MEXICO CITY — At a busy intersection, a little girl with a high half-ponytail looks at you as she begs for coins. There is dirt beneath her fingernails, and her pink shirt looks unwashed. The image in the photo could fit thousands of impoverished Mexican children on the streets but for one thing: The girl in this picture has blond hair.
The flurry of Internet attention to the photo, and the quick way officials reacted, has renewed a debate about racism in Mexico, a nation that is proud of its mestizo heritage but where millions of indigenous people live in poverty and passers-by often barely notice dark-skinned children begging in the street.
It started when a Facebook user posted a photo last week of the girl on a Guadalajara street. He apparently suspected she might have been stolen because “her parents are brown” and said he had contacted a welfare agency and state prosecutors.
“Let’s spread this photo around,” he wrote.
Tens of thousands shared the photo of the golden-haired, green-eyed girl, and dozens commented on it, some thanking him, others complaining that the post was racist.
Lino Gonzalez, the spokesman for prosecutors in Jalisco state, where Guadalajara is the capital, said the widespread distribution of the photo was seen as a sort of collective warning, and an investigation was launched.
“The concern was the suspicion the girl had been stolen,” Gonzalez said. “We had to respond because there was suspicion a crime had been committed.”
Officials tracked down the 5-year-old child, put her in a Guadalajara orphanage and detained her 23-year-old mother for two days.
The child’s grandmother, who also has green eyes, handed over the birth certificate of the girl. Gonzalez said the mother was released and that there were no signs the girl had been kidnapped, though DNA results are pending.
