Hormigón Armado street newspaper brings hope to Bolivia's shoeshine army
Hormigón Armado street newspaper brings hope to Bolivia's shoeshine army
Bolivian publication inspired by Big Issue aims to improve street workers' lives by turning them into vendors and tour guides
Sara Shahriari in La Paz
The Guardian, Friday 24 January 2014 15.14 EST
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Esteban Quispe, 11, puts his tools inside his shoeshine box after a six-hour shift on
the streets of downtown La Paz. Photograph: Dado Galdieri/Associated Press[/font]
Walking the cobbled streets of Bolivia's capital with scuffed or dirty shoes attracts a lot of attention from the hundreds of shoeshiners who work along the city's streets and plazas.
Wearing balaclavas and carrying wooden boxes filled with polish and brushes, shoeshiners are reviled by many as drug addicts and criminals, but their story is more often one of poverty, child labour, violence and homelessness. It is also a story you can read in the newspaper sold by a small group of shoeshiners to supplement their income.
The newspaper is the brainchild of Jaime Villalobos, who saw homeless people selling The Big Issue while he was studying natural resource management in Newcastle.
Now in its eighth year, the result of Villalobos's efforts is a publication called Hormigón Armado, a play on words that means both reinforced concrete and armed ant, representing the resilience of Bolivia's street people.
"One time a well-dressed woman told me: 'You lazy shit, why don't you get a job?'" shoeshiner Juan José Poma, 33, says in an interview published in a recent issue. "What hurts most is when people ask me why I don't have a job when I'm shining shoes or selling candy."
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/24/street-newspaper-bolivian-shoeshine-army-big-issue