Who Are These Children?

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 had to cut through the 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.

 

(Refrain)

Who are the 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?

 

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.

 

(Refrain)

 

The gangs in Honduras and Guatemala

Are recruiting young children to join them 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 actually not homegrown entities

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.

 

(Refrain)

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?

(8-17-14)