The surprise was in the setting. Men in white make-up had performed before the exotic dancer took the stage. This was a circus, literally.

The Pan American Circus, to be exact. One of the many roaming troops that visit towns across rural northeastern Brazil, they pulled into Santo Antônio de Jesus, a city in the interior of the state of Bahian, on the weekend of March 10th.

The crowd of around 50 people that had gathered outside the circus entrance for the 7:30 evening show consisted of several families with their children, a few adolescent couples and one old man.

Once inside, they stepped into a concessions area just outside the big red tent. The booths offered cotton candy in the traditional pink, popcorn, soda and candy apples, even bits of bacon in white paper bags.

Peter Pan in a Tent 

A strobe light began flashing and the crowd filled the bleachers. Beyond the bleachers were the expensive seats – a set of white plastic chairs set in front of the performance area.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to The Pan America Circus", said the voice over the loud speaker.

First came the clowns. Wearing the universal clown costume – baggy pants, white makeup near the mouth, red plastic nose, neon plaid shirt – these clowns spoke in an exaggerated singsong Bahian accent, and crammed more slang into their vocabulary than wannabe rappers. They stumbled around stage, tripping, falling, shouting and squeaking out jokes – skillfully drawing laughs from both the children and adults in attendance.

While the show moved on to a cowboy who wowed the crowd with his twirling lassoes, a moreno or brown-skinned boy approached a woman in the front row who was aiming her digital camera. The boy appeared to be around 7-years old

"Does that cell phone take pictures?" he asked.

By the time the woman responded "yes," the boy had a companion.

He eagerly joined in, tapping the camera and asking, "Can you fit the whole circus in there?"

They were circus children – the children of the older performers and vendors. The first boy looked at the stage anxiously. "I have to go now because I’m going to go work," he said before disappearing behind the curtain.

The announcer introduced him as "Roque Junior". Billy Ray Cyrus’s ballad "My Achy Breaky Heart" tested the limits of the sound system and Roque Junior hopped and high stepped his way through a line dance. His black bushy hair flopped when he jumped; his smile seemed as natural as the shine in his brown eyes. The crowd loved it.

Then came something much more troubling. A small girl began climbing a red cord that was hanging down from the ceiling.

The announcer declared in an omniscient voice, "Ladies and Gentlemen, look at our youngest performer… she is only 3-years old!"

Cláudia, as I will call her, was dressed in white tights, a red silk skirt with silver lining and a stringy top fixed with blue sequins that seemed alien on her small pale shoulders. Her socks had a cartoon figure on the ankle and little red hearts by the toes.

She climbed the rope until she was about 20 feet above the audience. After a dramatic pause, she spun upside-down and released her hands, holding her place with her feet, which were wrapped in the cord.

When she slipped down the rope and into the arms of her watcher, who was the buff young man who had taken the stage as a cowboy minutes before, the audience stood up and applauded. Cláudia took a bow and looked directly at the woman with the digital camera as the flash went off.

The dancers followed Cláudia – their number began with laughter when adolescent girls skipped around the stage, and ended with catcalls when a "healthy" woman in her late 20s shimmied her way toward an eager fan that was old enough to be her grandfather.

Exploited But Loved

A law had been broken, even if no one had noticed. The circus children were working, which violated anti-child labor laws. Yet, in rural farms in the United States children work for their parents, shouldn’t circus children be allowed to do the same?

It is one thing to have a child work; it is another to deny them an education. Circus children travel from town to town with their parents, who were once circus children themselves. There is no time for school.

This is not just a Brazilian issue. Circus children in the United States miss school as well. In 1978, a writer with the Southeast Ohio Magazine interviewed circus children as part of a glowing feature article.

A 19 year-old man who had grown up working for a circus told the reporter, "The only thing I wish I could have done differently is going to public school. I went there in 4th and 5th grades and loved it. After that we always worked in the winter."

For circus children in Southeast Asia, the situation is far worse. According to the charity The Ester Benjamin’s Trust, human traffickers purchase boy and girls from villages across rural India and Nepal and then sell them to circuses.

The traffickers pay the desperately poor and often-illiterate parents the equivalent of between 40 and 60 dollars and promise that they will give the children a "better life". Once the children enter the circus, they are kept under lock and key. Sex traffickers use similar methods.

