Next thing they're going to prohibit...
Next thing they're going to prohibit is to be poor, or what?
First, street children selling agua de coco and pasteles, working as limpia botas or limpia parabrisas are no criminals (delinquentes). They seem to do what so many Dominicans don't... trying to survive by working.
Exploited by their parents? Sure, they bring money home, but it's not like they are getting rich on their kids selling agua de coco, now is it. I will not say that some desgraciado dad will not spend all of good part of it on liquor and beat the poor kid up as part of the "fun". But these families need help and solutions first.
How many American kids in the grand ol' South have been picking cotton until their finger were bleading so they couldn't even hold a pen at school anymore. And they where black and white and this went on way into the 50's and 60's? Would we dare to distort history and claim that they were exploited by their parents or that this kids were criminals??? (Read Johnny Cash's and Carl Perkin's books if you care for an enjoyable kick of history memory.). Now, I agree, that wasn't such an unpleasant sight... after all it was just down South in them cotton fields... not on 5th Avenue.
ONLY taking the kids off Dominican streets will only take a way to survive away from them and most likely turn them into deliquentes if no other solution is offered to them and their families (and no, I am not suggesting to just plain and simply give them money).
If they want to get rid of the sight of children peddling in the streets, they will have to resolve the socio-economic problems of their families and the defficiencies in the country's educational system, in other words, to fix up the economy not just with happy numbers for the IMF but for real.
... J-D.
(I know, I know, this is not what the OP asked for...)