We are deeply interested in knowing to what extent these stories touched our own families, because what you are about to hear was not an isolated case. It was an entire generation sacrificed in the name of tradition. The case of Sebastián Montes began long before his birth. It began in 1920 when his paternal grandfather, Don Aurelio Montes Santibáñez, opened his shoe workshop at 312 Hidalgo Street, in the heart of León.
Don Aurelio was a man trained in the old school. He had learned the trade at the age of 7, beaten by his own father every time a seam was crooked. And for him, that had been the only education that mattered. León, Guanajuato, in 1947, was a city of just over 90,000 inhabitants, known throughout Mexico [music] as the shoe capital.
The city air smelled permanently of tanned leather [music] and glue. In the mornings, when the sun was just beginning to warm the cobbled streets, you could hear the clatter of hundreds of hammers hitting soles in workshops scattered throughout the city. It was the sound of an industry that fed thousands of families, but it was also the sound of thousands of children losing their childhood.
Don Aurelio’s workshop was located in a two-story adobe house with walls almost a meter thick, painted a yellow that time and dust had turned into ochre. The workshop occupied the entire ground floor, a space of approximately 60 square meters with a cracked cement floor, small windows [music] with wooden frames that were almost never opened, and a [music] high beamed ceiling where cowhides in different stages of tanning hung.
There were four solid wood workbenches , stained by decades of glue and dye. On the walls, tools hung from rusty nails, shoe lasts of different sizes, huge scissors for cutting leather, small-headed hammers, needles as thick as nails. The smell was overwhelming. A mixture of raw leather, toluene-based industrial glue, human sweat, and the smoke from the perpetual cigar that Don Aurelio kept between his lips while he worked.
That smell permeated the clothes, the hair, the skin. The children who worked there would arrive at school on the few days they could attend smelling of chemicals, and their classmates would avoid them. In 1947, Mexico was living through the final years of President Miguel Alemán Valdés’s six-year term.
It was a time of accelerated industrialization, migration from the countryside to the cities, and promises of modernity. But in places like León, the artisanal [music] tradition resisted strongly, and with it, the old customs about how a child should be educated also resisted. Don Aurelio was 62 years old in 1947. He was a man of medium height, robust build the product of decades of physical work, huge hands as calloused as tree bark, and a gaze that rarely revealed any emotion.
She always dressed the same. Navy blue denim pants stained with glue. White cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. leather apron that reached down to his knees. She never smiled. His wife, Doña Refugio, had died 10 years earlier from tuberculosis. And from then on, Don Aurelio lived alone on the top floor of the mansion, except when his grandson was there.
Sebastián Montes was born on February 3, 1938. He was the son of Andrés Montes, the only son of Don Aurelio who had survived [music] childhood. Andrés had rejected the shoemaking trade against his father’s wishes. He had studied to be a rural teacher. He had married a woman from a nearby town, Rosa María Gutiérrez, and together they had had Sebastián.
But on September 8, 1946, when Sebastian was just 8 years old, his parents died in a bus accident on the road to Guadalajara. Sebastian was orphaned. I had no siblings. His mother’s family lived in conditions of extreme poverty and could not take care of him. So Sebastian was taken to León, to the house of his paternal grandfather, the only relative who had the means to support him.
[music] Don Aurelio agreed to receive him, but with one condition that he made clear from the first day. In his house, lazy people were not tolerated. Sebastian was a thin boy, of fragile build, with straight black hair that his mother used to comb carefully every morning. He had his father’s dark eyes, large and expressive, which in the first [music] months after his parents’ death remained almost always full of tears.
He was a naturally quiet, obedient child who had learned in the rural school, where he studied to read and write with remarkable ease. His teacher, Professor Guadalupe Ramirez, had told his parents shortly before his death that Sebastian had a talent for studies, that he could go far if he continued his education.
But Don Aurelio did not believe in formal education. For him, school was a modern invention that created weak men, incapable of working with their hands. He had built a thriving business without being able to read much and was convinced that this was all a man needed, a trade. A trade learned with sacrifice, with pain if necessary.
[music] Sebastian’s first day at the workshop was September 20, 1946. He was 8 years old. and 10 months. Don Aurelio woke him up at 5 in the morning. Outside it was still dark and the September air in León was cool, almost cold. He gave her a glass of coffee with milk and a sweet roll. Then he took it downstairs to the workshop.
