COMM: Every year in town of Montufar in Central Guatemala the virgin icon is taken out of the church and paraded into the countryside. The fiesta's a celebration which mixes the Spanish colonial past and the Catholic religion with the pagan rituals of indigenous Indian culture. The dancing Moros - a remnant of colonial Spain - symbolise Good overcoming Evil.

COMM: For Christina and Renee Juarez it's one of the most exciting times of the year - not only are they allowed to stay up late to watch the traditional fiesta, but there are also lots of new and exciting funfair rides to go on. After a few hours the procession weaves its way back to Montufar - and the virgin icon is returned to her rightful place in the church. No Fiesta is complete without letting off fireworks - the grand finale at Montufar: lighting of a huge 50 metre-long strip of firecrackers. Exploding firecrackers are the climax of every celebration in Guatemala - and throughout Central America. They're part of the culture, set off at every kind of festival, from graduations to weddings to birthdays.
Christina is seven and her brother Renee is nine. They live with their eight brothers and sisters in the village of Ajuix in the San Juan Sacatepequez region of central Guatemala. Two brothers have already left home to find work in the city. Rafael, their father, is thirty-nine and an agricultural worker. The house they live in is owned by their uncle.

CHRISTINA (TRANSLATION): Here's where we cook! Here is where we make tortillas. These are our dishes. Water. Here's where mum and dad sleep and we sleep over there - this is the place.

INTERVIEWER (TRANSLATION): Who sleeps there?

CHRISTINA (TRANSLATION): Me and my other sisters - my older sister and Olga. This is the altar - it's where my father prays. This is maize for cooking, these are wicks to put into the firecrackers and make them catch fire.

RENEE (TRANSLATION): We're counting the wicks, and tomorrow we'll put the wicks into the firecrackers and then the day after my brother Roberto will wrap them in paper.


COMM: The two children make fireworks. Every day they walk to a make-shift factory where they and their brothers and sisters work making firecrackers. They work several hours a day. They have to - Rafael doesn't earn enough as a farm labourer to support them all. And when seasonal demand for fireworks is high there's little chance for the children to go to school. It's repetitive work and often even crippling. RENEE (TRANSLATION): I'm putting the wick into the tube and I am about to finish the circle. It hurts my back when I work for two hours and I work hard like this. My sister likes doing the washing up and doing what mum tells her to do.

CHRISTINA (TRANSLATION): I prefer doing this!

COMM: In this region of Guatemala over two thousand children work, making fireworks. Employed at home, they're quick to learn and are slow to complain.

BORIS GALVÁN, ASI - Association for Integrated Support (TRANSLATION): Well the truth is the fireworks - the lights are a demonstration of happiness. It's a way to express happiness, to express joy, to show that one is happy - that you are celebrating something. Unfortunately in countries like Guatemala that joy is overshadowed by the blood and the tears and the pain of many children who are not old enough to be fully aware of what they are doing. But unfortunately they have to live, they have to eat and if they don't produce fireworks - which is their only income - they cannot survive.

COMM: Renowned for its mountain ranges and extraordinary natural beauty as well as its rich indigenous heritage, Guatemala has only recently emerged from 30 years of brutal civil war. Today, it's one of the poorest countries in Central America. Most people exist on subsistence farming with over 80% of the population living on less than two dollars a day. Here, just two hours' drive from the capital, Guatemala City, in the San Juan Sacatepequez region the land is poor and the main source of income for the local population is through firework making. Eight out of every ten families are out-workers, producing firecrackers at home. Once a week, a middleman visits families in the region to drop off supplies and pick up the finished firecrackers. Israel Berrayo inherited the business from his father. There are at least eight other middlemen like him in the region. He takes the stock to sell in Guatemala City. It's an extremely lucrative business - he sells each strip for at least 12 times the amount he's paid for it.
And yet it's a highly labour-intensive production process. First, the firecracker papers are chopped into two-inch tubes. Then, they're tightly packed into a circle. Clay is applied to the bottom of the circle to hold the crackers in place. The highly volatile gunpowder is poured over the circle. The wicks are coated with even more explosive materials and jammed in and finally the crackers are released from the circle and tied into strips and the strips are encased in red tissue paper.

