I Am A Taxi

·        See the interrelationship between globalization, democratization and human rights?

The book I read is I Am A Taxi, this book has some perfect examples for some points from statement above. But not necessarily related to the exact statement or any others. In this book there is multiple times where human rights are shown and how they are being broken and the rights abused.

I Am A Taxi is a book about a young boy that has to go live in prison with his mother and younger sister. The reason they live in jail is because they got accused of smuggling drugs on a bus ride, and the children had nowhere to go so they were granted permission to live in the prison with their parents. The main character of this story is a young boy named Diego; he is a very smart, ambitious boy who has to take care of his younger sister at times and do chores for his mother in the jail. At the prison they have a “taxi” system where boys who are old enough to do chores get paid Boliviano for going around in Cochabamba to deliver mail or buy things for the women in prison who can’t go outside. Diego was one of the little boys who got to be a taxi. Hence the title I Am A Taxi.

Diego had gotten into some trouble at the prison when he couldn’t find his little sister that he was supposed to be watching over, so he tried to sneak around looking for her but he accidently dropped a bouncy ball into an older woman’s pot of soup that she was making to sell. The woman got mad and told the little boy that he and his mother had to pay her enough money for the whole pot. So Diego decided that he had to get away and make money fast so that he and his mother wouldn’t have to go I debt.  Diego’s best friend had a fabulous idea on how he could do that. Diego had no idea what he would have to do but he was sure that Mando (his best friend) wouldn’t lie to him. So one morning a man named Rock came and picked them up so they could go to work. As soon as they got to the site the whole story turns into a nightmare for these young boys.

About half way through the book the boys have to deal with things that are unnatural for anyone to deal with. The worst part about it is that they are little boys having to make decisions that a thirty year old man should make. This part of the story shows how human rights are getting abused by the older men. Diego and Mando get dragged to a drug camp for the work that they thought they were going to make great money doing. But that was not the case Rock made them go through weeks of child labour. He didn’t give the children any say in what was going on. Whenever Diego talked back or even said anything that would intimidate Rock would find different ways to abuse him, “Rock crossed the clearing in two steps and struck Diego across the face.” (page 116) The reason that Rock had smacked him was because Rock had messed up on some math and Diego tried helping him because Diego was a very smart young man. But of course that made Rock feel threatened.

This book shows how human rights were being destroyed because the boys didn’t want to do any of the work but the older men knew how to trick them. Their feet hurt and they weren’t allowed to eat. But the men were drug dealers so they did what they knew how to do best. Give drugs to the kids, the drugs made them feel great and a live but they didn’t last for long, “Could we have something to eat... we will give you something better than food.... he rolled them cigarettes...it will give you the strength of 10 men...” Pages 117& 118. Whenever the boys were tired or hungry they just gave them a smoke. This was unfair to do because they were manipulating the boys.

Those are just a few examples that I could find of how the older men used and abused the young boys. They had threatened them many times with their lives. They would hold guns up to their heads or backs to make them scared so they would do whatever they wanted them to do. I realise that I didn’t answer the question but this book was not related to globalization, or democracy’s.  Nobody helped these boys the only thing in the book that mentioned anything about another part of the world was when they talked about where they would sell the drugs and to who. This book was a wonderful example of a dictatorship because there was one man in charge and everyone took orders from him. Nobody else got say because they just wanted to get paid. 

The book was a good book to read about the misfortunes of others and how in other countries how rights and rules are abused. It was a wonderful piece of writing that taught me a bunch about how not to trust people and that there are some very cruel people in the world. It opened my eyes to what types of people are out there and what I should watch out for and what not to do.