Changelings: transformative perceptions of San José's street children, 1965-1981

Between 1965 and 1981, Costa Ricans changed their perceptions of which characteristics they thought defined appropriate urban childhoods. By 1981, the model of a modern, urban Costa Rican child was that of a child who attended school, did not work on the streets, and played in specifically designated places. Children who did not fit this mold began, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, to be viewed as dangerous to society and as evidencing social pathology. Whereas children who worked on the streets during the 1960s were considered part of the urban landscape, and their childhoods, though difficult, were not perceived as deviant, these same children, two decades later, were viewed as marginal and problematic. To trace this change, this article focuses on the changing perceptions about children on the streets that writers for and public contributors to La Nación, one of the preeminent Costa Rican newspapers, show during the sixteen-year period under analysis.