He showed her a small table in a corner. a table that had been built specifically for a child to work on. The height was lower than the other tables, but not low enough for the child to work comfortably. Sebastian would have to hunch over to see his work. Don Aurelio explained to him in a dry and emotionless voice that from that day on, Sebastián would work in the workshop 6 days a week from 6 in the morning until 6 in the evening.
On Sundays he could rest and go to mass. Regarding school, Don Aurelio was clear: school is for lazy people. You’ll learn something real here. Sebastian said nothing. What could an 8-year-old orphan, alone, say? He nodded, and thus began his education. Sebastian’s first tasks were simple [music] but tedious. Clean the wooden shoe lasts, sweep the leather scraps off the floor, and organize the tools.
But Don Aurelio soon showed him the real work. Within two weeks, Sebastian was already gluing soles. The process was simple, in theory. Industrial glue was applied to the sole [music] and the bottom of the shoe. They waited until both surfaces were at the exact point of adhesion, neither too wet nor too dry, and then pressed firmly together.
A poorly glued shoe would come off in a matter of days. A well-glued shoe would last for years. The glue they used was an industrial product based on toluene, a thick, yellowish liquid with a sweetish smell that initially caused dizziness and nausea. In poorly ventilated spaces, like Don Aurelio’s workshop, the concentration of chemical vapors reached dangerous levels, but that didn’t matter.
I had never imported [music]. Sebastian spent hours leaning over his table with his small hands holding bottles of glue that weighed almost as much as he did. The fumes gave him a headache, and his eyes burned. Sometimes he felt like the room was spinning around him, but if he stopped, if he complained, if he asked to rest, Don Aurelio would appear behind him with a shoe sole in his hand.
The punishment [music] was always the same. ” Extend your hands,” Don Aurelio ordered. [music] And Sebastian, trembling, extended his palms upwards. The impact of the sole was sharp, brutal. Thick leather against the delicate skin of a child’s hands. Once, twice, [music] three times, depending on the severity of the error.
Sebastian’s hands, which at 8 years old should have been smooth and soft, began to fill with calluses. After scarring, after permanent deformities in the fingers that would never heal properly. At the Vicente Guerrero elementary school, located four blocks from the workshop, teacher Guadalupe Ramírez noticed Sebastián’s absence after the death of his parents.
I knew that the child had been taken to live with his grandfather. On October 12, 1946, teacher Ramirez walked to Don Aurelio’s workshop. He found the workshop door closed . He played repeatedly. Finally, Don Aurelio opened the door with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his lips and an expression of annoyance.
“I’ve come to ask about Sebastián Montes,” said the teacher. “He hasn’t attended classes for a month.” Don Aurelio looked her up and down with contempt. “The boy is not going to school anymore,” [music] he replied in a flat voice. Here you are learning something useful. But Don Aurelio, insisted the teacher, Sebastián [music] is a brilliant child.
I could finish elementary school, go to high school. He has a future in his studies. A man’s future is in his own hands. Don Aurelio interrupted. Not in books. Books don’t put food on the table. The teacher tried to argue, to talk about the law that required children to attend primary school. But Don Aurelio raised a hand to silence her.
With all due respect, miss, the child is my grandson [music] and is under my custody. What I decide to do with it is my business. Good morning. And he closed the door. Teacher Ramirez wrote a report to the school administration. The report was sent to the area school inspectorate. From there, an inspector visited the workshop two weeks later.
Don Aurelio showed him documents. which proved that Sebastian was his grandson. He explained that the boy had been orphaned, that he had taken him in out of charity, and that he was training him in an honest trade. The inspector, a man in his fifties named Esteban Saldaña, saw Sebastián working on the corner of the workshop.
The boy looked up briefly, his eyes reddened by the fumes of the glue, and then went back to his work. The inspector wrote in his report, “The minor is under the proper care of his paternal grandfather, who is instructing him in the family trade. It is recommended that the case be closed, and so Sebastián Montes’s file was archived.
No one else inquired about him. Months passed. Sebastián grew, but his growth was abnormal. Spending 12 hours a day hunched over a table too low for his height was deforming his spine. When would it end? He turned 10. By February 1948, Sebastián already showed a visible curvature in his upper back. His shoulders were beginning to hunch permanently forward.
