The other day we were walking by Santo Domingo on the cobblestone apron that fans out beside the church when our attention focused on two grubby street kids, climbing up a pile of sand left over from construction and then throwing themselves back down, gleefully.  They gave little puppy shrieks and pummeled the sand lovingly as they wriggled up and rolled down.  I knelt and snapped a picture.

The picture shows a Dickensian little boy in a torn blue sweater and tattered trousers.  Barefoot and staring surprised at the camera, his mouth is a delicate ‘o.’  He is directly in the middle of the sandpile, as if he’s levitating before the sand.

“No fotos!” the boy said, snapping to attention. “10 pesos.”  He charged down the pile and stood defiantly in front of me.

I had to laugh.  Normally I sternly refused any begging from these kids, but this was different ; the little guy was obviously sharp and understood the tourist mentality.  I’m cute, I’m ethnic, I have a slight air of conflict and tragedy about me, and this makes for an ideal photo.  But the trick the photo can’t capture is that it costs ten pesos.

The boy laid out the terms but, being a kid — even a street kid for whom money is real and felt — couldn’t really care about following through with them when there was a big pile of sand to be climbed.  And I’d lost the desire for a photo when the dynamics of the transaction had been laid out like that.  He raced back to his mountain, I lowered my camera.

So it goes — even I, who fancy myself the hardened cynic who’ll have none of authenticity this, authenticity that, had been trumped once again by the authentic.  I wanted my token photo of the worn and dirty little dude doing something kid-like, going on with his childhood in the simplest way even while his mom begged for money in the Zocolo or sold roses.  But he turned that around real fast.  So much for precious childhood in rags, gringa, unless you’re willing to cough up a fat ten peso coin for it.

There’s nothing wrong with this kid’s instinct other than the fact that it subverts the nature of our relationship right there, on the spot, and destroys any illusion I have about being the benevolent observer of a tragic but touching and authentic reality.  And fair enough.  Me and my kind have been a part of that reality for a long time, have in fact helped shape it.  This little guy was both immediately and constantly aware of that.

For as much as his response – all tiny wrinkled knees and jerky elbows camped defiantly in front of me – pulled the plug out of my this-is-Oaxaca moment it also gave me hope.  Good for him.  Sure, it may not be the best sign that he sees tourists as mere cash machines, but in a way, they are and they prove it again and again and again.  But beyond this, beyond the raw capitalist interaction that makes me cringe, is a positive instinct.  He isn’t going to sit back and cower and let people come and champion his authenticity.  He knows what people want, and he knows how to use that to his advantage.  Who’s to say that little dude someday couldn’t be a tourist guide, couldn’t start up some small business?

Now that I’ve been beaten back by the mocking, cynical cries of the peanut gallery telling me, “Are you insane?  Still hopelessly naive after so many years in Mexico?” I’ll say that yes, this boy has a very small chance of becoming a tourist guide, of starting his own business.  But at least I can find some hope in that instinct, and instead of seeing it as the pin in my bubble I can see it as a sign of growing agency and self-awareness on his part, which may someday lead to something other than life in the street.

On with the story.

The boy’s even littler, pudgy-cheeked buddy in a cheap woolen hat followed his friend’s lead to the tee, posing an elbow on his hip and staring at me for a moment, sizing up just what I wanted.  Then he threw himself back into the sand and tried to roll uphill.

I watched them for a moment.  Photography has given me the capacity to do this.  Stop and absorb a scene and the potential story behind it.

“How ‘bout this,” I said.  They stopped climbing, perched at different heights on the pile.

“I get to take a picture, and you can give a treat to my dog.”  Scrap the “I’ll observe you as the tourist observes the locals in their local culture” game, scrap the adorable heart-wrenchingness of authentic Oaxacan reality, this is gonna be an exchange, pure and simple.  Jorge was standing nearby with the Stella who, with her long, smooth Shepherd body, her pointed ears and her thick black fur was a spectacle right out of the far reaches of a kid’s imagination.  They gawked at her.  Street kids, for the most part, do not fear the Stella.  They do not have the upbringing and the cautious familial/societal membrane of protection around them to worry about things like getting bitten by dogs.  They are reckless and straightforward, they want to test the limits of the world around them in ways that seem violent compared with those of other children.

“Sale!” shouted the older one.  Meaning in this context, “it’s on, it’s a deal.”  He went charging down his little mountainside and stood directly in front of me.  Jorge brought up the Stella as if we were setting up an elaborate magic trick.

“Sit, Stella,” I said.  She sat, singly focused on the rawhide.  The little boy gaped with nervous, barely held together anticipation.

“Put it flat on your hand,” I explained, “lay it flat like that so that she doesn’t get your fingers when she grabs it, ok?”

He nodded.  His buddy observed anxiously from the side, his admiration for his friend cemented for life.

The blue-sweatered boy held out his hand firmly and flatly to the Stella, who sucked up the rawhide like a horse inhaling a sugar cube.  The boy screamed in delight.

“Now you,” I said to the little guy.  He gaped at me with rounded eyes.

“Flat.” He said.  “Flat flat flat!”  He stuck out his hand.

His coin-sized palm was hardly big enough to hold a rawhide.  I set it down carefully and guided his hand towards the dog, who reached out as if to swallow his arm whole and then zeroed in on the rawhide, slurping it up and leaving a trail of drool.

The boy jumped up and down and then went racing into the sandpile, assailing it full-force with his body as if he didn’t know what to do with the thrill of feeding a wild animal.

His older friend followed him and moments later they were hurling themselves down, crawling back up, flailing around the sand as if they’d never met me.  We kept going on our walk.  I didn’t take another photo.

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This post has been entered into the Grantourismo-HomeAway travel writing competition.