TIMOTEO BOCH SURUY (TRANSLATION): We stick the label on, and then its ready to sell.

COMM: Each one-metre strip contains 160 firecrackers. For this, the producer will be paid the equivalent of 50 cents. The story goes that the production of fireworks in the region first started over 50 years ago when a Spaniard came and taught some local people how to make them. The first official factories were set up over 20 years ago. All but two of these were closed down during the civil war because of government anxieties about who had access to gunpowder. Since then, the situation has become even more difficult to control, because now most producers work at home - either in small shacks nearby or, literally, just outside their back door. Whole families are employed in the business with children often starting work at the age of six. Exposed to explosive chemicals, like potassium nitrate and gunpowder, there are no controls at all to regulate health and safety or how much families are paid for their work. Child labour in the fireworks industry is both an economic and a cultural imperative - as father-of-five Luis Cotzojay explains:

LUIS COTZOJAY (TRANSLATION): The children - if we don't teach them to work they will become lazy. God knows what will happen. If I die they will be unable to support themselves; they won't be able to do anything, so I am teaching them to work now.

COMM: Luis is right to be afraid. He's working in one of the most dangerous areas of the production process. These pieces of string are coated in highly flammable chemicals. As he cuts them, just one wrong move could create a spark which would make the whole lot go up in flames.

COMM: Horrible accidents happen on a regular basis. If any one of these circles filled with gunpowder were
accidentally knocked by the children here, everyone here would be killed in the explosion. Paula Camel and her family live around the corner from Renee and Christina's house.

PAULA BOCH CAMEL (TRANSLATION): Here - here is where Martha and Briyan were. And the wicks were there, and something made a spark.

COMM: Martha and Briyan were burned while playing with the same wicks that Christina and Renee have in their home. Martha is six years old. PAULA BOCH CAMEL (TRANSLATION): I am devastated. It's been fifteen days like this - she hasn't eaten or slept. Nothing, nothing - she's just like this - she screams at night. Every night she screams and cries and so does her brother. We can't sleep either, my husband nor me. We just have to continue - what else are we going to do? If we work with baskets, they don't sell - that's why we are still working with this. And if there is no food, what are we going to do - it's a necessity. It's even worse now she's like this because we have to pay the doctor.

BORIS GALVÁN (TRANSLATION): Every week, every fortnight, once a month, there's an accident - there's a child that suffers. Children are not aware of most of the movements they rely on. They're not aware of the danger they're being exposed to. The results can be as serious as death. The repetitive actions reduce the speed of their reaction - they become physically very slow when they're always doing the same thing. As well as this, they lose social skills, they only focus on the production - it's very absorbing. They don't even have time to play, and miss school to work.

COMM: So what can be done to change the situation? Currently only fifty per cent of the community knows how to read or write. Many children are kept at home to work. Boris and his colleagues are trying to encourage more families to take out credit to expand or set up new businesses. The idea is that then they could make enough money in their new business to be able to send their children to school.

BORIS GALVÁN (TRANSLATION): At the end when we've provided them with credit, the people getting the money have to sign the commitment - the commitment says that their children will go to school and that they will stop producing fireworks. When a child has the wealth of education, they have more chances to get a different job - an activity that won't be as dangerous as making fireworks. At the same time we're also trying to build up the capacities of the local people so that our country, Guatemala, can look forward to a better future, with an educated workforce.

COMM: Like Renee and Christina, Oswaldo used to spend his days making fireworks. But since his family signed up to the credit scheme he now attends school and hopes one day to be a teacher. In his spare time, he and his brothers help their father in the tomato fields and their mother, Hortensia, making baskets. Both businesses that have been expanded with the help of the credit scheme.

OSWALDO POP DE PTAZAN (TRANSLATION): One day my father told me that we weren't going to make fireworks anymore. We went to the fields and planted tomatoes, radish and cucumber.

HORTENSIA POP DE PTAZAN (TRANSLATION): We earned more making fireworks because they're easier to make, they're easier than working in other things. But there is a risk. But to stop making fireworks - well, you just have to be smart: maybe you make less money, but you're no longer in danger.

