Living in the Streets of El Alto

By
Edgar Villacorta Quisbert

To 4000 meters of the sea level, in the city of El Alto was born a child whom his

parents put the name of Marco that particular day of his birth. His parents, some honest

but poor people have been waiting some good months for the arrival of that day.

However the birth of Marco had provoked a terrible consequence for the family cause

his mother had died as a consequence of the absence of doctors at the moment of her

childbirth, this in part was due to the lack of medical attention of doctors who could

have saved his mother life at the location. For such reason, since then , his father heated

him and considered him as the cause of the misery of his life, so his dad started to drink

constantly arriving at home very drunk and yelling to everyone, for that reason his aunt

decided that she should take care of the child cause he didn’t care of what would happen

to his own child, this way was Marco raised up by his aunt, nevertheless the yells of his

father never stopped and for that, Marco had to create a more solid character from those

boys who had a family, more tranquil and more happy, by his part he had never seemed

to have known the meaning of the word Happiness, but just an approximation of it when

he smiled with some of his friends or neighbors of his street, but when he used to go

back home, he only remembered the misery of his life and for that reason he decided to

escape from his house.

Such event happened a day in which he turned 8 years old, this week he didn’t

even receive a simple congratulation for his birthday from anyone, besides his only real

friend a sheep who he used to call "Soft ball" have been killed by his father to be served

as a meal for the day of the remember of his birthday, the boy believed that his father

have done that with his will and certainly he did fine in believe that, cause that was the
awful truth and were those causes that resulted in his escape from his house. He took 10

Bolivianos from a tied bag with an aguayo cover of his aunt where he knew that she

used to keep her money, so he promised to himself just to take enough money to pay for

the bus and his way out to the city and that will cost 3 Bolivianos in a micro that used to

go to the city in the dawn of that day, the rest of the money was to eat at least

something, he thought, he could survive with that amount at least a week.

Once done the escape from his house, he arrived to the Ceja of El Alto, and that

was a shock because he watched a big change in the persons, cause they were acting

very different from the people of the location where he used to live, these persons were

moving around constantly almost without leaving a single space between these same

walking impatient people, bus-drivers, bus-speakers, newspaper sealers, sealers of cds,

of meals, street announcers, traffic officers giving whistles and getting closer to the

buses and mini buses, light trucks, and also he noticed that they were causing that more

cars couldn’t continue their way so for the first time in his life he really understood the

meaning of a Trancadera or translated Traffic Jam. In his way he found a place where

were selling noodles at the price of 1 Boliviano, he told to himself in his inner that yes I

can spend 1 boliviano although for that moment that was much since he only would stay

with 6 Bolivianos but he didn’t have choice, his stomach started to bother him then he

spent 1 boliviano in the “aji de fideo” or in english “Chili noodle” that a woman served

him in a dish with a spoon after eating voraciously and leaving the empty dish he felt

also that he was thirsty, so he spent another 1 boliviano to drink a coca cola mini and

then he stayed with only five Bolivianos and then his preoccupation grew and he get

concerned about it cause he thought that in the moment of his escape from home, 10

Bolivianos would be enough to be able to survive a week but at that moment he realized
that his calculation was erroneous since those 10 Bolivianos would not last more than a

day and even he had to count with the fact that he didn’t have a place to sleep, as the

need had affected him, he started to speak with a shoe-shine service boy or

“Lustrabotas”, the other boy had a similar age to his own and he asked him What he

used to do to be able to survive in the city?.

He told him that he was an orphan too and that in his case his parents

have died when he was 3 years old in a trip to “Los Yungas” and that he did not have

someone else and so he was raised up by a family by a time but they also had children

and for that reason the treatment was very difficult by part of her step-mother and his

step-brothers because they used to call him Bastard and the family seem to raise him to

be the service-man of all the family but as he was only a kid he just wanted to play but

the other children didn’t let him and what's more his step-parents gave him hard works

as cleaning the entire house, going shopping, carrying the enormous market bags alone

in most of the cases, and was in this last task that a day a seller woman have been

cheated in the change of money and when he returned home he was extremely punished,

he was beaten so much that he got a black eye and the following day he escaped, and

that way he learned to live in the street as a shoe-shine service.

Marco has heard the history with a lot of attention for being similar to his own,

this way also Marco told his history and both became friends. Then Roberto, that was

the name of the shoe-shine kid, proposed him to sleep with him and so he taught him to

sleep at squares of the city of El Alto or in places where they could avoid cold as places

under the bridges, the only problem was that there were many people that used to fight

for those spaces and in other places where they could pass the night with less cold in the
city. The problem was that one from always, and was that due to their age, cause they

were kids, they couldn’t face other groups, nevertheless he knew a group from which he

was a friend but he used not to get closer very often cause they used to consume drugs

with other groups, according to Robert was better to have certain protection instead of

not having any, however Marco y Roberto passed the first night together under a square.

That night both could not sleep because they had a long conversation about the life in

the streets and also of the one in the city.

The next day Roberto had woken up even earlier than the first sunshines

and that was because he could not tolerate anymore the cold, therefore he used to wake

up at that hour every day; both were with a lot of Cold. When Marco woke up, he was

dynamic cause he didn't know what he was going to do now, but that moment he was

sure about something, he was not going to go back home, he'd rather to die on the

streets of cold, or of infection or of whatever, but he knew that he had to do something,

then Roberto told him that he could work as a Bus speaker that he only needed to

memorize announcements to yell from the Minibuses and for that he had to go where

the minibuses and buses and micros were and to listen what the other children of

similar age used to do, then also he learnt what was a bus-speaker-man or kid in his

case, and as a result of having spent his last coin, he didn't have other choice more than

introducing himself to the bus drivers and tell them if they didn’t want a Voceador who

could fill his empty sits, was like that how he started to win his first cents in the city but

this generally was consumed in his meals and in part because he used to spend good

time of the day following Roberto but one day Roberto told him that he should save

some money so he could buy a box-shoe to become a shoe-shine service man and with

that he could earn more money, spite of the advise that Roberto gave him, he didn’t
listen him, until another day when happened another critical moment for Marco and is

that Roberto got sick for the cold and that he collected for having lived much more time

in the streets.

Roberto had gotten pneumonia and after a month of coughing a lot of

blood, he was weak and then he died. The saddest thing was that Marco will never

know of his death and also he will never see Roberto again, he thought he may have left

him maybe because he thought was a trouble for him, but in fact Roberto had died on a

street in the anonymity without family and without friends. Marco in the following days

got despaired but he worked more as a bus-speaker kid to be able to eat and to save

some money until a day could make what his friend advised him, and to be able to live

in the streets of El Alto as a shoe-shine man.