Thursday, 28/6

On Thursday, we were invited to a Festa Junina at CCJ where kids from the local community danced quadrilha (squaredance) and played games with us. While I was there, I talked to some of the girls at the party, who all wanted to hear their names in English and to know what life was like in São Paulo (since we clearly weren't from Recife, we had to be from there). As I talked to the girls about their lives, I saw one of the few aspects of Brazilian culture I do not agree with at all: the exploitation of adolescent girls. The girls pictured above range in age from 12 to 14 years old and they were telling me about their boyfriends, all of whom are grown men in their twenties and thirties. This scenario is unfortunately very common in Brazil, especially in the poorest regions where older men take advantage of the girls by buying them clothes and jewelry and often food for their families. Most mothers don't see anything wrong with it, since they dated much older men when they were the same age. Recently, the Department of Human Rights has begun a program to denounce child and adolescent exploitation, but any real change has to start with the mothers and fathers in these poor communities recognizing that it isn't okay or normal for their young teenage daughters to be used by these old men. It's a sad, vicious cycle that needs to be broken.