Lord of the Flies, 2018.
Via Miami Herald:
As Liliana picks lice from the tangled, thick hair of her boyfriend, Patricio, as they sit together on the sidewalk of a Caracas street, she’s also multi-tasking, keeping a watchful eye on her “family.” When a 10-year-old girl named Danianyeliz kneels down to drink water from a puddle, Liliana reproaches her, urging her to have a sip from a juice bottle they’ve just found in a garbage bag.
At 16, Liliana has become the mother figure for a gang of Venezuelan children and young adults called the Chacao, named after the neighborhood they’ve claimed as their territory. The 15 members, ranging in age from 10 to 23, work together to survive vicious fights for “quality” garbage in crumbling, shortage-plagued Venezuela. Their weapons are knives and sticks and machetes. The prize? Garbage that contains food good enough to eat.
Liliana has a quick, wide smile and goes by the nickname Caramelo. She takes charge of each day for the group, deciding how much food her “family” will consume and how much they will stash away for another day. She settles conflicts that flare up and gives a hug, a kiss or a pat on the back as needed.
“Caramelo is my mummy and Paola is my aunt,” declared Danianyeliz, a newcomer who joined the gang about a month ago. She left home, she said, because there was not enough food to go around. The “aunt” she referred to, Paola, is just 14 and another member of the gang.
Caramelo — who asked that the full names of the group’s members be withheld for fear that they will be targeted by police — has created a hierarchy within the Chacao gang. There’s an inner circle she calls the “small combo.” It includes her, Paola and seven other members who roam the city together to “recycle” black trash bags, meaning they search the bags for food and drink.
Whatever they find, they share. The rest of the gang is left outside of the leadership circle for various reasons — violent behavior, keeping food to themselves or sometimes a personal dislike.
But when it comes to defending their territory, all differences and antipathy are forgotten. Caramelo convenes all 15 members into the “big combo” to present a united front to gangs from different neighborhoods.
That’s how Caramelo’s gang took control of Chacao even though many members don’t come from the neighborhood — including Caramelo, who was born and raised in Junquito, a Caracas neighborhood in the mountains some 10 miles away.
A year ago, the gang was “stationed” around a supermarket at a mall called Centro Comercial Ciudad Tamanaco that generates tons of garbage. But a feared rival gang from the neighborhood Las Mercedes also wanted the garbage.
Caramelo’s gang was attacked and chased out of the zone. So they took their weapons — knives, slingshots, broken glass and machetes — and seized the nearby neighborhood, Chacao.
“At this point, we had enough members and we were organized. We pushed the other group out of here,” said gang member Patricio, 23, who added that the clashes with Las Mercedes group “toughened” them up.
The reason for the violent takeover, which in gang slang is called a “change of government,” was simple and sad — Chacao’s many restaurants offer a better chance to find food in the garbage.
HT: patechinois