The pain was constant. At first, Sebastián complained. ‘ My back hurts, Grandfather,’ he would say in a small voice. Don Aurelio always responded with the same phrase: ‘Pain makes men.'” [music] Those who cannot endure pain are good for nothing. Over time, Sebastian stopped complaining. He learned to swallow the pain, to breathe, even though the chemical fumes burned his lungs, to work even though his hands bled, because he knew that complaining only meant more blows.
The neighbors of the workshop began to notice strange things. Doña Matilde Ochoa, who lived in the house next door, recounted years later that she heard dry, persistent coughs coming from the workshop at all hours of the day. ” I thought it was Don Aurelio,” he said, “he was a heavy smoker, but then I realized that the cough was more acute.
” It was a child’s cough. In 1949, when Sebastian was 11 years old, he developed his first serious respiratory crisis. It was a Sunday afternoon. Don Aurelio had gone out to buy tobacco. Sebastian was alone in the house, resting in his room, a tiny space on the top floor, with barely enough room for a cot and a wooden box where he kept his clothes, when suddenly he felt [music] that he couldn’t breathe.
Panic gripped him. He tried to inhale, but the air wouldn’t reach his lungs. [music] He put his hands to his chest and began to cough violently, a cough that tore at his chest. He fell to the ground. Several terrible minutes passed until he was finally able to breathe again with shallow, painful inhalations. When Don Aurelio returned, he found Sebastian pale and trembling.
What’s the matter? He asked without much concern. I could n’t breathe. ” Grandpa,” Sebastian whispered. Don Aurelio watched him for a few seconds. Then he said, “You’re getting weak from lack of work. Tomorrow you’re going to work an extra hour.” And he left. The respiratory crises became more frequent, occurring once a month, then once a week.
Sebastian learned to recognize the signs: the chest closing up, the feeling of suffocation, the panic, but he never received medical attention. Don Aurelio did not believe in doctors. “Doctors are for the rich and the cowards,” he said. Two other men also worked in the workshop. They were employees of Don Aurelio.
One was Jesús Maldonado, a quiet 35-year-old man who had worked there since he was 15. The other was Pablo Rentería, younger at 25 years old, who had only been in the workshop for 3 years. Both men saw what was happening to Sebastian. They watched as the child coughed until he vomited. They watched as Don Aurelio hit him with the sole of his shoe.
They watched as Sebastian [music] hunched over more and more. how her back was visibly becoming deformed. Jesús Maldonado once told his wife, “That [musician] boy isn’t going to grow old.” But he never said anything to Don Aurelio, he never reported anything. I needed the job. And in León, in those years, getting involved in another man’s family affairs was dangerous.
[music] Pablo Rentería, younger [music] and perhaps more aware, tried to talk to Don Aurelio once. It was in 1951 when Sebastian was 13 years old. ” Don Aurelio,” Pablo said carefully, ” the boy is very thin and that cough won’t go away.” Do n’t you think he should see a doctor? Don Aurelio turned towards him with an icy stare.
Since when do you care about my family’s affairs? He asked in a dangerously calm voice. “That’s not it,” Don Aurelio hastened to say, “Pablo, I’m only worried about the child.” The child [music] is my grandson. ” And if you’re so worried, perhaps you should worry more about your own job,” replied Don Aurelio.
Because if you keep meddling where you’re not wanted, you’re going to have to look for a job somewhere else . Pablo never mentioned the subject again. Sebastian developed a survival routine. He would get up at 5:15 in the morning. She went down to the kitchen in silence. She was making coffee for her grandfather.
Don Aurelio would get furious if the coffee wasn’t ready when he woke up at 5:30. He would eat whatever was available, usually a piece of stale bread with cold beans. At 6 o’clock sharp he was in his place in the workshop. He worked non-stop until 1 p.m. when he had 30 minutes for lunch. Don Aurelio would give him a plate [music] of soup and tortillas, nothing more.
Then back to work until 6 pm. After 6, Sebastian had to clean the workshop, sweep, and organize the tools. By the time it was over it was 7 pm. He ate dinner alone in the kitchen. Don Aurelio was having dinner in his room. At 8 pm, Sebastian would go up to his room, lie down on the cot and cry. He cried silently every night , his face buried in a thin, musty-smelling pillow so that Don Aurelio wouldn’t hear him, because crying was for the weak and the weak received more beatings.
In 1953, when Sebastian was 15 years old, his physical appearance was that of a prematurely aged old man . He was barely 1.55 cm tall. His growth had been stunted by malnutrition and overwork. He weighed 42 kg. His back was so hunched that he could no longer straighten up completely even if he wanted to. He had a visible hump between his shoulder blades.
Her hands were permanently deformed, her fingers twisted into unnatural positions, her palms covered in thick, rope-like scars. His face was pale and gaunt. The eyes that had been large and expressive as a child were now sunken in deep sockets. She had permanent dark purple under-eye circles. His lips were always cracked and sometimes bled, but the worst part was his lungs.
Eight years of breathing toluene fumes in a poorly ventilated space had destroyed his respiratory system. Sebastian coughed constantly, a dry, harsh cough that tore at his chest. Sometimes he coughed so hard that he spat up blood. Small red drops stained the workshop floor. Don Aurelio ordered him to clean them immediately.
[music] But what was happening inside Sebastian’s lungs that no one [music] could see? What irreversible damage was occurring to the body of a child exposed [to music] day after day to toxic substances. And why did no one—not the neighbors, not the workshop employees, not the educational authorities who had closed his file—do anything to stop this? If you want to know the answer, don’t forget to subscribe to the channel and activate the bell, because what [music] you are about to hear will reveal to you the extent to which
an entire society can fail a child. In 1954, a doctor finally saw Sebastian, but not because anyone was concerned about his health. Don Aurelio had a problem with his right knee. She had been in pain for weeks until she finally decided to go to Dr. Ramón Villegas’s office, located on Madero Street. For some reason, that day, Don Aurelio decided to take Sebastián with him, perhaps because he needed someone to help him walk.
In the waiting room of the doctor’s office, Dr. Villegas saw Sebastian and froze. Dr. Villegas was a 50- year-old man with experience treating workers in the footwear industry. I had seen many cases of work-related illnesses, but never in someone so young. After attending to Don Aurelio, the doctor [music] asked him, “Who is the boy?” “My grandson,” replied Don Aurelio.
“She works with me in the workshop.” The doctor looked at Sebastian. The boy was 16 years old, but looked 40. “Can I examine him?” asked the doctor. Don Aurelio shrugged. If you want to, but it’s nothing serious. The exam was brief, but revealing. Dr. Villegas asked Sebastian to take off his shirt. The spinal deformity was evident.
He asked her [music] to take a deep breath. Sebastian tried to inhale, but halfway through breathing [music] he began to cough violently. The cough lasted almost a minute. The doctor placed the stethoscope on Sebastian’s chest. What he heard [music] alarmed him deeply. The lungs sounded as if they were filled with fluid.
There was wheezing with every breath. “This boy is seriously ill,” said Dr. Villegas [music] gravely. He needs immediate treatment. His lungs are severely damaged. ” That’s fine,” Don Aurelio replied indifferently. It’s just a cough. It will pass. ” No, Don Aurelio,” the doctor insisted. It’s not just a cough.
This boy has all the symptoms of chronic lung disease, probably from exposure to chemicals. If he does not receive treatment, it could be that Don Aurelio interrupted. Dr. Villegas chose his words carefully. He might not live much longer. There was silence. Sebastian lowered his gaze to the ground. Don Aurelio lit a cigarette.
How much does the treatment cost? He finally asked. The doctor mentioned a number. Don Aurelio shook his head. I do n’t have that kind of money to spend on medicine. The boy is fine. And he got up to leave. Sebastian followed him in silence. Dr. Villegas tried to stop them. Don Aurelio, please, [music] at least allow me to give you some recommendations.
But Don Aurelio had already left the office. That night, Dr. Villegas wrote in his personal diary, “Today I saw a 16-year-old boy whose body was destroyed by work. He has perhaps two or three years left to live, and his grandfather will do nothing to save him. I tried to talk to him, but it was useless. I feel powerless.
What kind of society allows this?” Dr. Villegas considered reporting the case to the authorities. But to whom? To the police? What law was Don Aurelio breaking? In 1954, there was no law prohibiting a grandfather from putting his grandson to work in the family business. Child labor in artisan workshops was not only legal, it was a tradition.
