Artifact One: Mexico's Poverty

What is poverty? Poverty is the state of being extremely poor. There are people living in poverty all across the world, from India to Mexico to South Africa to the United States. Some places, like Mexico, poverty is more extreme than other places like The United States. 

The Census Bureau measures poverty by a families income, not including food stamps or housing subsidies, and by poverty thresholds such as size of the family and ages of the members. If the families total income is less than the poverty threshold, every person in that family is considered to be living in poverty. 

Poverty In Mexico

In Mexico, there are two types of poverty: regular poverty and extreme poverty. Adults and children that live in poverty may go days without eating and always wondering where their next meal will be.  Their houses are made out of scraps of garbage (if they even have a house) and most likely don't have electricity or running water. 

Mexico’s population has a large percentage of young people, currently about 20 million minors. Over half of these children live in poverty and 4 million of them in extreme poverty. In addition, more than 21 million children have little or no access to goods and services. There are also 20 million people in Mexico who live on less than two dollars a day. I know I wouldn't be able to survive on only two dollars a day. Would you be able to? 

Abuelita Chinta's house in comparison to today poverty
stricken houses.

Poverty extends beyond not eating for a day or not having running water. For example, about fourteen percent of Mexican children under the age of five, are stunted in development. This means their development is slowed down dramatically.  This is often a result of malnutrition. A stunted development is a life long issue.  Some kids may never over come that especially because it very unlikely they'll receive a decent education. Without a decent education, they won't get a decent job with a stable income which results in them living in poverty for the rest of their life. If there is a large population with stunted development, the literacy rate will not improve and it will cause Mexico's development to not progress any farther.  

In The Distance Between Us, Reyna, Mago and Carlos all lived in poverty while they were in Mexico. Their Abuelita Chinta's house was a shack. The house was just one large room which had dirt floors, the walls were made of scraps including cardboard and trash. (Picture above.)

Her other grandmother, Abuela Evila, house didn’t have running water. They’d pay to have someone deliver water to her house. Except Mago, Reyna and Carlos weren't allowed to use that water, they had to walk to the well everyday to get water for them to use in order to bathe. 

Their whole life in Mexico, whether it was with their grandmothers or their parents, their food supply was scarce. There were days they'd only eat one meal and other days they wouldn't eat at all. Sometimes their grandmother wouldn’t eat just, so she could make sure the children were fed. Mago, Carlos and Reyna wouldn't get lunch while they were at school.  They didn't have food to bring nor money to pay for a school lunch. Reyna specifically remembered her first day of school smelling the wonderful aroma of enchiladas and her stomach grumbling, because she didn't have anything to eat and no money to buy a lunch. When one of her classmates dropped a mango on the ground, Mago told Reyna to go pick it up for her.  But Reyna refused at least until everyone left.  Then she couldn't resist and she sunk her teeth into what she thought was a delicious mango. Reyna also recalled how Mago would always search for half-eaten fruit or a lollipop on the ground, whenever they had to run errands. 

According to the study in the article, southern Mexican states have the highest child food-insecurity. Today, Guerrero, where the Grande family lived in Mexico, 77.1% of people under the age of eighteen live below the poverty line. While reading this article, it helped me realize how serious Mexico's issue is with poverty and how many million lives it dramatically effects.

Reyna's parents left Mexico to establish a better life in America which included escaping poverty. It meant having running water, electricity, food on the table at every meal, a TV and other house hold appliances like a refrigerator. Still today, a main factor for immigration is escaping poverty in Mexico and hopefully living a poverty free life in America.