I V Public Childhoods: Street Labor, Family, and the Politics of Progress

Public Childhoods: Street Labor, Family, and the Politics of Progress in Peru by Leigh M. Campoamor Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Orin Starn, Supervisor ___________________________ Diane Nelson ___________________________ Irene Silverblatt ___________________________ Rebecca Stein ___________________________ Elizabeth Chin Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 i v ABSTRACT Public Childhoods: Street Labor, Family, and the Politics of Progress in Peru by Leigh M. Campoamor Department of Cultural Anthropology Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Orin Starn, Supervisor ___________________________ Diane Nelson ___________________________ Irene Silverblatt ___________________________ Rebecca Stein ___________________________ Elizabeth Chin An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Cultural Anthropology in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 Copyright by Leigh M. Campoamor 2012 Abstract This dissertation focuses on the experiences of children who work the streets of Lima primarily as jugglers, musicians, and candy vendors. I explore how children’s everyday lives are marked not only by the hardships typically associated with poverty, but also by their need to respond to the dominant notions of childhood, family roles, and urban order that make them into symbols of underdevelopment. In particular, I argue that transnational discourses about the perniciousness of child labor, articulated through development agencies, NGOs, the Peruvian state, the media, and everyday interpersonal exchanges, perpetuate an idea of childhood that not only fails to correspond to the realities of the children that I came to know, but that reinscribes a view of them and their families as impediments to progress and thus available for diverse forms of moral intervention. I ground my analysis in a notion that I call “public childhoods.” This concept draws attention to the ways that subjectivities form through intersecting mechanisms of power, in this sense capturing nuances that common terms such as “street children” and “child laborer” gloss over. Children, I show, are a symbolic site for the articulation of the kinds of classed, raced and gendered differences that characterize Lima’s contemporary urban imaginary. As they bear the embodied effects of such discourses, I argue, children who work the streets also participate – if in subtle and seemingly counterintuitive ways – in these everyday ideological struggles into which they are drawn. My dissertation is based on twenty-two months of fieldwork in Peru, in addition to several one- and two-month periods of preliminary and follow-up research. As an ethnographer, my research consisted primarily of accompanying children as they went iv about their daily routines. Beyond “hanging out” in their workspaces, which included a busy traffic intersection in an upper-middle class district and public buses, I also spent a great deal of time with the children’s families, typically in their homes in Lima’s shantytowns and working-class neighborhoods. I also attended meetings and otherwise participated in institutional spaces such as NGOs, social movements, Congressional hearings, and advocacy groups. Finally, in order to gain a more long-term perspective on discussions and policies involving childhood, I conducted research in Lima’s historical archives. v Dedication Por y para mi familia. You know who you are. vi Contents Abstract..........................................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments .....................................................................................................................viii Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1. Vehicles of Exchange: Public Responsibility at a Busy Intersection ................ 36 Chapter 2. Troubling Families: Defensive Motherhood and Public Neglect ..................... 71 Chapter 3. Mobile Home: Performing Family on the Public Bus....................................... 116 Chapter 4. Impotent Adolescence: Arcade Addiction and Narratives of Family Breakdown ................................................................................................................................. 165 Chapter 5. The Identity Politics of Child Labor in an NGO Age ....................................... 210 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 256 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 260 Biography................................................................................................................................... 287 vii Acknowledgments This has been a tremendous journey, intellectually, emotionally and physically. Orin Starn, you have been the best advisor imaginable, not just due to your record turnaround time but also because you have patiently let me do my thing while also providing the structure that I often struggle to attain. You are not only a brilliant scholar and public intellectual, but you somehow make it all look so easy. I hope one day to be half as articulate and knowledgeable as you. Diane Nelson, thank you for your passion, energy and creativity, for your ability to see endless possibilities, and for inspiring me pedagogically. Irene Silverblatt, I value your incisive questions, your subtle yet unmistakable gestures of care, your poetic writing, and your continued love for Peru. Rebecca Stein, I admire your focus, your clarity, and your inability to waste words, and I appreciate the enthusiasm and excitement with which you have always approached me. Elizabeth Chin, thank you for consistently reaching out to me and including me, despite the distance, for showing me that there are many paths, for writing the best book about kids, and for being so damn funny. I would also like to acknowledge Kathryn Burns, Charlie Piot, Anne Allison, Ralph Litzinger, Louise Meintjes, Mack O’Barr, and John French for advising me in crucial ways. I thought graduate school was supposed to be a cut-throat social experience, but instead I found myself in the most supportive and collegial department. Thank you Holly Frances, Pat Bodager and Kelly Freeman for setting the tone, as well as for dealing with all of the bureaucracy. And beyond the department, I am grateful for Natalie Hartman, who helped to incorporate me into a vibrant interdisciplinary network of Latin Americanists and for being a good friend. My graduate work would not have viii been possible without the generous financial support I received from Duke University. I am grateful to the Graduate School, which provided with several fellowships and awards, the University Scholars Program and Tori Lodewick, and the Center for Latin American Studies. And, of course, thank you to my brilliant and loving colleagues, Dwayne Dixon, Alvaro Jarrin, Giles Harrison-Conwill, and Brian Goldstone, who have become some of my best friends in the world. Beyond the department and the classroom, so many people commiserated, collaborated and made their ways deep into my heart: Sara Appel, Fiona Barnett, Mitali Routh, Kristin Wintersteen, Shilyh Warren, Kinohi Nishikawa, Jesús Hidalgo Campos, Kate Costello, Beatriz Rodriguez, Ignacio Adriasola, Hollianna Bryan, Ken Maffitt, Lindsey Andrews, Iara Diaz Araujo, Jessica Levy, Hong-An Truong, Enver Casimir. Jatin Dua, Negar Mottehedeh, and Jacqueline Waeber. And to the emerging generation of cultural anthropologists, Stephanie Friede, Spencer Orey, Tamar Shirinidan, please don’t forget to open the third floor for me every once-in-a-while. Thanks to Durham, for being patient as I learned to love you and even call you home. And to my Durham peeps, especially Lori Glen and Erin Karcher, without whom I may never have truly gotten beyond the academic bubble. I am indebted to the therapists, healers, bartenders, and baristas who were an integral part of my wellbeing. Skylar Gudasz and Natalie Deyneka, who would have known that you two smartypants would have become two of my biggest supporters and favorite people to spend time with. Gracias totales to the people who make it such that Peru is my home, not simply my fieldsite, and who have supported me through very intense times: Vanadis Phumpiu and family, Charlie Smith, Alfredo Marquez, Pati Ríos, Celeste Zeña, Caroline Hawkins, ix Karim Capristán, Karen Bernedo, Ix, Adrian del Aguila, Rocío Trinidad, Pablo Nieto, Hugo Rodriguez, Myriam Vergaray, Piero Quijano, la familia Casusol and the Juanito crowd, Belen Arróniz, Silvia Mindreau, Andrés Longhi, Angélica Bayro, Miguel Angel Cuba, Eugenia Werner, Sandro Méndez, Francesca Delucchi, Valerio Ávila, Leslie Josephs, and Paola Herrera. I am deeply appreciative of the Peruvian academics who enthusiastically embraced me and advised me: the late Carlos Ivan Degregori, Victor Vich, Jeanine Anderson, Ponciano del Pino, and Alejandro Cussianovich. Gracias Neiser Núñez, Luz Silva, Juan Herrera, María

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