Mexican drug cartels increasingly recruit the young

VIDEO

Protecting Omar

As violence kills a dozen people a day in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, the warring drug cartels need new recruits. They often turn to teens for drug smuggling, gun running or murder. The neighborhood of Diaz Ordaz is prime territory and 16-year-old Omar Camacho is just what they're looking for. Camacho is a natural leader without many other opportunities.

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At a detention facility for young murderers, rapists and drug runners on the outskirts of Juarez, a 17-year-old youth serving six months for selling guns said: "Young people sell drugs and weapons because they want to make the easy money." He complained that a person can barely live on wages paid at maquiladoras, where his mother makes $70 a week.

He described crime as "almost irresistible" for himself and his friends.

On a school night in Barrio Azul, a Juarez neighborhood of one-room cinder-block homes lighted by pirated electricity, a dozen children and teens stood in the shadows of an abandoned adobe house. Some were high from sniffing "agua celeste," or heavenly water, a sky-blue industrial solvent used as an inhalant and sold openly for a few dollars a jar. Nearly all said they were no longer in school.

Judith Olivas, 15, matter-of-factly said she has seen 10 murders in the past two years.

A convoy of masked Mexican troops passed by in open-air trucks, bristling with weapons. The children stared blankly. Asked how she felt about the soldiers, Judith said: "We don't like them."

Researcher Michael E. Miller contributed to this report.