Kids as young as 6 drafted into war on Mexican crime
MEXICO CITY — In a lawless stretch of western Mexico, children as young as 6 years old are taking up arms against organized crime.
Last week, 19 children were inducted into a vigilante group that for years has been battling drug gangs in restive Guerrero state. Local journalists published photographs and videos of the induction ceremony — in which uniformed, rifle-wielding children performed militarystyle exercises — that drew outrage across Mexico, with human rights officials condemning it as child abuse.
But the leader of the vigilante group said in a phone interview that a dramatic spike in violence in the region and an absence of government intervention have left the community no choice but to arm even its children.
“They must be prepared,” said Bernardino Sanchez Luna, the founder of the vigilante group known as the CRAC-PF. “If they are afraid, the criminals will kill them like little chickens.”
Two of the children who were trained were 6, he said. The oldest members of the group were 15.
Over the last decade, dozens of self-defense groups have emerged in Guerrero. They say they are defending themselves from local criminal gangs that control drug smuggling routes and extort businesses in the region. Critics say the vigilantes are often themselves involved in criminal activity.
Sanchez said his group, which patrols the mountainous region east of the city of Chilpancingo, decided to begin training children in self-defense after the Jan. 17 killing of a group of indigenous musicians in the town of Chilapa.
The 10 musicians were returning from a performance in two vans when assailants attacked them, according to state prosecutors. The musicians were stabbed and their vehicles and bodies set on fire.
After the musicians were killed, local residents reacted angrily, blocking roads and demanding that government authorities intervene. They were particularly upset about the death of the youngest band member, who was 15 years old, Sanchez said.
When it comes to violence in the region, “nobody, not even a child, is off-limits,” he said.
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was elected in 2018 on a platform that he said would combat crime by giving poor Mexicans economic opportunities.
That strategy has so far been unsuccessful, with the country recording a record 33,341 homicides last year.
Asked about the child soldiers in Guerrero, Lopez Obrador refrained from condemning the practice and returned to his security strategy, which he said will make it so young people don’t have to take up arms.
“We have to give options to children, to young people, to keep them away from weapons, keep them away from the violence, and that’s what’s being done,” he said at his daily news conference Thursday.
Human rights officials across the country were quicker to voice their concern about the recruitment of young vigilante soldiers.
“We strongly reject the involvement of minors in security tasks that put their development, physical integrity and life at risk,” Ramón Navarrete Magdaleno, president of the Guerrero Human Rights Commission, told journalists.
Sanchez responded by saying human rights officials should not criticize self-defense groups that are only trying to protect children.
Before the induction ceremony last week, he and other vigilante leaders spoke to the youths.
“Having a weapon is a lot of responsibility,” he said he told them. “You should only use your gun to defend your life.”
Some analysts speculated whether the recruitment of child soldiers was a tactic used by the vigilantes to bring attention to violence in the region.
“I don’t think they’re serious about getting 6year-olds to defend the town and even to defend themselves,” said Chris Kyle, an anthropologist and expert on Guerrero based at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “This may just be a play to get media attention.”