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In Mexico, fears of a 'lost generation'
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"Everyone around here talks about it, especially the kids," she said in an interview. "It's like -- I'm not sure how to describe it -- but they look at it like the ultimate wow."
Two years ago, traffickers met her in a dingy motel room along the U.S.-Mexico border. They taped two kilos of cocaine to her thighs, then concealed them beneath a billowing skirt. She walked through the Port of Entry at Nogales, Ariz., but was captured at a Border Patrol checkpoint south of Tucson. After serving six months in detention, she was deported.
Hundreds of minors, including U.S. citizens, some as young as 12, have been arrested this year for drug smuggling. In San Diego County, 26 minors were caught last year trying to bring drugs across the border; this year authorities have arrested 124.
"They'll risk their futures for an iPod," said Joe Garcia, a supervisory agent at Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. "And there is almost an endless supply of teenagers."
According to Mexican authorities, La Familia, a cartel based in the southwestern state of Michoacan, recruits members as young as 14. The organization inculcates the youngsters with a radical religious doctrine that demands loyalty, a promise to respect women and children -- and a commitment to kill rivals.
The young gangsters emerge from a grim panorama marked by an absence of government authority. Calderón's wife, Margarita Zavala, said in October that 60 percent of Mexico's children live in poverty.
"In some parts of this country, it would appear that the only options for children are to immigrate to the United States or become traffickers," said Teresa Almada, director of the Center for the Assistance and Promotion of Children in Juarez.
In Juarez, where low-wage assembly plants called "maquiladoras" have been mothballed because of the recession, a third of all teenagers neither work nor attend school, according to census figures.
"These days, youths are joining the drug cartels at an ever-younger age because they're cheap," said Martin Barron Cruz, a researcher at the National Institute of Criminal Science in Mexico. "It is a question of the market. A kid of 15 ends up doing the same job as a 20-year-old, but for half the money."
"It is easier for the cartels to dispose of them when they are no longer needed," Barron said. "I say 'dispose' because, sadly, there's no other word for it. They eliminate them, often using another kid of the same age."
Prisoners are also getting younger, Barron said. The largest cohort of inmates is now 19 to 25 years old.
Chronic drug use has doubled since 2002 in Mexico. The fastest-growing addiction rates are among 12-to-17-year-olds.
