The work is hard, the conditions dangerous, the hours long - and that's before the workers even reach adolescence. Deaglán de Bréadún, Foreign Affairs Correspondent, reports on the scandal of child labour in Nicaragua.
It's an impressive-sounding name: Angelo Alberto Munoz Antones. To an Irish ear, he could be an aristocrat, politician or businessman. But Angelo is none of these things. He works in a quarry in the Nicaraguan town of Diriamba, some 50km south of the capital Managua, carrying heavy blocks of stone uphill all day long. Angelo is 12 years old.
Taking a break from his labours, Angelo tells his story. He works from 6am to 5pm, six days a week. He doesn't go to school and can't read. An adult fellow-labourer listening to the conversation chimes in, "At school they didn't like him because he was badly behaved." Angelo ignores the shouted comment. There is no sign of skittishness or indiscipline about him as he describes his daily life in a sober, matter-of-fact way; he's still in short trousers but has a grown-up, even fatalistic, demeanour.
At the quarry, the older workers hack out large blocks of stone. I have a go at lifting one: they are heavy, about 100-weight, or the equivalent of two breeze-blocks. It's Angelo's job to take a block from the pit of the quarry and carry it on his back up a steep hill for about 250m before depositing it on a donkey cart. Even walking up that hill without a load on your back would leave you short of breath.
All this work leaves Angelo little time for play or the normal fun and games of boyhood. He does not play football or baseball but, each evening, watches an hour-long soap opera on television, which is broadcast between 6pm and 7pm. The title of the programme is Passion of the Vultures.
When he grows up, Angelo wants to be a carpenter. His work is risky and one of the stones fell on his foot recently. A pink rag is wrapped around his left hand and he unwraps it to reveal several skin callouses. The hand needs to be washed and treated but there is no sign of anyone doing that.
Angelo at least is wearing shoes, but his fellow child-worker is barefoot. Even more grandly named, Asdruval Francisco Campos Gutierrez is 11 years old. He works three hours a day, from 2pm to 5pm, Monday to Saturday. He attends school in the mornings, from 7am till noon, but has to feed the animals at home before he leaves the house.
In the evening he has homework which leaves "no time" for baseball (Nicaragua's favourite sport), football or just playing with the other kids. The family can't afford sports gear anyway, he adds. Asdruval gives his wages to his mother. He is the second eldest in a family of four boys and one girl.
There are quarries all over Diriamba. The pay for carrying blocks is about €1 for every 40 blocks.
Marcos Aleman is now 20 years old. He started working at the age of nine, selling food to passing motorists. He took up quarry work at 13 and spent a year at it. The job gave him a hernia and he still suffers from it. He can't afford to have the necessary operation.
His hours at the quarry were 5am to 6.30am and in that period he shifted between 40 and 50 blocks. Then he went off to school. Marcos used the money for his education and any surplus cash went to the family.
Marcos is involved in a non-governmental organisation called Natras which campaigns for children's rights, whether in the labour market - the minimum legal age for workers is 14 - or in the home, where children can be subject to domestic violence or sexual abuse. Natras receives funding from the Irish agency, Trócaire. Leaving Diriamba, I pass a large, articulated truck packed with the type of stones Angelo, Asdruval and other children have carried from the quarries.
CHILD LABOUR IN Nicaragua is not confined to the construction industry. The massive city-dump at Chureca, on the edge of Managua, is a sight to behold. The busiest days are Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. That's when the city's refuse is collected and brought to the dump, which sits by the shore of Lake Managua contaminating the water. It could be a scene from Mad Max or some other movie about the aftermath of nuclear war. Hundreds of men, women and children await the arrival of the latest truck.
When the vehicle arrives, a man with a red flag guides it to an appropriate dumping spot.
The truck opens its jaws at the rear and vomits out the latest offering. Anything could emerge: household rubbish, plants or vegetables, paper or even hazardous hospital waste.
The people gather at the rear of the truck, many of them holding a long metal pole called a gancho, with a double spike at the end. As the rubbish comes cascading out of the truck, they poke and probe for items of possible value. Economy-size plastic Coca-Cola or Pepsi bottles are especially prized and these are gathered into oversized sacks. Discarded cans, shoes and clothing are also of possible value and even decayed food will not be spurned.
Once it has been sorted and any marketable, usable or edible items extracted, the rubbish is burnt in order to clear space for fresh material.
It's a scene from hell as an enormous fire blazes in one part of the dump and, close by, the wretched of the earth examine their latest malodorous consignment. A strong wind is whipping up a minor sandstorm of dust and debris, so most people are wearing mufflers over their faces. As vultures circle overhead in the rising smoke, a local guide remarks: "They also eat here." A further surreal element is provided by a herd of cows grazing at the dump and competing with the humans for the sordid pickings. There are numerous dogs and, over to one side, a man in an orange shirt is sniffing glue and appears to be passing the container to his friends for a "hit".
Although there is no hostility, the scavengers are not interested in giving their story to the media. There is work to be done and there is always the danger from their viewpoint that some well-meaning do-gooder, trying to "save" the scavengers from their plight, will try to call a halt to the whole thing and leave them with no work. One man prevents his son from talking. It is very difficult in any case to hold a conversation in the blinding wind but a boy tells me his name is Pedro Garcia and that he is 12 years old. I also see other boys aged from about eight to 14 and a girl who looks around 13, searching in the rubbish or carrying loaded sacks on their backs. If they collect 1 lb of plastic bottles, they will be paid one Nicaraguan cordoba, or just less than 5 cent in euro currency.