The children of The Pan American Circus were not taken from their parents, however – they live and perform with their families. Say what you will of the arrangement, but as Janet Reno can attest, any politician that orders the seizure of a family’s child will quickly be seen as a cruel oppressor, no mater how noble their original intentions.

There is also a question of cultural rights, if you agree with that notion to begin with. The circus is a tradition, passed on from "generation to generation". If some indigenous families have the right to keep their children out of the public school system, on what grounds could circus families be forced to enroll their children?

But the small family circus is dying a slow death. In her thorough and compelling dissertation on the history of family circuses in Brazil, "The Circus, Its Art and Knowledge", writer Erminia Silva tells how the circus tradition died out in her own family. As she writes, between the 1940s and 1950s her family stopped teaching the circus trade to the youngest generation. In an interview, her father said, "We didn’t want you to learn anything about the circus because afterwards we wouldn’t be able to get you out of there."

When they were old enough to start school, Silva and her siblings were sent away from the circus. "Each of us were sent to a relative who had a fixed address," writes Silva. "So we could begin our studies and build a ‘different future’, ‘better’ than the life our parents had inherited."

Small circuses continue to struggle on in rural Brazil. Only the largest and most elaborate circuses visit the major cities, where the entertainment industry is diverse and competitive.

Family circuses like Pan American are struggling to survive, and in their desperation, they have abandoned the circus’s traditional sensuality in favor of soft porn, just as they have started to incorporate younger and younger children into their acts – an unfortunate combination.

Roque Junior, for his part, had no doubts about his future. When asked if he wanted to continue working in the circus when he grows up, he responded, "I want to be a tight rope artist. I love the circus. I was born for this."

If Claudia’s act was any indication, Roque Junior may have the chance to walk the tight rope well before he becomes an adult. His career path was set at birth, but his profession is dying.

Related Information:

For more information on The Ester Benjamin’s Trust efforts to combat human trafficking in circus in India, go to their program web page at http://www.ebtrust.org.uk/site/circus.htm

Erminia Silva’s dissertation on the history of the family circus in Brazil, "The Circus, Its Art and Knowledge, The Circus in Brazil from the 19th Century to the Middle of the 20th" is available in Portuguese here: http://www.pindoramacircus.arq.br/publicacoes/bibliografia/tesemina.htm

Jared Goyette scrapes by as a freelance writer in Santo Antônio de Jesus, Bahia, Brazil. His blog can be found at http://bahiacorrespondent.blogspot.com/ and his email is jaredmgo [at] gmail – dot – com.

The program, coordinated by the Ministry of Social Development and Hunger Alleviation, is present in 314 Brazilian municipalities in 26 states. It proposes the development of measures designed to look after children, adolescents, and the families involved in sexual violence.

According to the Ministry’s national coordinator of the Sentinel Program, Maura Luciani Conceição, expansion of the program should be discussed at the meeting.

The program, which was created in 2001, provides educational guidance, permanent multiprofessional accompaniment, psychosocial and legal support, and shelter for 24 hours, if necessary.

Between 2004 and July, 2005, the Sentinel Program received US$ 11.5 million (27.5 million reais) and provided assistance to 28,902 children and adolescents.

It should receive another US$ 3.4 million (8 million reais), beginning in August. These resources will make it possible to extend the project to another 150 municipalities.

ABr – www.radiobras.gov.br

Over half the children and adolescents who entered the federal government’s Program for the Eradication of Child Labor (Peti) abandoned activities related to agriculture and sidewalk commerce.

43.59% of a total of 568,608 beneficiaries came from agriculture, and 12.06%, from sidewalk commerce.

These data may be found in a pioneer study of the characteristics of Peti beneficiaries, released today by the Ministry of Social Development and Hunger Alleviation (MDS).

According to the survey, 247,871 children worked in the agricultural sector, and 68,558 were street vendors.

The third largest quantity was engaged in domestic labor (38,972 or 6.85%), followed by trash sorting (36,236 or 6.4%), and the food sector (4,433 or 4.3%).

Children were also removed from the areas of shining shoes, fishing, brickyards, porters, watching and cleaning cars, charcoal kilns, and mining.

The research was carried out between December, 2004, and April, 2005, with information from 2,011 municipalities, representing 72% of the municipalities in which the program is operating and 61% of the children and adolescents who are receiving assistance.

The data that were gathered will be used to facilitate the inclusion of all of the government’s social programs in a single register.

