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 The catcalls began the instant the dancer turned around. Dressed in black knee high boots, black thong, black fishnet stockings, and strangely, with black cloth rings around her eyes - she backed up toward the crowd, shaking her sagging goods as she went. An old man had moved his chair up to the edge of the stage, and now he leaned back in pleasure. There was nothing strange about any of this.
The surprise was in the setting. Men in white make-up had performed before the exotic dancer took the stage. This was a circus, literally. The Pan American Circus, to be exact. One of the many roaming troops that visit towns across rural northeastern Brazil, they pulled into Santo Antônio de Jesus, a city in the interior of the state of Bahian, on the weekend of March 10th. The crowd of around 50 people that had gathered outside the circus entrance for the 7:30 evening show consisted of several families with their children, a few adolescent couples and one old man. Once inside, they stepped into a concessions area just outside the big red tent. The booths offered cotton candy in the traditional pink, popcorn, soda and candy apples, even bits of bacon in white paper bags. Peter Pan in a Tent A strobe light began flashing and the crowd filled the bleachers. Beyond the bleachers were the expensive seats - a set of white plastic chairs set in front of the performance area. "Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to The Pan America Circus", said the voice over the loud speaker. First came the clowns. Wearing the universal clown costume - baggy pants, white makeup near the mouth, red plastic nose, neon plaid shirt - these clowns spoke in an exaggerated singsong Bahian accent, and crammed more slang into their vocabulary than wannabe rappers. They stumbled around stage, tripping, falling, shouting and squeaking out jokes - skillfully drawing laughs from both the children and adults in attendance. While the show moved on to a cowboy who wowed the crowd with his twirling lassoes, a moreno or brown-skinned boy approached a woman in the front row who was aiming her digital camera. The boy appeared to be around 7-years old "Does that cell phone take pictures?" he asked. By the time the woman responded "yes," the boy had a companion. He eagerly joined in, tapping the camera and asking, "Can you fit the whole circus in there?" They were circus children - the children of the older performers and vendors. The first boy looked at the stage anxiously. "I have to go now because I'm going to go work," he said before disappearing behind the curtain. The announcer introduced him as "Roque Junior". Billy Ray Cyrus's ballad "My Achy Breaky Heart" tested the limits of the sound system and Roque Junior hopped and high stepped his way through a line dance. His black bushy hair flopped when he jumped; his smile seemed as natural as the shine in his brown eyes. The crowd loved it. Then came something much more troubling. A small girl began climbing a red cord that was hanging down from the ceiling. The announcer declared in an omniscient voice, "Ladies and Gentlemen, look at our youngest performer... she is only 3-years old!" Cláudia, as I will call her, was dressed in white tights, a red silk skirt with silver lining and a stringy top fixed with blue sequins that seemed alien on her small pale shoulders. Her socks had a cartoon figure on the ankle and little red hearts by the toes. She climbed the rope until she was about 20 feet above the audience. After a dramatic pause, she spun upside-down and released her hands, holding her place with her feet, which were wrapped in the cord. When she slipped down the rope and into the arms of her watcher, who was the buff young man who had taken the stage as a cowboy minutes before, the audience stood up and applauded. Cláudia took a bow and looked directly at the woman with the digital camera as the flash went off. The dancers followed Cláudia - their number began with laughter when adolescent girls skipped around the stage, and ended with catcalls when a "healthy" woman in her late 20s shimmied her way toward an eager fan that was old enough to be her grandfather. Exploited But Loved A law had been broken, even if no one had noticed. The circus children were working, which violated anti-child labor laws. Yet, in rural farms in the United States children work for their parents, shouldn't circus children be allowed to do the same? It is one thing to have a child work; it is another to deny them an education. Circus children travel from town to town with their parents, who were once circus children themselves. There is no time for school. This is not just a Brazilian issue. Circus children in the United States miss school as well. In 1978, a writer with the Southeast Ohio Magazine interviewed circus children as part of a glowing feature article. A 19 year-old man who had grown up working for a circus told the reporter, "The only thing I wish I could have done differently is going to public school. I went there in 4th and 5th grades and loved it. After that we always worked in the winter." For circus children in Southeast Asia, the situation is far worse. According to the charity The Ester Benjamin's Trust, human traffickers purchase boy and girls from villages across rural India and Nepal and then sell them to circuses. The traffickers pay the desperately poor and often-illiterate parents the equivalent of between 40 and 60 dollars and promise that they will give the children a "better life". Once the children enter the circus, they are kept under lock and key. Sex traffickers use similar methods. The children of The Pan American Circus were not taken from their parents, however - they live and perform with their families. Say what you will of the arrangement, but as Janet Reno can attest, any politician that orders the seizure of a family's child will quickly be seen as a cruel oppressor, no mater how noble their original intentions. There is also a question of cultural rights, if you agree with that notion to begin with. The circus is a tradition, passed on from "generation to generation". If some indigenous families have the right to keep their children out of the public school system, on what grounds could circus families be forced to enroll their children? But the small family circus is dying a slow death. In her thorough and compelling dissertation on the history of family circuses in Brazil, "The Circus, Its Art and Knowledge", writer Erminia Silva tells how the circus tradition died out in her own family. As she writes, between the 1940s and 1950s her family stopped teaching the circus trade to the youngest generation. In an interview, her father said, "We didn't want you to learn anything about the circus because afterwards we wouldn't be able to get you out of there." When they were old enough to start school, Silva and her siblings were sent away from the circus. "Each of us were sent to a relative who had a fixed address," writes Silva. "So we could begin our studies and build a 'different future', 'better' than the life our parents had inherited." Small circuses continue to struggle on in rural Brazil. Only the largest and most elaborate circuses visit the major cities, where the entertainment industry is diverse and competitive. Family circuses like Pan American are struggling to survive, and in their desperation, they have abandoned the circus's traditional sensuality in favor of soft porn, just as they have started to incorporate younger and younger children into their acts - an unfortunate combination. Roque Junior, for his part, had no doubts about his future. When asked if he wanted to continue working in the circus when he grows up, he responded, "I want to be a tight rope artist. I love the circus. I was born for this." If Claudia's act was any indication, Roque Junior may have the chance to walk the tight rope well before he becomes an adult. His career path was set at birth, but his profession is dying. Related Information: For more information on The Ester Benjamin's Trust efforts to combat human trafficking in circus in India, go to their program web page at http://www.ebtrust.org.uk/site/circus.htm Erminia Silva's dissertation on the history of the family circus in Brazil, "The Circus, Its Art and Knowledge, The Circus in Brazil from the 19th Century to the Middle of the 20th" is available in Portuguese here: http://www.pindoramacircus.arq.br/publicacoes/bibliografia/tesemina.htm Jared Goyette scrapes by as a freelance writer in Santo Antônio de Jesus, Bahia, Brazil. His blog can be found at http://bahiacorrespondent.blogspot.com/ and his email is jaredmgo [at] gmail - dot - com.
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This is sending out all the wrong signals and heaven knows what some people must be thinking. Children are a priority and should be protected NOT exploited for cheap thrills.
If this continues you will all be sorry. This is monstrous and is morally wrong.