Changes have rapidly emptied the hogar lately. Many girls have gone home with their families, ran away, or have been sent to other hogares for misbehaving. With the departure of so many, along went the drama. And working there since returning from Peru has become kind of quiet. Irma surprisingly got pulled out of the system and reintegrated into her family to live with her grandmother. That was a positive move for everyone just because she provoked so much of the violent attention she got from the other kids. She was bullied because nobody liked her and nobody liked her because she’d try to be a bully. In the end, Irma would always be the one laying face down in the dirt, belting out the loudest cries, ignored by everyone, staff and kids alike, because it was too much of an effort to get through to her. Seeing her go is so good for her, so good for the group in the house, and so much less stress for the tias who cared for her. As horrible as that comes across, there’s just not enough staff to work on the behavior and psychology of the kids all the time. For their own sanity, they get used to things, turn a blind eye, and let the moment pass instead.
Sisters Viviana and Isabel also went back home, which is where they probably should have been months ago. Just recently their parents got everything into place to be able to care for the girls without relying on the hogar. These are the type of kids in the system that go to their mom’s or dad’s every weekend, sometimes for weeks at a time like for summer vacation and winter break. They’re dressed in the latest fashion with cool jeans, sweaters, and hair accessories, and are given other presents like every visit is Christmas, always returning to the hogar with CD players, makeup, toys, and new school supplies. The parents are friendly and talkative with the tias, so the tias reciprocate by working with their parents, too. It’s evident that these parents are making strides to help care for their own kids, not just abandoning them completely or playing the role of the parent when they pop in a few times. The tias obviously don’t have a lot of respect for the other type of parent; the one who complains that their kid’s hair is full of lice or comes by to watch TV with their kid, but not help them with their homework. It's insulting to the woman hired to care 24-7 for their kid. Even though the women at the hogar provide a motherly role, it’s just too much work for one woman to be responsible for the cleanliness, development, and care for 10 or more kids.
Katrina and Adriana caused nights of problems when they ran away and wouldn’t return until way after their 9 o’clock curfew. Past 9 p.m., the tias just call the caribineros (police). The girls fully know the rules as well as the consequences, but kept running away, bored of life in the hogar, looking for any type of excitement in the streets. After a few nights of this, the director had the girls removed from this institution and put into another one. It’s well understood that if they run away, they don’t get to come back to the same hogar. The change is drastic because it means leaving their entire setup, their only sense of stability, their social status among whatever relationships they’ve built, and essentially their rank among others. They are forced to start from scratch and to fend for themselves in a new home which is a technique the system employs for many reasons. One is to keep the bad egg away from the others so as to not give younger ones any ideas about pulling the same stunt. And two is to psychologically and physically scare the kid who misbehaves by feeding them to the hungry wolves in another orphanage, although it’s more damaging than children’s services would ever advertise on their help the children homepage. There are initiations and a long ladder that must be climbed to establish where you stand. Worst of all, no one really protects you, so you learn to fight harder, stronger, rebel more, and cause more drama instead of having an adult who cares about you get to the real heart of the matter and get you back on track. Apparently, everyone is convinced that Katrina is now pregnant. The kids talk and the staff buys into it, following it up with comments like, “Yeah, I saw her the other day walking down the street. Looks like she has a belly.” I’ve seen speculation like that before with another girl, and even a more hardy appetite can’t gauge what only time can tell. Surprisingly, despite the rule, Adriana was invited back to the hogar after spending a few weeks in a temporary institution on the other side of town. I don’t know what set the two apart. They both even have other sisters at the hogar, and usually siblings of the same sex are kept together.
A few weeks later, Adriana and her older sister Veronica got pulled from the hogar for their bad attitudes and refusing to go to school. Adriana admitted she’s lived her whole life in a home and is sick of the system. She’s not motivated to do anything. I’ve tried to get to know her, but she’s hot and cold in a severe way. Veronica’s a different story though. Veronica and I have spent a ton of time together. We’ve been to the movies, seen art shows downtown at the museum, spent time with my mom when she came to visit. Veronica is a blooming artist and we talked about her jumping deeper into her drawing, painting, and participating in the photo project. We just had a conversation about how this 2-month workshop was going to start to take pictures and how interested she was in being a part of it. She knew she had to go to keep going to school if the staff would let me choose her as a participant, but it wasn’t a bribe, it would be a reward. A few days later, the staff was done with her and her sisters heaviness and they were taken away. The director and I even talked about how this kid refused to get up in the morning and go to school. I suggested how maybe I could come to the work earlier some mornings to escort her to school, which is a 40-minute bus ride away. Perhaps she just needed someone to care and to take her by the hand and accompany her. She’s 16. I was told that Veronica’s old enough to do it herself and that she has to learn the hard way because these kids don’t have parents to push them along in life. “I don’t feel sorry for them,” she said to me, and it definitely came out like a regurgitated speech someone else told her when she needed advice on how to manage the intensity of her job. At this point, nobody knows where the two older sisters have been placed. Fabiola, their younger sister who’s still at the hogar, seems to be all right on her own for now.
The good part about all of these changes is that a lot of violence in the hogar seems to have died down. The hitting and bullying is still there. Other girls are starting to assert themselves by taking control, moving up in rank by raising their hand at the younger ones. It’s definitely not as intense as when I first started working there though and having less bodies makes the environment so much more comfortable. The hogar can house up to 30 girls. Right now there’s space for 7. One of the tias said she thinks we’re not going to receive anyone else. For her sake I think it’s a wise idea. But I have the feeling that we’re about to get a group of new girls and the spaces will be filled.
So the youngest ones remain and a few of the older ones spend their days glued to the television after school watching telenovelas, talkshows, Rebelde, and Mekano. The other day a Chilean woman told me that the drama in Latin TV is so passionate and loud not necessarily because it’s mimicking the lives of Latin people, but to prepare them for how to react and what to expect when drama in their life really does hit. Looking at it that way, her theory kind of makes sense.
