Grade-schooler Tito loved going to school
To learn division and multiplication.
He tried to ignore the violence around him
But lived each day with trepidation.
He cut through an El Salvadorian town
To get to his school—a daily trek.
He constantly encountered violent street gangs—
Each frightful day a reality check.
One day Tito failed to come home.
The next morning grimly revealed
The poor school child’s dismembered body
Lying in an abandoned field.
Lucas and Marco feared for their lives,
In their small town in El Salvador,
Where violence governed their daily existence
As ruthless street gangs carried out their war.
When the boys’ mother was gunned down before them,
Fearing they’d be next, the brothers thenceforth
Left their home and their few belongings
And started on a long journey north.
Traveling hundreds of miles with no money
To leave a place of chaos and disorder
Would be a daunting task, along with
The added uncertainty at our country’s border.
The gangs in Honduras recruit young children.
In Guatemala they do so as well.
Some kids as young as eight or nine
Serve as drug runners from what we hear tell.
Two of the Central American gangs
That helped to create this horrible mess
Were not homegrown entities at all
But got their start HERE in the U.S.
How sad it is to see children suffer!
How helpless one feels in solving the matter!
But merely doing lip service with no action
Means nothing; it’s worthless. It’s just idle chatter.
Who are these children, fleeing their homes—
Fleeing the lands where violence reigns?
Who are these kids whom the world has let down—
Whose hope for escape is all that remains?
- by Bob B