Ramon Cuen's Proposal

In Oaxaca, I found a group of kids running without direction, living as outcasts under the city. Their families send them to work on the streets. They clean the windows of cars when the red light stops them. They use almost all the money to buy drugs. They sniff different kinds of solvents and glue. Sometimes they use marijuana. They are between 12 and 22 years old. Almost all have been in jail. The police are always looking for them, even when they are clean. I want to capture a complete vision of their situation, follow their lives until they show me the end. I have wanted to capture the essence of their lives which has been forgotten.

I started this project in a workshop class. Since then I had been working on this project under the instruction of different Mexican photographers.

I began my relationship with the kids by meeting the leader of the group "El Mitra." He invited me to a popular bar. We drank a beer together as a symbol of friendship. Now he is gone, but because of that meeting all the kids accepted me as one of them.

Most of the kids are boys, with the exception of "La Guera" and "Rosita." One18-year-old teenager thinks he is Bruce Lee when he is high. When he was younger he used to be a really good basketball player, and since then everybody knows him as "El Jordan." "El Moreno", "El Saltarin", "El Chino". " El Payaso", "El Botanas" and 'El Chango" are some other characters.

I believe in the importance of documentary photography as a portrait of the social reality and as a memory of our time. With this project I will show the hard human condition of all these kids as an icon of poverty and the extreme conditions of life in the middle of the indifference of society.