Author discusses the complementary processes of urbanization and industrialization in Latin America and shows how policies which seek to concentrate capital in the formal urban industrial sector of the economy have subjected growing numbers of families at the economic and social margins of society. The burdens of survival fall to each member of the family and increasing numbers of children have ultimately become responsible for their own survival. This problem reached the greatest proportions in Colombia and Brazil, where a larger society was been forced to look at the problem directly and was beginning to seek ways of addressing it in all of its complexity.