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A young drug addict sleeping in the Constitución train station of Buenos Aires. According to a study conducted by the Argentinean Ministry for Social Development, and the Council for the Protection of Child and Adolescent Rights, more than 12’000 underage people live in the streets of the Capital. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Jonathan 18 years old, and Patricia 47 years old. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Block of flats marking off the boundaries between the residential area, and la Villa Miseria on the Bajo Flores district. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2009.

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Gloria Martinez, a representative of the Mothers and Relatives of Drugs’ Victims Association. The association meets every Thursday at the symbolic Plaza de Mayo, to demand action and changes to the government policy in the fight against the pacos’ plague. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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The police and the SAME (Emergency Care System) work together in the forced hospitalization of a young addict. His mother Betty get through a court the declaration of disability to her adult son, which will allow placement in a paco addicts treatment center regardless of their will. "I don't know if I'm doing the right thing, but after so many years of addiction, I have no choice. The only i really know is that i don't want to see him die": Betty, Buenos Aires,

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Facundo, Piñeiro Hospital intern, at the Flores shantytown in Federal Capital, waiting for be transferred to a paco addicts treatment center. After being intern for 4 times without any positives results, her family decided to force his internment at a closed facility where he will remain isolated for the first 6 months of treatment. Buenos Aires, 2010.

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The family of a young addict currently hospitalized in a treatment center. Buenos Aires, 2010.

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Ezequiel Melo, 22 years old, with his son, leaving Olmos, La Plata jail on leave, where he is serving a sentence for armed robbery. "Paco void of yours feelings. When I used drugs, i hugged my son just out of obligation, now I do it for love." Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Johnny, 20 years old, at the Retiro train station. His average consumption of “paco” is between 50 to 70 doses per day. With a average consumption of around 50 doses per day, sold for just over one dollar, the traffic of “paco” in the Argentinean Republic reaches around 270 million euros per year. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Young consumers are being frisked, during a police operation in Villa Miseria Zavaleta, southern area of the federal capital, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Gustavo, 20 years old, shows his scars from a fight with drug smugglers in Villa Miseria 31. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010. "Paco", a drug obtained from the production wastes of cocaine, found it's perfect habitat in the disastrous social web left by the 2001 crisis and is presently taking the lives of more than 200 youngsters each month in the Republican Argentina.

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Luis funeral. Flores cemetery. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Dario, 14 years old has an absent father and mother paralysed by AIDS. He has been living alone on the streets for more than two years. He has a twitch in his eyes, one of the symptoms of the consumption of paco. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Angy, 28 years old, addicted to paco said: “A few years ago, in order to heal a cystitis, I had to have my ovaries and uterus removed. How many chances has a woman who can not give birth, to find a man?” Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Facundo, intern in Borda psychiatric hospital waiting for be transferred to a paco addicts treatment center. After being intern for 4 times without any positives results, her family decided to force his internment at a closed facility where he will remain isolated for the first 6 months of treatment. Buenos Aires, 2010.

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Youngs drug addicted sleeping in the street of Buenos Aires. According to a study conducted by the Argentinean Ministry for Social Development, and the Council for the Protection of Child and Adolescent Rights, more than 12’000 underage people live in the streets of the Capital. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Young consumers living under a bridge. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Young inmates in evangelical drugs treatment center. Buenos Aires, 2010

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Jonathan, 20 years old, on the entrance of Villa Miseria 1.11.14. Many drug addicts coming from different areas of the city are now living in the surroundings of the Villa, where they can easily buy enough paco to satisfy their daily needs for a low price. Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Mary 18 and Angy 28, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2010.

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Ezequiel Melo, a young addicted, greets his grandmother before returning to Olmos, La Plata jail on leave, where he is serving a sentence for armed robbery.

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Ezequiel Melo, a young addicted, in his jail cell in Olmos, La Plata, where he is serving a sentence for armed robbery.

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Wake for Luis, killed during a robbery by young addicts, Buenos Aires, 2010

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Who works with addiction to paco, agrees that to stop using drugs is very difficult, and can only be done, if generated reintegration opportunities in society

Fragile are those bodies each day slimmer.
Fragile are those minds incapable to find meaning to life.
Fragile is family bonding.
Fragile this society.

-Fragile - deepens in the problematic of Paco consumption in Buenos Aires. This new drug with a residual characteristic its obtained by a process of transforming CBP (cocaine basic paste) in cocaine hydrochloride (pure cocaine) capable of generating I high dependence after the first consumption, finding and ideal habitat in the delicate society of a post crisis 2001 Argentina.
Today, after ten years of the biggest social, economical and political crisis in Argentina, the paco consumption turned out to be on one hand an indicator of the leading part of Argentina as a cocaine producer for the international drug market and on the other the sad allegory of social exclusion.
Sold by less than a dollar a dose, the paco is the most evident symptoms of poverty of Argentina´s urban periphery. I walked down its street, grey and desolated, afar from the ideal welfare of Buenos Aires. I´ve worked with mothers and family of those that are today suffering, trying to reach their heart and through my lens what prejudice that avoids us seeing; the tenderness of their faces, the sadness of their look, the abandonment of the children and adolescents who fell into addiction, even before having the tool to defend themselves and choose.

Since the beginning of the year 2010 I started reaching young addicts and followed them in their lives with the will of crossing the barrier of that is invisible, trying to understand what is the before and after of addiction.
Darío inspires with intensity the improvised aluminium pipe that holds in between his lips, burnt due to the heat of combustion.
With only 14 years of age, an immobilized mother lying in bed with HIV and a father who he wishes not to talk about, knows exactly what he is doing; letting himself die. The drug went into his life before childhood, filling the emptiness with an ephemeral sense of pleasure but talking the most important thing, the will of living. As Dario, thousand of children wander through the streets asking for a penny as an exchange of a quick window car cleaning and taking refuge in the dark corridors of the shanty towns. They abandoned their house causing anxiety in their families who look in vain the judicial support to save the lives of their loved ones or ran away from their parent incapable of reacting to the selfishness and manipulative's of what their children have become due to the consumption.

They are victims of an aching society, overwhelmed by the devastating effects of social inequality where only in Buenos Aires 10% of the upper class has an income 35 times higher in relation to the income of a 10% of the lower class.
Whilst its still under debate the harming chemical composition of the paco (acetone, ether, hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, kerosene) and media emphasizes in the need to develop and facilitate the access to rehab centers, all of those that constantly live with the pain of family and addicts fight to show that the paco is more than one drug: is the expression of the profound discomfort of today´s society.