Moisés Liranzo is 14 years old and went to the street to shine shoes when he was eight. 13-year-old Aquiles dropped out of college to sell fruit with his father. Kiorranny, 12, has taken on housework in her home and looks after her younger siblings. Their daily struggles, their truncated dreams, their fears and their hope for a better future are detailed in Canillitas, a documentary about boys and girls in the Dominican Republic who are forced to work and, in many cases, drop out of school. The film currently being shown in Madrid is an initiative of the religious organization Misiones Salesianas, which has been developing educational projects with children in need in the Caribbean country since 1985.
This 21-minute documentary, directed by three-time Goya Prize winner Raúl de la Fuente, introduces the viewer to the daily problems of six working boys and girls who are victims of poverty, violence, abandonment of their families, etc. Not enough, that Contempt for a society that sees them as dangers or thieves. “They are not criminals, they are just victims of an abusive society,” defended the Salesian missionary Juan Linares, founder of the Canillitas de Don Bosco program, at the presentation of the documentary in Madrid.
Canillitas, diminutive of canillas (legs), is used in several Latin American countries to describe minors who earn their living on the streets. The film also aims to reflect the dreams of these boys and how their time in the religious organization’s project changed their lives. Liranzo is proof of that. The boy, who was present at the premiere of the documentary in Madrid, says that at the age of eight he started working on his own initiative to pay for his grandmother’s medication. “When I left school, I went to the street with my older brother to shine boots. My parents didn’t know. “My mother used to beat me so I wouldn’t do it, but one day she saw it wasn’t worth it,” he explained. The youngest eventually neglected his studies so much that he could neither read nor write. Four years ago, at the recommendation of a friend who also worked on the streets, Liranzo reached out to the Canillitas program with Don Bosco for help. He resumed his education and now dreams of becoming an “artist and lawyer”.
Protagonists of the documentary “Canillitas” in a scene from the film promoted by Misiones Salesianas
“Many of these working children come from families with adults who have little or no education and therefore cannot work and earn enough income to maintain a home. Minors do not feel that their rights are being violated, it is helpful for them,” explains Karen Montás, head of the Canillitas de Don Bosco program in the country.
According to Unicef there are 160 million boys and girls between the ages of 5 and 17 worldwide who work and are denied the opportunity to learn. “Many children in this situation end up dropping out of school; They think they will be embarrassed because they are older than the others, are repeating a year, and are not at the top of their class. These things demotivate them,” explains Montás. The law in the Dominican Republic has banned child labor since 2003, but the documentary shows that it is normalized and widespread in the country.
“My father tells me that I have to work to avoid being a thief,” admits Aquiles, who sells fruit on the street with his father. And when asked where the children should be, the boy proudly answers: “Working.”
It is virtually impossible to estimate the extent of the child labor problem in the Caribbean country as there are no reliable and up-to-date official figures. According to the Salesian Mission, 340,000 minors work in the Dominican Republic. The latest official figures available come from the 2014 ENHOGAR MICS survey. According to this document, 12.8% of the population aged between 5 and 17 worked that year. But these are statistics that are almost 10 years old and in which Liranzo and the rest of the protagonists of the documentary were never involved.
The documentary “Canillitas”, which gives them unprecedented visibility, will be shown in Rome, Vienna, Warsaw, Brussels and Lisbon in the coming days and will then be broadcast on online platforms.
You can follow Future planet In TwitterFacebook, Instagram and TikTok and subscribe to our newsletter here.