For the street children of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, escape comes in two ways. The first is by way of a solvent-based glue called Resistol which they inhale to induce a four-hour long high.
But there is a more final exit that the street children dread -- murder at the hands of the city's so-called "death cars" and dumped in skips, dustbins and ditches.
It is not just the street children, who beg and sell their bodies on the streets of Honduras, who are victims. Other youths too are victims of a social cleansing that is sanctioned by a large proportion of the country's society.
They are Honduras' tattooed gang members with affiliations to the Los Angeles gangland. They are the number-one enemy of the country's literate classes, denounced by politicians and in the media, and exterminated by police and private death squads.
Some 700 children have died in the last two years, according to Amnesty International which has been running a campaign against child murder in Honduras.
And some of these killings have been on a large scale. The latest took place on May 17 when 105 prisoners, largely young gang members with the Mara Salvatrucha gang, were locked into the El Porvenir prison in the textile-producing city of San Pedro Sula and burned alive.
But while it has been the prison fires that have drawn the most attention, it is the constant attrition against the country's youth that is still alarming Amnesty.
Darwin Roberto Sacuceda Flores dreamed of becoming a doctor and was good at school, but that all changed when he joined the 18th Street gang at the age of 14. Two years later he was dead.
Sara Sacuceda Flores believes the police executed her son. "Darwin met a girl from the 18th Street gang at a party," Sara, 39, said. "The gang was a new world. They promised clothes, shoes, gold chains and the chance to be a leader, a boss."
"But it was all a lie. When you start, the gang gives you a better identity, but when you try to get out you can't," she said.
"He had `18' tattooed on his chin, and his arms were full of tattoos. He took cocaine and alcohol, and they robbed to get what they needed."
Darwin got into frequent trouble with the police and went to prison several times. He was arrested for the last time on Feb. 14 2002, and released two days later. He frightened his mother with gloomy premonitions.
"He said he would die soon, that the police would kill him," she said.
He died the next day.
"The police let him go, but then they came back and killed him," Sara said. "There are witnesses, but they are afraid to speak out. The police are blaming the killing on the gang, but it's not true," she added.
"Our government is repressive and they let the police act with impunity. There is no rehabilitation, they just arrest our kids and throw them into prison and they come out more aggressive. The courts in our country don't treat their deaths seriously because these are kids with social problems," she said.
The assault on Honduras's street children and gang members is part of the country's mano duro (strong hand) policies, inspired by the zero tolerance approach of New York in the Nineties.
Those policies were introduced by President Ricardo Maduro, who has converted zero tolerance into an anti-gang campaign that has stigmatized every youth with a tattoo and resulted in widespread human rights abuses.
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