The sun is crushing the village of Alcozacan, lost in the mountains of Guerrero State, in southwest Mexico. A hundred men, gun in hand, and women, hugged in their mourning veils, wait in leaden silence. Heavily armed masked face police arrive in huge pickups. They protect four long gray hearses. On board, the bodies of ten musicians massacred, beheaded and burned by drug traffickers. This morning, January 29, the authorities returned the remains of the murdered artists, all Nahu Indians, who had fallen into the trap of a local cartel upon returning from a concert, to their families. It is the mafia crime of too many for the indigenous communities, in this steep region, which has become strategic for the production and trafficking of drugs. To force the authorities to protect them, these poor peasants are arming their children and alerting the media.
"Position one!" Position two! Position three! "shouts a barely pubescent boy to his ten friends lined up on the basketball court in a neighboring village. At each of his orders, these kids from 9 to 15 years old kneel, lie down, then get up, never ceasing to hold on to the horizon. They then parade with hunting rifles, in olive green uniforms, scarves on their faces. "We’ve been training them for a year, once a week," says Bernardino Sanchez Luna, head of the community police of this group of small Nahua villages. On January 29, this little man, a constantly sizzling waist-walkie talkie, once again reviews his troop of child soldiers in front of the cameras of journalists, who have come in large numbers.
The images quickly spread to the media in a country where homicides break records. In 2019 alone, the deadliest year in twenty years, more than 35,000 people were killed. “Two days after the massacre of the musicians, the authorities had promised to come to the village. We haven't seen them. It forces us to organize ourselves ", continues Mr. Sanchez Luna.
Overwhelmed by the heat, one of the children passed out in the middle of a demonstration. The others remain frozen. Two fathers, rifle slung, rush to transport the little one to the shade. "We don’t like to see our children with a gun, says Juan, whose 10-year-old son is training today. But they attack us. " Thee cultivator of squash, corn and beans refrains from pronouncing the name of the latter, Los Ardillos (squirrels). This local gang of drug traffickers terrorizes the population in this rural region with ideal climatic conditions for the cultivation of the poppy, which is the basis of heroin production. Mexico is the world's third largest producer of poppies, after Afghanistan and Burma. The Guerrero Mountains alone account for half of Mexican production, most of it destined for the United States – a juicy business, however, threatened by the boom in synthetic opioids, including Fentanyl.
Legal Armed Bodies for Indigenous Communities
In Alcozacan, war is declared between the "narcos" and the Guerrero Indians. The ten musicians killed came from this poor village with dusty streets and tin roofs. It is one of the 16 indigenous hamlets that make up the municipality of José Joaquin de Herrera. The inhabitants took up arms to defend themselves from the attacks of the Ardillos. These communities relied on their own police, under the law of "customs and habits". These armed bodies, legal since 2011 in the state of Guerrero, are gathered within the Regional Council of Community Authorities (CRAC), created twenty-five years earlier in respect of the autonomy of the original peoples of Mexico. Long devoted to the daily management of communities, the efforts of the CRAC are now focused on the problem of security.
These child soldiers are no longer in school, more than an hour and a half away. "It's too risky, we could get kidnapped"says Gerardo, 15, whose large black eyes appear between the visor of a black cap and a red muffler. He’s the oldest in the group. Gerardo dreams of becoming a doctor. But he spends his time watching over the few goats in his family and learning to handle a gun: “I’m afraid I’ll find myself in a confrontation one day, but thinking of defending my family and my village gives me courage. " Beside him, José Miguel, 11, slides with a timid as shy as childish: "I’ve already fired for real. It scared me the first time, but on the second, the fear went away. "
At the top of the stone grandstands overlooking the field, transformed into a place of arms, Dominga, 30, follows the exercise on loan. Like others, this mother of three girls and two boys, aged 5 to 17, criticizes the abandonment of the authorities. "We suffer threat after threat, assassination after assassination … One day, they will kill everyone", worries the young woman, who lives on her small piece of land. And Bernadino Sanchez Luna to accuse: “The government of Guerrero is in league with criminal groups. How else to explain that, each time one of our people is killed, the police do not arrest anyone? " The head of the Ardillos, Celso Ortega, is none other than the brother of a former local MP who is still very influential. In Mexico, only 2% of crimes are tried. The rate drops to just 0.2% in the state of Guerrero.
Yet the new president of the left, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, aka AMLO, who took office in December 2018, had promised to reduce the violence. Since then, its security policy has struggled to bear fruit: AMLO no longer plays the card of confrontation with cartels, but rather that of prevention by tackling the causes of violence, including poverty. A long-term strategy. Some public security experts accuse him of having opened a breach, increasing the violence of the cartels. CRAC is calling for the president to come to Guerrero to pressure local authorities in the hope of ending the impunity of criminals.
"If the state does not keep its word, we will make noise again"
The media coverage of child soldiers hit the target, causing controversy. "It is a desperate act to get the attention of the state"reacted the network for the rights of the child in Mexico (Redim), alarming that the minors are taken hostage in this bloodbath. According to the Redim, 35,000 children and adolescents are recruited each year by organized crime; 460,000 miners have joined the ranks of the cartels; more than three are murdered on average per day.
"It is lamentable that irresponsible adults arm young people", said Alfonso Durazo, Minister of Public Security, calling on the CRAC to respect the rights of minors. And AMLO to take a stand by accusing "Criminal groups recruit children for lack of adult killers". Opposite, the CRAC rejects the criticisms, justifying its initiative by the urgency of the situation.
Bet won: the indigenous organization signed an agreement with the government on February 11. The latter is committed to better securing the region. In return, the child soldiers of peasants in the state of Guerrero must lay down their arms. But, in the process, Mr. Sanchez Luna warned the press: "If the state does not keep its word, we will make noise! "
