Examples Of Social Inequality In Los Olvidados

The film Los Olvidados, directed by Luis Bunuel in 1950, is a great Latin American film that focuses on surrealism and satire of the injustices of poverty. This film also displays various degrees of social inequality. In the cities, there are businessmen and other collared shirt men who work to provide for their families, there are men selling egg sandwiches on the streets and there are children who steal, lie and kill each other. Most of the social inequalities in the film focuses on the children’s treatment towards each other. Social inequality can also be displayed by those who can pay people to do simple tasks for them like buying cigars.
One of the early scenes involves Jaibo, a very young gang leader, beats his rival Julian to death with a rock and

a stick in front of his associate, Pedro.

Another character is called little eyes, carries out the chores of an older blind man who pays him with food and shelter after little eyes’s father never showed up at their meeting place. The gang children constantly state “only morons work” and how prison life is better than their own. Although they are lazy and search for trouble, they are on a constant lookout for money. They even beat up an old blind man for his money after he earns the money from playing his instruments for a crowd of listeners. It's all about having the money to eat food or how to get a job to do as minimal work necessary to eat food. Wherever they are, children without parents are still subjected under older children’s control as the older ones have more experience with criminal acts. That is how Jaibo has so much control and is why Pedro seems overwhelmed by his older, larger, and more brutal friend, unable to escape from his grasp anywhere from the streets to farming school. Pedro is unable to avoid the cycle of poverty, desperation, and crime. He is abandoned by his mother and society to find a job and not get into trouble. Pedro is once given 50 pesos by the principle of the farming school to walk to

the corner store and buy cigarettes. His initial hostility melts into disbelieving joy that he has found a place where others trust and respect him. Poverty always reappears as Pedro is tracked down by Jaibo, consistently threatening him with hostility and malice and then eventually kills Pedro. The principle of the farming school stated that he “Wish to lock up poverty instead of children”. This shows that leaders of society understand that social inequality exists. They just don't know how to change the ideas of individuals altogether in order to stop crime and allow everyone to live with equal money and statuses in places where poverty exist.