Children are forced to work very early in their lives

• Guatemalan children shine shoes and make bricks, many starting as early as five or six years of age.
• They cut cane and mop floors; and at some factories exporting to the United States, they sew and sort and chop, often in conditions so onerous that they violate even Guatemala's very loose labor laws.
• Guatemala's young workers, most of them poor indigenous people, say they often feel that nobody cares about them, not their parents who send them off to the work force, not their stern bosses who treat them like adults, and not even the dysfunctional government in Guatemala City.
• Guatemalan work-places resemble grade schools, with adult supervisors standing over little laborers like the strictest of teachers.
• According to an independent study of the issue, an estimated one million Guatemalan children under the age of 18 are working.

One child worker's testimony

The child workers are people like Maria, 16, who lamented her four years in the labor force, but at the same time insisted that she not be fully identified so as not to endanger a job that is helping to support her parents and four brothers and sisters.

• "My father hits me and tells me I can't study," she said, tears running down her cheeks. "He stays home and drinks and I have to go to the factory."
• On Sundays, her only day off, she goes to special classes for young laborers offered by the Center for Study and Support for Local Development.
• Despite having worked at a factory since she was twelve and at home for years before that, Maria has now completed the equivalent of third grade.
• "I can be so tired, so exhausted, but I feel so good when I come home and read," she said, her tears stopping and her face lighting up.
• "It can be any book. I just like to see the words."