Mexican Cartels' War on Farming Villages

"We find ourselves under siege. This is a public cry for help by a community that's been cornered."
"They've been trying to get assistance by federal and state government, unsuccessfully, so they're trying to escalate the language to try to negotiate and get help."
Falko Ernst, analyst, International Crisis Group 

"I don't know how they can get the government's attention aside by doing these sorts of things -- or by dying, and even that will only get the authorities' attention for a few days."
Chris Kyle, anthropologist, University of Alabama, Birmingham

Miguel Toribio, 11, puts a pistol belonging to his father into his belt, before demonstrating newly learnt skills from military-style weapons training, to a Reuters journalist in Ayahualtempa, Mexico, February 3, 2020.   REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

The children wear uniforms with jackets emblazoned with "Community Police". They mask their faces with handkerchiefs. Thirteen-year-old Alex spoke of the training he received, how good it made him feel. He could feel the weight of the gun, fully loaded with ammunition. "There was no fear in his eyes. That's how I knew he was ready", his father Santos Martinez said. "I'm preparing to defend my village", Alex added.

Mexico's enormous problem with heroin production and drug cartels and gang killings is legendary. Not so well known is the plight of remote villages in areas where the drug gangs control everything, posing an existential threat to villagers' safety, controlling their comings and goings, exacting vengeance on those they believe betray them, and the ongoing siege of the villages leading to well-founded fears for the lives of village children.

Fathers of families see little option but to allow their children to be involved in military-type training, learning how to handle themselves in dangerous situations, arming them with deadly weapons to enable them to self-protect should/when the occasion arises. Venturing outside her community, a 56-year-old villager, a grandmother, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by cartel members, a warning to others to remain in their villages, silent, obedient.

The ten-year-old granddaughter of the murdered woman was given her father's permission to obtain training. "They do this to prepare themselves to defend the family, their siblings and defend the village", corn farmer Sanchez Luna explained of the "community police" his rugged region was required to form in self-defence. Arms training is offered to school-age children, seen as a matter of forced necessity.

Children walk in a single file, holding toy and real guns, as they demonstrate newly learnt skills from military-style weapons training, to a Reuters journalist, in Ayahualtempa, Mexico, February 3, 2020. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

Children as young as six years of age are seen carrying guns, demonstrating their military manoeuvres with ease. "They are killing children. We have to arm children", said 25-year-old Isabel Marquez, mother of two. The Indigenous community elders near the city of Chilapa add that young children would not be allowed to fight cartel gunmen; the situation is being used to attract help from far-off officials in Mexico City.

Last month suspected Los Ardillos Cartel members ambushed and killed ten area musicians after they had exited the territory their self-defence militias guard. Their bodies were  later found charred. The cartel dominates Guerrero state, their specialty the trafficking of heroin. A number of murders in the area preceded the attack on the musicians. One murder was a beheading, frightening the 6,500 residents whose land sits surrounded by poppy-growing farmland.

In Mexico, constant violence led by heroin-trafficking cartels threatens the population. President Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador has focused on the method, not the message: Those who arm children "should be ashamed of themselves", he pronounced, denouncing the use of children to grab the attention of an inattentive government. It worked. The government noticed."Giving children weapons and taking videos is an act of cruelty", he added and doesn't seem ashamed that its citizens must resort to such methods.

A community police agent poses for a photo as he guards a check point in Ayahualtempa, Mexico, January 30, 2020. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

Residents, for seemingly good reasons, are suspicious of regional authorities, much less the few local police in their villages. They accuse them of being in league with the Los Ardillos cartel, whose presence forces their children to stop formal education at age twelve, since the middle schools are located in territory the cartel controls.So, from that age forward, the boys become men, carrying weapons as part of their own local "police patrol".

"We are surrounded by the bad guys, so we have to prepare ourselves to defend our town and our families", said Louis 'Gustavo Morales, 13,  holding a 20-gauge shotgun. The self-defence militia is known as CRAC-PF. Last year they managed to repel a major attack by Los Ardillos, leaving residents in fear of the warning siren going off again.

Children with toy and real guns demonstrate newly learnt skills from military-style weapons training, to a Reuters journalist in Ayahualtempa, Mexico, February 3, 2020. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini