In a disturbing trend, Mexico’s organized crime groups are deliberately recruiting minors into their ranks by preying on their desire for status and camaraderie.
Sol, now 20 years old, was one of these young recruits. She remembers her first kill, a kidnapping she committed with other young members of the cartel when she was just 12 years old.
She had joined the cartel a few months earlier, recruited by someone she knew while selling roses on the sidewalk outside a local bar. She started as a lookout but quickly rose through the ranks.
The cartel valued Sol’s childish enthusiasm for learning new skills and her unquestioning loyalty. Perhaps most importantly, her status as a minor protected her from severe punishment if caught by the police.
“I obeyed the boss blindly,” Sol told Reuters, speaking from a rehabilitation center in central Mexico where she is trying to rebuild her life. “I thought they loved me.”
Sol declined to disclose how many people she killed during her time with the cartel. She stated that she had been addicted to methamphetamine since the age of nine and was arrested for kidnapping at 16. She spent three years in juvenile detention, according to her lawyer.
To protect Sol’s identity, Reuters has withheld her full name and the names of the city where she worked and the cartel she joined.
Psychologists at the rehabilitation center and Sol’s lawyer believe her account is accurate, although it cannot be independently verified.
Security experts say children like Sol are casualties of a deliberate strategy by Mexican organized crime groups to recruit minors into their ranks. These young individuals are known as ‘pollitos de colores’ or ‘colorful chicks,’ after the toxic-colored baby chicks sold at Mexican fairgrounds. They are cheap, bright, and short-lived.
Reuters has spoken with 10 current and six former child assassins, as well as four senior cartel operatives, who all confirm that cartels are increasingly recruiting and grooming young killers.
Their experiences highlight the growing brutalization of Mexican society and the failure of President Claudia Sheinbaum and past governments to address not only the expanding territorial influence of the cartels but also their extensive cultural hold.
This disturbing trend reveals a deeper problem in Mexico, where children are being exploited by organized crime groups for their own purposes. The country’s authorities must take immediate action to protect these vulnerable individuals and prevent further recruitment into cartel ranks.
Source: Reuters
