Disparity

Yesterday I met a family that Josh has been photographing. Pedro, the father, and Rocio, the mother, wash windshields at a busy intersection from around 9 AM to 5 or 6 PM every day of the week. When the light turns red, and the cars have stopped, Rocio and Pedro run out into the street and begin beckoning to drivers with their water bottles filled with soapy water. They usually have time for one, maybe two windshields before the light turns green. Normally people give 1 to 2 pesos for Rocio and Pedro's services (around 10 to 15 cents) but there are also those who give nothing.
Meanwhile, Rocio and Pedro's two children sit in the median of this busy intersection. Estrella, who will be 3 in December, plays with anything that she can find of interest on the ground. Yesterday she had twenty flakes of confetti, red and silver, and we exchanged them back and forth as regalos (gifts) for quite some time. She comes dangerously close to the edge of the median as cars whiz by, but has managed somehow to stay "safe."
Juan Carlos was lying in the stroller next to us, squacking occasionally. Juan is extrememly malnourished with, perhaps, a few other problems as well. At the age of one, he cannot sit, let alone crawl or stand. His legs and fingers appear abnormally long and skinny, and his belly is enlarged. He lays in the stroller every day for hours at a time with a soiled diaper, sucking on a bottle with a mixture of formula and questionable water. The whole family is dark from hours of exposure to sun, and dirt. The air they breathe is ridden with exhuast.
They spend their days working so that they can make enough to pay for their 70 pesos a night room in a dilapitated apartement complex of sorts. They cannot manage to make enough to get ahead. The whole family sleeps on the floor, while Pedro's mom and 19-year-old niece sleep on a small bed. The apartment is filthy, and roaches crawl everywhere.
I cannot imagine living this life day after day. I was maddened and frustrated by it all as I left the family, knowing that examples such as this exist all over this city and world.