Not political, it still needs to be seen: Bolivian boy, 10, survives icy hunt for mother

[Judi Lynn]

Bolivian boy, 10, survives icy hunt for mother
AP
Friday, 13 May 2011

A boy aged 10 who ran away from his home in Bolivia's highlands to try to find his mother has ended up in Chile after a 620-mile journey in freezing temperatures without food and water while hidden in a container under a lorry.

Franklin Villca Huanaco was trying to reach Cochabamba in central Bolivia, where his mother had been serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for transporting chemicals used to make cocaine. He hid in a metal container roughly the length of a person among the lorry's wheels, thinking it was heading to the Bolivian city. But it was heading for Iquique in northern Chile. "I wanted to see my mother," the boy told Chilean state television.

Authorities said the boy was lucky to survive the two-day journey crossing Bolivia's Andean altiplano, where temperatures at night can fall below freezing. He was wearing only shorts, a shirt and ragged shoes. The driver did not know he was there. A woman found the boy wandering the streets of Alto Hospicio township, which neighbours Iquique.

Franklin's parents were separated, and he had been living with his father and four siblings in Oruro, Bolivia. His mother, Zenobia Huanaco, was released from prison a month ago and had been working in the countryside outside Cochabamba. She said: "I've never been separated from my son until I went to jail."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bolivian-boy-10-survives-icy-hunt-for-mother-2283235.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Guardian: Bolivian boy who tried to find his mother ends up in Chile

Bolivian boy who tried to find his mother ends up in Chile
10-year-old climbed into a container beneath transport truck thinking it would take him from Andean highlands to Cochabamba, where his mother was jailed
Rory Carroll, Latin America correspondent guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 12 May 2011 06.55 BST

Franklin Villca Huanaco ran away from home to be reunited with his mother but hid in a truck going the wrong way and wound up in a foreign country lost, frozen, ragged - and apparently successful.

The 10-year-old clambered into a metal container beneath a transport truck thinking it would take him from Oruro in Bolivia's Andean highlands to the city of Cochabamba, where his mother was jailed for three and a half years for transporting chemicals to make cocaine.

Instead he emerged two days and 620 miles later on Chile's Pacific coast. Famished and disoriented, wearing only trousers, a pullover shirt and battered shoes, Huanaco wandered the streets of Alto Hospicio, a poor community just outside the city of Iquique.

Three strokes of luck then supplied the story with a happy ending. The boy was taken in by a local woman, Margarita Valencia, who fed and looked after him along with her other children. Chilean state TV picked up on the tale and broadcast his heartfelt plea: "I wanted to see my mother."

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/12/bolivian-boy-find-mother-chile

[Peace Patriot]

2. Heartrending story! Made me cry! I'm so happy he survived and some kind woman

noticed him and took him in.

I hope this results in some good changes in Bolivia--for imprisoned mothers (and fathers, too) and their children, and against the "war on drugs" and the criminalisation of the poor that is its inevitable result.

There's hope in Bolivia--a much more solid democracy than our own--that this "war on the poor" can be ended. They've already taken some steps--legalizing the coca leaf, throwing the DEA out, ending the toxic herbicide spraying. The Morales government has done the right thing whenever they can. I know it's a dicey business. The war profiteers are counting on this backup gravy train and they and the corporates hate Morales. But if anyone can lead the region to end the "war on drugs," it is him.