised into joining the gangs or working for them as drug pushers or in other roles” (Medina). This fear dynamic is used in order to promote corruption within the system of migration. The migrants that decide to escape are forced to encounter constant dangers while migrating. Medina states, “Fear of deportation is largely behind the failure to report crimes; in order to get their destination, most migrants will continue on their journey as soon as possible, leaving the experiences behind them, shrouded in silence” (Medina). This silence thrives on the system of corruption which implicates Mexico’s passivity to protect migrants from violence. Overall, this represents enduring the consequences the migrants face and the perseverance to
Growing up in a developing country has really open up my mind about setting up for a better future. My home in El Salvador wasn't the most lavishness, but it's also not the worst. I grew up in a house with two levels; three bedrooms on the top floor, one on the bottom, a garage and laundry room at the lower level, and a small sale shop at the front of the house. Growing up in this home has been a meaningful place for me. Its where I found my sense of place.
War and violence in Central America is a result of governmental injustice due to the United States’ foreign policies. The United States supported El Salvador with weapons and money throughout the civil war. As a result of enforcing these policies, El Salvador’s poverty, population and crime rate increased. The books “…After…” by Carolina Rivera Escamilla and “The Tattooed Soldier” by Hector Tobar give us a glimpse of the issues Central Americans faced.
In addition, most of these children Nazario interviewed, almost half lived in dangerous gang territories and were exposed to life threatening situations, “Of the 322 minors I interviewed, 145 have at least one gang in their neighborhood, and about half of these live in a contested gang territory. They report hearing gunshots nightly and are often afraid to walk even two or three blocks from their home since they fear crossing an always changing boundary” (Nazario, ###). Children decided they must leave their home country and chose to go to where they had family, because they feel unsafe and they have the necessity to escape the danger that entraps them in a never ending cycle of violence; this is why DACA plays an important role assisting these individuals.
And with that comes a life of anguish and the only thing they can do is turn to “crime.” To them the benefits of committing a crime outweigh the consequences. Hanna Rosin, author of “American Murder Mystery,” also agrees: “as part of a nationwide experiment to free the poor from the destructive effects of concentrated poverty.” Rosin sees how destructive living in poverty can be for people. Rosin isn’t the only one who thinks poverty is destructive, she quotes HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros: “’ these enclaves of poverty,’ where ‘drug dealers control the stairwells, where children can’t go outside to play, where mothers put their
When I was born, my family had just migrated to California from Mexico. In a new country, my father worked in landscaping earning less than $4 dollars an hour, while my mother relied on public transportation to take her newborn child to and from doctor visits. In the land of opportunity, my family struggled to put a roof over our heads. But never discouraged, my parents sought to achieve their goals and worked tirelessly to raise my younger brother and I. From a young age, I was taught the importance of education; this became a major catalyst in my life. My desire to excel academically was not for self-gain, but my way of contributing to my family’s goals and aspirations.
This was back in November 2007, in India. I was 12 years old. I was enjoying my normal life. But I didn’t know that my life will change surprisingly. One day I came home from the school and my parents made decision of moving to the United States. I was totally amazed at that moment. My parents wanted move so that me and my sister can have a better life, education, and opportunity.
As an adolescent growing up in Jamaica I was intrigued by the justice and political system. I would question why many law breakers would be roaming free and so many homeless people were on the streets. I probed the purpose of policies and the justice system after witnessing child abuse, and watching my peers suffer from enduring molestation from family members. On numerous days I obtrusively observed my surroundings just to satisfy my curiosity on how some very impoverished individuals and others with mental health issues survived and solved their everyday life happenings.
While we were incredibly fortunate enough to escape the war, we continued to carry the trauma and distress of war well into our time in America, as several of our friends and relatives remained in our war torn hometown. I was too young to remember the trauma caused directly from the war that my parents are doomed to live with, However the pain of having to hear my mother sobbing through the night over the death of her sister is beyond enough to remind me of the tremendous opportunities I have been given here in America. My family was extremely fortunate to escape the war, but it would not have been possible without the best resource of all, my parents. The amount of steadfast, unconditional commitment which my parents had and continue to have for our family is beyond my level of comprehension. After escaping the war my parents were dedicated to giving our family an improved life compared to the one we left in the DRC. This dedication to a higher quality of life is the reason why my siblings and I have the opportunity to attend a university and accomplish something with our
My parents have this perfect life for me pictured in their heads, and the first thing they see me doing is going to college. They expect the best of me, and so by going to college, I will not only have fulfilled their goals for me, but I will have accomplished one of the goals I have set for myself. In our culture, when parents come to the age where they can’t support themselves, it is the duty of the children to look after them.
At first, my very first experience in the United States is so bored, depressed, and hopeless. It was a new journey for me, I learn a language that I had never learned before, I get bullied just because I am the only one Asian who do not speak English. However, my life has become better when I realized that the “American Dream” is possible. Well, for me, the term “American Dream” is fitting for the one who attends at school, who has confidence and hard work. It might be a dream for my generation but not my parents. I saw my parents struggle to keep my brother and I fed. They worked more than two jobs, just to help us finish our education, paying our rent, and everything. I saw them suffer in tears, to sacrificed their future to let my brother and me to get a better education and opportunities to
The world of poverty is a complex one with similarities seen in every society. In Brazil, poverty has created an especially dark situation in which society's most vulnerable children are forced to live or work on the streets and fend for their lives on a daily basis. In many societies, poor children are exposed to street life, but Brazil is interesting in that many of its citizens have changed their mentalities from viewing street children as creative ?urchins? to viewing them as vermin that must be discarded, often through murder, all while blaming the victim. In the world of poverty, there is extreme competition for few resources, and it is other low-income people who often support wiping children off the streets, instead of sympathizing with them. It is a huge paradox that Brazil, with some of the world's most progressive legislation regarding children, encompassed in the Statute of the Child and Adolescent of 1990, also has some of the world?s most horrendous violations of human rights against the group. A combination of market forces, the state, and international organizations must fight poverty and societal structures that leave children susceptible to violence if they, and thus Brazil?s future, are to survive.
You can’t turn on the television, or read the paper without hearing about violence in our cities and world. In a report from “Stand Up for Kids” in Chicago, they analyze the relationship between low wages, income inequality, and the epidemic of violence in Chicago’s low income neighborhoods. This report found that in 2012 there were nearly 7,700 gun-related crimes reported in the city. The city of Chicago has the third highest overall metropolitan poverty rate in the nation. Nearly one quarter of all Chicago residents live below the federal poverty threshold according to this report. ("Chicago Not Only Leads the Nation in Gun Violence Rates, but Also in Measures of Urban Poverty." Stand Up Chicago, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.) Decades of research have demonstrated that there is a statistically significant link between low wages, income inequality and crime. The analysis presented in this report shows that when a city’s economic conditions improve, the violent crime rates go down.( "Chicago Not Only Leads the Nation in Gun Violence Rates, but Also in Measures of Urban Poverty." Stand Up Chicago, 1 Feb. 2013. Web. 7 Oct. 2014.) Parents and children are turning to violent acts to provide for their family needs. Policy makers and the government need to address the issues of persistent poverty and income inequality such as raising the minimum wage to a living wage and create satisfying jobs for the