Mexico sees rise in gangs, vigilantes recruiting children

Photo: The Canadian Press

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador 

One day after a vigilante group revealed that it was using children as young as 8 as “recruits” for armed defence patrols, Mexico's president said Thursday that drug cartels too are recruiting ever-younger kids.

The whole issue has sparked a debate in Mexico over the use of children in armed confrontations, with rights groups saying the practice threatens not only kids' safety, but their mental health.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said that because social programs are giving more youths opportunities to study or work, drug cartels are having trouble finding gunmen, leading them to recruit children.

“The gangs are having trouble getting hit men, so they are recruiting more children and young people, because there is competition,” López Obrador said. "The thing is, the social programs are giving youths more options, and that is leading them (gangs) to get desperate, and they are looking to reinforce themselves with kids".

López Obrador said “the key is to attack the root causes, to stop the breakdown of families, to strengthen values and material welfare, to give attention to young people” to avoid them being recruited.

The issue came to a head Wednesday, when a vigilante group in southern Mexico publicly displayed a troop of 19 armed, masked children who had been recruited to act as “community police”.

The children appeared to range in age from about 8 to 15, and they carried shotguns and rifles. Some of the very youngest carried sticks instead of guns.

They performed rifle drills on a road in the township of Alcozacán in southern Guerrero state. In a nearby town, a local drug gang had killed 10 men and burned most of their bodies, and vigilante organizers said the kids were needed to guard their villages against the drug gang.

The head of the Guerrero state human rights office forcefully condemned the vigilantes, saying they were exposing the children to danger.

“We categorically reject the involvement of minors in security roles that put their physical safety, their lives and their development at risk,”the office said in a statement.