It is 9 p.m. in one of the biggest cities in Brazil. Downtown, office workers enjoy the extended happy hour occupying dozens of tables on the sidewalk to share a beer. Walking among them is Jonas, a skinny little boy. He is 12 but looks like 10. 

He brings in his hands two boxes, one containing chocolate bars and the other with bubble gums. The adults, used to the presence of kids like him, pay little attention when he offers his products at “one for R$ 2 and 3 for R$ 5”. After a while, some people buy chocolate “to help the kid,” they say.

I want to interview him, but he is a practical little man and only agrees to talk to me if I buy some of his stuff. While I pick sweets from his boxes, I start my questions. I found out that he has been selling chocolate bars on the streets since he was 11, and he often stays until midnight.

When I ask why he is working instead of being in bed, he answers with some innocence: “This month we didn’t have enough money for the cooking gas.”

I can’t remember his real name (Jonas is a pseudonym), but I never forgot those words. They explain the difference between a kid who decides to sell some lemonade down the street to buy a fancy toy and a boy who has to work so his siblings and parents can eat.

Jonas is part of a sad reality in Brazil, the resistant numbers of working children that stagnated after decades of government efforts. He is a boy selling candies in the city, but we also have a significant amount of girls working as housekeepers and children of both genders working on the farms.

Most of them are also in school, but with the second journey, you can’t really expect straight A’s. It doesn’t take long until they quit classes in exchange for low-paying jobs, if they are lucky. If they are unlucky, the destination is the crime scene.

Poverty, child labour, low education levels and no perspective. This forms the basis of criminality all over the country. But some people manage to break the cycle. Antônio dos Santos, 53, for instance, is now a teacher. But when he was 8, he was selling fruits on the streets to help four younger siblings. What changed? At 16 he was selected for a social program that helped him to plan for his adult life. He started to practice sports activities and took a job as a cleaning staff. With the support he got, he was able to move up.

Today he is working to get other boys out of labour. “When you have an eight-year-old kid and send him to work instead of school, what future can they have?” he asks.

This is a shortened adapted translation of the original story, published in April 2014 in the Rolimã Magazine. The original can be found here.