The area also has suffered from spectacular mismanagement. The only school in Povoado de Jose Valerio remained shuttered for four years during the 1990s because the Teofilandia government did not pay the teachers. The area's addiction to sisal has allowed few people to earn an education and develop the skills to seek better opportunities. Today many children who do go to school attend only sporadically because their parents make them work when money is especially tight. If you have industry, you can have jobs, and if people have jobs, they're able to survive.
Survival is what most children here say they aspire to.
Many said they plan to cut sisal when they grow up. Few say that they mind the exhausting work. The short, skinny teenager, five of whose siblings also work, has worked since he was 8. Today he is in the third grade. He does not know the days of the week.