Bogota is noted for its galladas, groups of about eight to fifteen children in 
which membership and leadership are fairly rigid. Although not free of 
violence and exploitation, galladas generally offer their members a measure 
of protection and emotional support. Outsiders commonly regard them as 
gangs of young thieves, and it is true that crime may be one of their means of 
survival. Within the gallada sharing a marijuana cigarette, below, the boy 
with close-cropped hair can be recognized as one who was detained by the 
police not long before. The police shave the heads of those they pick up, 
ostensibly for reasons of hygiene, but also to aid identification. 
two decades. This migration has been 
described by urban planner Edward 
Popko as a hunger-dictated “push” 
from the country rather than an eco- 
nomic “pull” from the city. Indus- 
trialization has not kept pace with this 
population shift, which has brought 
little more than a transfer of poverty 
from rural to urban areas. The forces 
of modern communication, transpor- 
tation, and national education have 
only heightened the effect. In addi- 
tion, the trend was exaggerated in Co- 
lombia owing to La Violencia, a period 
of primarily rural political violence 
and banditry that has been likened 
to a civil war. In search of safety, 
people were forced toward the cities, 
and those already there were forced 
to remain. Only Colombia’s coastal 
regions escaped the worst effects of 
this disruption, which began in 1948 
and lasted at least into the 1960s. 
With some 5,000 street children — 
there are no reliable statistics — Bo- 
gota has been called the capital of 
the abandoned child. The phenomenon 
is equally significant in Cali, Colom- 
bia’s third largest city, where the es- 
timated numbers run to over 1,000. 
Cali’s warmer and drier climate is 
more hospitable, and it is not uncom- 
mon to find children who have trav- 
eled hundreds of miles from Bogota, 
seeking the milder weather. A sam- 
pling of street children in Cali reflects, 
more accurately than a sampling from 
Bogota, Colombia’s great racial diver- 
sity and dispels the popular myth that 
only mestizo children (those of mixed 
Spanish-Indian descent) become gam- 
ins. Cali is the nation’s fastest-growing 
city, exemplifying the population pres- 
sure and poverty that contribute to 
gaminismo. With a population of little 
more than 100,000 in the 1950s, Cali 
has expanded to well over a million 
people. Migration accounts for most 
of this increase, and the swelling of 
slums has placed an unbearable bur- 
den on the city’s limited public works 
and social services. Despite an alarm- 
ing infant mortality rate (92 of every 
1,000 babies die in the first year of 
life, in contrast to 16 per 1,000 in 
New York City), more than half of 
Cali’s population is under eighteen 
years of age. 
Street children do not all share the 
same plight, but fall into three general 
types. The first and largest category 
consists of those children who main- 
tain some family connection although 
42 
