ACAPULCO, Mexico (Reuters) - A volunteer police force in rural Mexico that says it has been overwhelmed by local kidnappings has recruited schoolchildren as young as 12 to join its ranks, the latest sign of how some parts of the country are struggling to cope with organized crime.
Armed with rifles and sticks, and with their faces covered, boys and girls paraded around the local sports field this week before joining a patrol in Ayahualtempa, a mountain village in the southwestern state of Guerrero.
“We can’t study because of lawlessness,” one recruited teenager told the Milenio television channel. The boy explained how he had learned to shoot a gun after a handful of lessons.
And Trump and Abbott are calling the people fleeing this shit, and literally walking to US authorities and asking for asylum, “invaders.”
The pictures are sobering. Knowing that you will likely die ugly but proceeding due course is a look that masks can’t hide.
From child soldiers, to child police officers… :(
Violence has recently escalated in Guerrero, one of the poorest states in Mexico. In early January, a drone attack allegedly carried out by drug cartel La Familia Michoacana killed around 30 people, human rights groups say.
Wow. From an Aug ‘23 article:
The Mexican army said Tuesday that drug cartels have increased their use of roadside bombs or improvised explosive devices — especially bomb-dropping drones — this year, with 42 soldiers, police and suspects wounded by IEDs so far in 2023, up from 16 in 2022.
At what point do we stop referring to these entities as cartels and start describing them as paramilitary insurgencies? It’s starting to seem a rather fine line.