There is a truck that comes to purchase this grim harvest.
The dump sustains some 2,000 people, including 600 children. About 1,000 live in a shanty-town at the site. Asked if they would spend their whole lives there, a community activist replies simply, "Yes". If the children go to school outside they get teased and bally-ragged by their classmates who sneer at them as "garbage kids".
I HAVE VISITED forlorn shanty towns in South Africa but this one is even poorer. The shacks are made of metal and wood, but the strips of metal are that bit rustier and the flimsy structures more ramshackle. There is a primary school run by an American evangelical charity as well as a clinic for the sick, although I was told, "Nurses and doctors don't want to come here because of risks to their own health." Karla Vanessa Lopez lives in one of the shacks with her family, right on the edge of the dump.
Although she is only 20 years old she already has three children. Striking in appearance, her eyes blink constantly in the windstorm as she does the day's washing with no shoes on her feet. A small black-and-white television plays inside her modest dwelling where a cracked mirror and a sign in English that reads "Merry Christmas" are the only visible ornaments. Her eldest boy, Marvin, missed breakfast that morning and has come home for some food. Even on my own short visit, the biting wind and penetrating dust are hard to take and the conditions must be almost unbearable for anyone living there full-time.
A non-governmental organisation called Dos Generaciones (Two Generations) has set up a training centre at nearby Acahualinca, assisted by funding from Trócaire, to teach people a skill that will enable them to break out of the Chureca environment. Yelda Melendez Garcia (22) comes from a family of 13 and worked at the dump between the ages of eight and 14.
"It's a very risky job because you are exposed to all kinds of dangerous things." She received cuts on her feet "many times", resulting in skin ailments. She also has problems with coughing and chest infections which she blames on the dump. She had a hard time at school because of her background: "They used to call me the Garbage-Girl (Churequera)." Thanks in large part to the help she received from Dos Generaciones, she now studies journalism part-time at Managua University.
THERE ARE MANY fine vistas in Nicaragua but one of the less appealing is its panorama of exploitation. An organisation called Cesesma, again with funding from Trócaire, seeks to better the lot of the children on the coffee plantations. The coffee beans are picked by hand, mainly between November and February, with people working from 6am until 3pm in the afternoon. Under-18s are not officially allowed to work but there is a tendency for them to drop out of school and come along anyway. "Children have smaller hands and can pick the lower branches without hurting their backs," I am told. They tip their baskets into the sacks of their parents or older siblings: the letter of the law is thereby observed.
Only a tiny percentage of child coffee pickers finish primary school. Again there is a lot of fatalism and resignation: many parents do not see the benefit of schooling for a child who faces a lifetime of coffee-picking. Cesesma seeks to persuade them otherwise but it's no easy task.
Some of the workers on Los Placeres plantation high in the mountains above the city of Matagalpa are employed all year round whereas others are hired only for the picking season.
Young Jaime Ruiz, aged 10, goes to school from 7am until noon and spends the afternoon sorting coffee-beans. His mother, Maria Lourdes Ruiz (37) is a single parent with six children, aged three to 19 years, as well as a three-year-old grandchild.
The family lives with others in a barracks-like structure on the plantation. Their room is partitioned into three and there is a separate kitchen area; there is of course no running water. She has to work to keep the accommodation. During the harvest, she gets less than €3 per bucket. Her pay in the off-season for cultivation and maintenance work is about €1.50 per day - for a family of eight.
There is a nurse and a dispensary but medicines have to be paid for at the company pharmacy.
Maria says she has no social life in the heart of the forest: "There is absolutely nothing to do." Asked about the political situation, she says: "When the Sandinistas were in power, there was more food, more work but since they are out of power, the situation has worsened."
Although one could describe conditions on the Los Placeres plantation as basic and, by European standards, quite primitive, the scene at the Santa Celia plantation in Matagalpa is worse. A huge wooden structure looks like a barn from the outside where supplies and implements might be stored. Looking inside, though, it is clear it is inhabited.
There are five "apartments": sleeping quarters on one side of the corridor, the "kitchen" on the other. I hear someone groaning in pain and coughing breathlessly from behind one of the doors. Tentatively, I edge it open to see what is wrong. The place is in near-total darkness but I can make out four layers of bunk beds, reaching to the ceiling. In one of them lies a person - it is too dark to see if it is a man or woman - who has been burnt in an accident with boiling water earlier in the day and is now lying down to recover. No proper medication or treatment was available for the burn.
The corridor, too, is very dark but someone has put some stones together and built a fire with sticks. Rice is cooking in a pot on the fire and a 10-year-old girl, Marisela Acuna, stirs it dutifully with a large spoon. Her mother, Vicenta Gutierrez Acuna, says Marisela is one of 11 children. She adds proudly that "all of them are alive".
The Acuna family are seasonal workers and, when the coffee picking is done, they will work elsewhere, in the sugar-cane fields or harvesting peanuts. Vicenta is entitled to be proud that all her children survive, given the conditions in which the family lives and works.
Child labour in Nicaragua is the focus of Trócaire's annual Lenten fund-raising campaign this year. But it clearly needs to be a focus for a much wider range of organisations and governments on a continuing basis. The sight of these exploited youngsters should be haunting the conscience of the world.
Deaglán de Bréadún travelled to Nicaragua as a guest of Trócaire