Thousands of children in León worked in the same conditions as Sebastián. It was normal, it was accepted. Many adults of that generation had grown up working since they were seven or eight years old and had survived. Some, those who didn’t survive, simply disappeared from the records. They died of pneumonia or tuberculosis or general weakness.
And life He kept going. Sebastián kept working. His health continued to deteriorate. By 1955, he could barely walk from his room to the workshop without stopping several times [music] to catch his breath. Respiratory crises were now a daily occurrence. There were nights when Don Aurelio could hear Sebastián’s cough from his room , that terrible cough that seemed to tear his lungs [music] from his chest.
But Don Aurelio never went up to check on him . He never asked if he needed help. To him, that would have been a sign of weakness. In February 1955, Sebastián turned 17. There was no celebration. Don Aurelio didn’t even mention that it was his birthday. Sebastián worked that day like any other, but something had changed in Sebastián.
In the last few months, he had stopped crying at night, not because the pain had lessened, but because he no longer had the strength even to cry. He had given up. He had accepted [music] that this was his life and that it would probably also be his death. August 4, 1955, was Sebastián’s last day of work . It was a Thursday.
It was hot. In León, the humid, heavy heat typical of August was oppressive. Sebastián arrived at the workshop at 6:00 a.m., as usual. He sat down in his usual spot and began working. At 9:00 a.m., Sebastián felt a sharp pain in his chest, stronger than ever. He placed a hand on his chest. He tried to breathe, but no air came.
“Grandpa,” he managed to say in a barely audible voice. Don Aurelio was on the other side of the workshop, engrossed in his work. He did n’t hear him. ” Grandpa,” Sebastián repeated, louder. This time Don Aurelio looked up. He saw Sebastián pale, his lips bluish, gripping the edge of the table. “What’s wrong now?” Don Aurelio asked, annoyed.
“I can’t breathe,” Sebastián gasped. Don Aurelio stood up with a sigh of irritation. He walked over to Sebastián. “I already told you that cough is just laziness. Take a deep breath and keep working.” But Sebastián couldn’t take a deep breath. He couldn’t breathe at all. He collapsed from the chair to the floor.
Jesús Maldonado and Pablo Rentería ran over. “ Don Aurelio, the boy is turning purple!” Pablo shouted. Finally, Don Aurelio seemed to realize the seriousness of the situation. “Go get Dr. Villegas,” he ordered. Pablo ran off. It took him 15 minutes to get to the doctor’s office and another 15 to get back. When Dr.
Villegas arrived at the workshop, Sebastián was lying on the floor, unconscious. His breathing was shallow and labored. The doctor tried to revive him, opening his shirt and patting his cheeks, but Sebastián didn’t respond. “ We have to take him to the hospital immediately,” the doctor said. Don Aurelio hesitated. “ How much is that going to cost?” Dr.
Villegas looked at him with a mixture of disbelief and fury. “You ’re asking me how much it costs to save your grandson’s life?” There was a tense silence. Finally, Don Aurelio nodded. “ Take him.” Dr. Villegas and Pablo Rentería carried Sebastián to the car. doctor. They took him to the general hospital in León, located on Hermano Saldama Street.
At the hospital, the doctors did what they could, but Sebastián’s lungs were destroyed. Years of exposure to toxic fumes had caused irreversible damage. He had severe pulmonary fibrosis, chronic pneumonia, and acute respiratory failure. On August 5, 1955, at 3:00 a.m., Sebastián Montes died. He was 17 years and 6 months old.
The death certificate signed by Dr. Ernesto Guzmán of the General Hospital indicated the cause of death as acute respiratory failure secondary to pulmonary fibrosis. It did not mention that the pulmonary fibrosis had been caused by 8 years of occupational exposure to toluene. It did not mention that the deceased was a minor who had been forced to work in unsanitary conditions since the age of 8.
It did not mention any of that because those things didn’t matter. Sebastián’s wake was held in the same workshop where he had spent the last 9 years of his life. Aurelio had the coffin placed in the workshop. Four votive candles surrounded it. Neighbors arrived, some customers of the workshop, the two employees with their families.
People passed by, crossed themselves before the coffin, murmured a prayer, and left. Doña Matilde Ochoa, the neighbor, approached Don Aurelio. “I’m so sorry, Don Aurelio,” she said with genuine sadness. He was just a boy. Don Aurelio nodded gravely. Then he said something Doña Matilde would never forget. At least he died working like a man.
Doña Matilde froze. Had she heard correctly? She looked at Don Aurelio searching for any sign that he was joking or in shock or had been misunderstood. But Don Aurelio was serious. His expression was [musical] with pride. Many boys his age don’t know what honest work is, Don Aurelio continued. Sebastián did. I taught him well.
Doña Matilde didn’t know what to say. [Music] simply walked away. Dr. Villegas also attended the wake. He stood beside Sebastián’s coffin. The boy finally looked at peace. [Music] He no longer coughed, no longer choked, no longer suffered. [Music] The doctor approached Don Aurelio. Don Aurelio said [Music] in a controlled but firm voice.
You know this boy didn’t have to die. If you had treated him in time. Don’t start with that, Doctor. Don Aurelio interrupted. The boy was weak. I raised him as best I could. As best he could, the doctor repeated, feeling the rage rise in his throat. You killed him. You and your stupid pride. [Music] That boy never had a chance. Don Aurelio stiffened.
I’m going to ask you to leave my house, [Music] said in an icy voice. Dr. Villegas looked at him with contempt. Then he looked one last time at the coffin and left. Sebastián was buried the next day in the León’s municipal cemetery. His grave was a mass grave. Don Aurelio didn’t pay for a headstone. He said it was pointless to spend money on stones.
After the burial, Don Aurelio returned to the workshop. He removed the small table where Sebastián had worked, took it out to the patio, and burned it. He said he no longer needed it, and life in the workshop went on as if Sebastián had never existed. But here the story takes an even darker turn, because Sebastián wasn’t the only one.
How many more children like him died in León’s workshops during those years? How many premature deaths were justified as natural weakness or bad luck? And why did an entire system—family, neighbors, doctors, educational authorities—allow this to happen in plain sight? If you want to know the truth about how many children lost their lives this way, subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications, because what you are about to discover will reveal that behind every family tradition hid a child exploitation industry that Mexico never
wanted to acknowledge. [Music] In the years following Sebastián’s death , Dr. Ramón Villegas began his own investigation. He was convinced that Sebastián’s case was not unique. He began reviewing death certificates of minors in León between 1940 and 1960. What he found was devastating. In those 20 years, more than 300 children and teenagers had died in León from causes related to respiratory illnesses: pneumonia, tuberculosis, pulmonary fibrosis, respiratory failure.
Dr. Villegas began looking for patterns. He discovered that more than 70% of those children came from families involved in the shoe industry. Many had started working before the age of 10. He wrote a detailed report. [Music] He titled it ” Occupational Diseases in Minors in the Shoe Industry in León, Guanajuato.
” He tried to publish it in the State Medical Bulletin in 1957. It was rejected. The official reason was that the [Music] study lacked sufficient scientific rigor . The real reason was that publishing that report would have It meant admitting that León, the proud shoe capital of Mexico, was built on the labor and death of children, and that was politically impossible.
Dr. Villegas then tried to present his report to the municipal authorities. He requested a meeting with the mayor . It was never granted. He tried to speak with the local press. The newspaper El Sol de León refused to publish anything on the subject. “ We cannot attack an industry that employs thousands of families,” they told him.
Dr. Villegas put his report in a drawer of his desk, and there it remained for decades. As for Don Aurelio Montes, he lived another 18 years after Sebastián’s death. He continued working in his shop until arthritis prevented him from holding the tools. He never expressed remorse for what he had done to his grandson.
He never mentioned Sebastián. Jesús Maldonado and Pablo Rentería continued working for him for several more years. Both developed their own respiratory illnesses. Jesús died of emphysema at age 58. Pablo died of lung cancer at age 60. 62. Don Aurelio died in 1973, at the age of 88, in his bed of natural causes. He died alone.
He had no family. They had all died or moved away. His workshop was sold to pay off the debts he had left behind. It was demolished in 1975. Today, at number 312 Hidalgo Street, there is an electronics store. There is no plaque, no memorial, nothing to indicate that in that place a child spent nine years being slowly destroyed.