At present, the Peti is helping 930,824 children and adolescents between the ages of 7 and 15.

The program withdraws youngsters from unhealthy, dangerous, strenuous, or degrading activities and offers them a stipend of US$ 16.12 (40 reais) in urban zones and US$ 10.07 (25 reais) in rural areas.

The program also provides cultural and athletic activities during the period when the children are not at school by transferring US$ 4.03 (R$ 10) per Peti beneficiary to municipalities in urban zones and US$ 8.06 (R$ 20) in rural areas.

The government plans to extend coverage to a million youngsters by the end of the year.

Agência Brasil

Between 1995 and 2003, the number of working children and adolescents between the ages of 5 and 15 fell 47.5% in Brazil.

According to the National Household Sample Survey (Pnad 2003/IBGE), child labor in this age group decreased from 5.1 million to 2.7 million.

According to the study, the biggest reduction in child labor during the period occurred in Rio de Janeiro, where the number declined from 115 thousand to 38.7 thousand (66.4%).

Mato Grosso do Sul came in second. The Program for the Erradication of Child Labor began in 1996 in that state and the number of working children dropped from 68.6 thousand to 24.3 thousand (64.5%).

The only state in which there was an increase during this period was Roraima, where the number rose 117%, from 1,874 to 4,068.

The Northeast was the region in which the highest child labor index was registered: 11.2% of the children and adolescents in this region work.

The lowest index is in the Southeast, where 4.4% work, less than the national average of 7.5%.

ABr

Brazil’s subcommission on pedophilia and child pornography at the Secretatiat of Human Rights is drawing up a national plan to deal with the problem of Internet pedophilia.

“We need specific policies so we can coordinate action by the government and civil society to control this problem,” says Alexandre Reis, who coordinates the subcommission.

One proposal under study is a plan to improve the notification of denouncements so more reliable statistics on the problem of sexual abuse of minors can be obtained.

The subcommission consists of representatives of the government, civil society and international organizations.

“Youth struggle – for an end to impunity” was the theme of this year’s commemoration of the National Day to Combat the Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children and Adolescents.

The coordinator of the National Committee to Confront Violence against Children and Adolescents, Neide Castanha, considers it possible to eliminate sexual exploitation.

But for this to occur, she says, it is necessary to overcome not only impunity but also social inequality and exclusion. “It is of no avail to call a halt to impunity and continue to produce and reproduce boys and girls in conditions vulnerable to acceptance of the sex trade, that is, to offer their bodies as a condition of their survival,” she affirmed. 

In May, Brazil’s National Congress received the file “Araceli Never Again – 30 Years of Impunity in Brazil,” containing cases that have gone unpunished since 1973 of sexual violence against children and adolescents.

The publication was produced, with the Committee’s support, by the National Association of Child and Adolescent Protection Centers (Anced).

According to the president of the Association, Renato Roseno, it is not a study but, rather, a warning about the existence of impunity, with suggestions on how to combat this type of crime. “Impunity is the rule, not the exception,” he asserted.

The title of the file is a reference to an 8-year old girl, Araceli Santos, who was a kidnap, rape, and murder victim 31 years ago, in Vitória, Espí­rito Santo.

In 2000, on May 18, the anniversary of her death, the National Day to Combat the Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children and Adolescents was established by law.

One of the Association’s suggestions is to update the legislation dealing with sexual crimes. The legislation dates back to the 1930’s.

“Sexual crimes are currently grouped together as crimes against public morals. This is absurd, because they are crimes against human dignity,” Roseno emphasized.

He also suggests that the police and the judicial system be trained to handle crimes that involve sexual violence. “If a person is not well received, he or she will be victimized again,” he said.

He goes so far as to propose the creation of special courts to treat cases of sexual exploitation and abuse of children and adolescents.

Sexual violence against children and adolescents can take various forms. The most common are sexual abuse within the family itself and sexual exploitation for commercial purposes, such as prostitution, pornography, and trafficking.

When sexual violence against children and adolescents is suspected, it can be reported to police stations, Tutelary Councils, or Courts for Children and Youth. The Tutelary Councils visit the families, notify them, and analyze the background of each case.

If the accusation is confirmed, the Council passes it along to the Public Prosecutor’s Office. The Courts for Children and Youth can receive denunciations in municipalities that don’t have Tutelary Councils.

Agência Brasil