Calle 13 Joins Fight to Protect Latin American Children

They’ve recently broken records at the Latin Grammy Awards. Now Calle 13’s Rene “Residente” Perez and Eduardo “Visitante” Cabra are working to end child trafficking and the exploitation of children in Latin America.

The Grammy-winning urban hip-hop duo has joined a special UNICEF campaign to raise awareness about the serious problems that youth in Latin America are facing.

Calle-13

“We want to cooperate on any campaign that helps the development of young people and Latin American countries,” said Perez. “For me, it’s very important. Latin America worries me because for us, we’re comfortable in the United States and Puerto Rico … (but) there it’s uncomfortable.”

The campaign includes a documentary entitled “Esclavos invisibles” that focuses on how child exploitation and trafficking is affecting Latin America. It was produced with UNICEF and directed by Calle 13.

The Puerto Rican group unveiled the campaign at UNICEF’s New York City headquarters and announced that it had donated the rights to Perez’s composition “Preparame la cena” for the music video to promote the first-of-its-kind campaign.

“We’ve traveled practically all through Latin America and we know about this and other problems,” says Perez. “So, I worked on the number ‘Cancion para un niño en la calle‘ along with Mercedes Sosa, which speaks about children who are exploited sexually, at work, who wind up addicted to drugs.”

The MTV Latin America and Tr3s networks on Tuesday will broadcast the “Esclavos invisibles” documentary.