Steve Liss

Photographic Essays: A Second Chance for Santos

When the only way to escape poverty is in your dreams, it’s hard to find a reason to wake up each day. Santos Estrada's first ten years offered no hope for a life outside the crumbling trailer he shared with his parents and two older brothers in Laredo,Texas. With his childhood seemingly over before it started, Santos believed nothing could change his fate.

  
We too often forget that real faces, real children, make up the endless streams of abstract facts about poverty in America. Children are not the cause of their own poverty, but they often suffer poverty's consequences.
   
Every kid makes choices. But no kid is responsible for the poverty that surrounds them, for a culture in which guns are status symbols, and communities in which drugs are on nearly every corner.
     
  
   
  
Santos and his mother get a visit from friend and gang intervention specialist Joe Espinoza who arranged a visit from missionaries from Jasper, Texas. Unfortunately there are too few outreach workers like Joe in the system.
     
  
Without saying a word, Santos touched the visiting church members and a boy named Dustin, 9, (in baseball cap) convinced his family they couldn't travel the 500 miles home without Santos. It wouldn't be right. To Santos it sounded to good to be true, but what did he have to lose? Santos' mother, scared that he will follow the career paths of many of his neighbors -- gang member or drop-out -- agreed.
   
  
An unimaginable dream. That’s what Santos Estrada is living. And he's thriving with his new family in Jasper.
     
  
   
Santos, who could barely read or do basic arithmetic, now excels at both.
   
     
  
He's a fierce competitor on the ball field.
   
And gets into playful mischief with his new brother at his side.
   
     
  
"I like it a lot better here. There’s no gangs, no drugs...nothing. In Laredo I'd probably have dropped out. Now I’m going to go to college." For the first time, Santos can say everything’s all right. He finally can smile.