COMM: Now, instead of being cramped over a gunpowder circle, Oswaldo and his brothers enjoy the benefits of going to school and of helping their father in a more healthy, outdoor environment. But what if you can't - or don't want to - do anything else. Twenty-four-year-old Timoteo has been working with fireworks all since he was Renee's age. His brother, his father and their extended family of 18 all work in the business. They learned his craft in the old firework factories before they were closed down. Timoteo already has four children to support. He doesn't know any other work - and doesn't see the economic sense of working in any other occupation.

TIMOTEO BOCH SURUY (TRANSLATION): We usually do it at six o'clock in the morning. The most dangerous thing is filling them up, but that only takes an hour. This one is small but if you lose concentration with one of the big ones when you are filling it up and you drop it, it will cause a huge explosion. Even with this small quantity of gunpowder that I am preparing here, it could destroy the wall. Yes, it's scary, but what else can we do? What can I do? I have to do it - there is nothing else. I only know how to make fireworks. I didn't go to school, and that's why I do it. Imagine that I work in the fields: I only earn 150 G and I don't have the help of my wife - and 150 is not enough for the week. Here, instead, with my wife helping me, I get 200 a week.

COMM: Henry Archila works alongside Boris helping families who see no other option but to remain in the firework industry. He tries to encourage them to work safely, more profitably, and not to employ their children.

HENRY ARCHILA (TRANSLATION): The project's chief aim is to build a factory with all the minimum safety conditions so that they won't carry on working in their homes, with all the risks that involves. At the same time, we're looking for loans to provide them with some capital, so that they can buy the materials and make more of a profit. As part of the project, we need to find them contacts to sell their fireworks directly, so that ultimately they can earn bigger incomes and so they won't need to have their children working for them.

TIMOTEO BOCH SURUY (TRANSLATION): I have seen my friends - some have lost their houses; they've lost their legs; their arms. There was one accident that I remember about five years ago where they had to pick up body parts. Around five children died. I really think that things will change with this factory. We need to fight for this, and let's hope that the government too will also help us in some way.

COMM: The International Labour Organisation works through affiliate organisations - like ASI and Cominguat - to address the problem.

MIRIMA DE CELADA, ILO/IPEC Guatemala (TRANSLATION): The ILO got involved in this as a response to a request from the government. We are working at different levels - political, legal, educational level, health level, and through community organisations - through encouraging new economic activities. At the political level, we have tried to get relevant Ministries to be much more involved. Laws we have lots but the problem is how to implement them to make people take the laws on board; to understand that it's an activity that they shouldn't be doing at home. The fact that the mayor says that children shouldn't work, believe me, has only happened through hard work over the last four years.

COMM: The Mayor of San Raymondo is now working with the ILO and its NGO partners to lobby for the new factory to be built, and to secure greater investment in the region and the creation of new jobs. But he's worried about how realistic it is to think that Guatemala's government will help with policies and funding to support the project and ensure its long-term success.

MATIAS AJUIX LACON, Mayor of San Raymundo (TRANSLATION): It's difficult in reality because the people in this government just don't seem to realise that this country needs to have a foundation to grow from. The difficult thing is that they think more of themselves and their personal wealth rather than projects that will benefit the state.

BLANCA GUERRA DE NAJERA, Vice Minister for Labour (TRANSLATION): Definitely, as a representative of the government - in particular, the Ministry of Labour - we are not going to deny internal corruption. But let's be honest, there is also corruption in the private sector. They are putting up barriers to stop the eradication of child labour because they are not letting us collect the funds that the government needs to enforce these projects. We need resources. We need the class that has the resources to help us by paying taxes. We need organisations from other countries with projects like the IPEC one to help us so that we can solve the problem. It's our people who don't have the money, especially the children, who suffer the most.

COMM: Back at home with Renee and Christina, Rafael their father wonders what kind of future his children can look forward to.

RAFAEL (TRANSLATION): The truth is that I didn't go to school and that's why I don't know anything. I can't read. I can't read or write at all - nothing. And I don't know anything about letters. But with my children - yes, I am trying. The oldest and the little ones, I am trying to get them to school - if I have money. But if I don't - well then, we'll just have to see what happens.