Sebastián’s grave in the municipal cemetery was reused after seven years. It was a mass grave, and mass graves are reused. Sebastián’s remains were exhumed and placed in an ossuary. Today, it is impossible to know where they are. In 1989, 34 years after Sebastián’s death, a researcher from the University of Guanajuato, named Dora Elena Sánchez, was conducting a study on the history of the shoe industry in León.
In the municipal archives, she found the Dr. Villegas’s report, [music] that had been filed away and forgotten. She read it with growing horror. She decided to investigate further. She searched the archives of the General Hospital. She found Sebastián Montes’s death certificate . She found those of other children.
Dozens of them. Dr. Sánchez tried to find relatives of the victims. Most had died or moved away. But she found Doña Matilde Ochoa, who at 84 years old still lived in the same house next to Don Aurelio’s old workshop . Doña Matilde remembered Sebastián. He was such a quiet child, she told Dr. Sánchez. He always seemed frightened.
I could hear him coughing through the wall. Sometimes I would see him in the yard and I wanted to say something to him, offer him food. But Don Aurelio was a fearsome man. We were all afraid of him, and I feel guilty for not having done anything. Dr. Sánchez also found Pablo Rentería, who was living in a nursing home.
Pablo was 63 years old at the time. He had cancer. When the doctor asked him about Sebastián, Pablo began to cry. I watched him die slowly, he said, his voice breaking. I saw how that man destroyed him day by day, and I did nothing. I needed the job. I had a family to feed, but that’s no excuse. I should have done something.
I should have reported him. But in those days, nobody reported those things. [music] It was normal for children to work, it was normal for some to die. That’s the most terrible part: that it was normal. Dr. Sánchez wrote her research. She titled it Stolen Childhood: Child Labor in the Shoe Industry of León during the 20th Century.
[music] It was published in 1992 by the University of Guanajuato. It caused a minor academic stir. Some local newspapers mentioned it. There was a discussion forum at the university, and then it was forgotten because in León, as in many cities in Mexico, people prefer to remember the glory of their industry. They prefer to remember how León became the shoe capital, how its products were exported all over the world.
They don’t want to remember what that glory was built on. In the year In 2006, Mexico ratified Convention 182 of the International Labour Organization on the Worst Forms of Child Labour. The convention expressly prohibits the employment of minors in conditions hazardous to their health. But for Sebastián and the hundreds of children like him, protection came 50 years too late.
How many Sebastians were there throughout the history of Mexican industry? How many children died in textile workshops in Puebla? In mines in Guanajuato, on plantations in Veracruz, in factories in Monterrey? We will never know. Because their deaths were never recorded as what they were: negligent homicides.
They were recorded as illnesses, as accidents, as natural weakness. And the society that allowed this to happen was never judged, never questioned. Today, in 2025, we walk the streets of León and admire its shoe industry. We buy shoes made in León and never think about the children who died so that this industry could exist.
Sebastián Montes had dreams. His teacher at the The rural school where he studied as a child remembered Sebastián once saying he wanted to be a teacher like his father. He wanted to learn to read more books. He wanted to travel, he wanted to see the sea he had never seen. He did n’t fulfill any of those dreams.
At eight years old, his childhood was stolen from him. At seventeen, his life was stolen from him. In between, he lived nine years of constant pain, and when he died, his grandfather said he had died like a man, as if that were some consolation, as if child labor were honorable, as if destroying a child in the name of tradition were something to be proud of.
The truth is simpler and more terrible. Sebastián died because an entire society decided his life was worth less than shoe production. He died because child labor was so normalized that no one questioned whether it was right. He died because the education authorities filed his record and never inquired about him again.
He died because the neighbors heard his cough through the walls and preferred not to get involved. He died because the doctor who wanted to save him didn’t have the power to He forced his grandfather to treat him. He died because his grandfather genuinely believed he was raising him properly. And he died because he lived in a time when the lives of poor children mattered very little.
Thank you for joining us on this journey through one of the most heartbreaking cases in Mexican labor history . If this story has impacted you, please share it, because remembering is the first step to prevention. Don’t forget to subscribe to the channel, turn on notifications, and leave your thoughts on this case in the comments.
Have you heard of similar cases in your family or community? Do you think we are truly protecting child laborers today? We’ll see you in the next story. Until then.
