( PEDRO PARDO / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESS VIA GETTY IMAGES ) - Children with candles and dressed in white march for peace during a 2010 protest against violence in Acapulco, Mexico.
“They kill children on purpose,” said Marcela Turati, author of “Crossfire,” a new book on the killings of civilians in Mexico’s drug war. “In Juarez, they told a 7-year-old boy to run, and shot his father. Then they shot the little boy.”
Once off-limits
Historians of the Mexican drug trafficking culture say that until recently children were considered off-limits in the rough code honored by crime bosses, who once upon a time liked to portray themselves as Robin Hoods dealing dope to gringos and donating alms to the poor.
“The rules no longer apply — rather, there are no rules,” said Bruce Bagley, an expert in the drug trade at the University of Miami. When the monolithic Institutional Revolutionary Party ruled Mexico, until 2000, Bagley said excess violence was tamped down by the state, which controlled the drug bosses with selective coercion and complicity.
Now no such “pacts” exist, Bagley said.
U.S. and Mexican officials say the grotesque violence is a symptom the cartels have been wounded by police and soldiers. “It may seem contradictory, but the unfortunate level of violence is a sign of success in the fight against drugs,” said Michele Leonhart, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The cartels “are like caged animals, attacking one another,” she added.
Earlier this month, the award-winning poet and commentator Javier Sicilia rallied at the main plaza in Cuernavaca and appealed directly to the drug lords “to return to your codes, where civilians are not touched, where civilians are sacred, where children are sacred.”
Sicilia’s 24-year-old son was found dead in March. His body and four others were stuffed into a compact car, their faces, wrists and ankles wrapped in tape, victims of suffocation. Next to the corpses was a message that read: “This happened to you for making anonymous calls to the military” and was signed “the Gulf Cartel.”
Young recruits
Children as young as 10 have been employed by crime gangs to watch over street corners or sell drugs, and in some cases to kill. In December, Mexican authorities arrested a 14-year-old boy who allegedly confessed that he worked as an assassin for $250 a week.
Edgar Jimenez Lugo told reporters that a drug trafficking gang kidnapped him when he was 11. “I participated in four executions. I was drugged. They said they would kill me,” he said.
Here in San Luis Potosi, violence between the La Familia cartel and ruthless Zetas group has roiled the once-quiet streets. People familiar with the latest murder of a child said the killers came looking for a rival. They didn’t find him — but they found his family.
“What malice, to kill the little girl,” said a neighbor whose children had played with Scarlett. He shook his head. “It’s incredible.”
Neighbors said the family worked hard. The little girl’s grandmother took in laundry. Her parents flipped hamburgers nearby.
Experts worry about the public health consequences of such violence. Schoolchildren in Michoacan were asked to create art for a contest commemorating the Mexican bicentennial, depicting scenes from everyday life in “the Mexico I live in.”
In late March, educators published a book of children’s drawings, which included a drug tough throwing a grenade at a federal policeman and a man being shot in the stomach with an automatic weapon.
Loading...
Comments