Latest news with #LizbethDiaz
The Star
30-06-2025
- The Star
Mexican authorities find 20 bodies in Sinaloa state
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexican authorities found 20 bodies in the western state of Sinaloa, many of them inside a van, the state prosecutor's office told Reuters on Monday, amid rising violence in the area linked to organized crime. The prosecutor's office said 16 bodies were found inside the van and four others were discovered on a bridge on the same highway near the state capital of Culiacan. At least six of them were decapitated, the office said. Sinaloa has been gripped by months of intense violence fueled by rival drug trafficking groups vying for control of routes used to produce and transport narcotics, including fentanyl, that are often destined for the United States. (Reporting by Lizbeth Diaz, Writing by Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Sarah Morland)
Japan Today
25-06-2025
- Japan Today
Mass shooting in gang-plagued Mexican state leaves 11 dead and more injured
By Lizbeth Diaz and Raul Cortes At least 11 people were killed, including a teenager, and more wounded in a Tuesday night shooting in the central Mexican city of Irapuato, authorities said on Wednesday. The attorney general's office in Guanajuato, the violence-plagued state where Irapuato is located, said that 20 others were hospitalized with gunshot wounds. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier on Wednesday that the victims included children, although the attorney general's office later confirmed only one casualty was a minor, aged 17. "It is very unfortunate what happened. An investigation is under way," Sheinbaum said. Local media reported the shooting happened during an evening party celebrating a Catholic holiday, the Nativity of John the Baptist. A video circulating on social media showed people dancing in the patio of a housing complex while a band played in the background, before gunfire erupted. Reuters was not immediately able to verify the video. Guanajuato has been for many years one of the most violent regions in the country, where criminal groups fight over routes to price drugs and commit other crimes. On Tuesday, five other people were killed in other parts of the state, according to the attorney general's office. © Thomson Reuters 2025.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
How Mexico's cartels recruit children and groom them into killers
By Lizbeth Diaz MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Sol remembers her first kill for a Mexican cartel: a kidnapping she committed with a handful of other young recruits that twisted into torture and bled into murder. She was 12 years old. Sol had joined the drug cartel a few months earlier, recruited by someone she knew as she sold roses on the sidewalk outside a local bar. She started as a lookout, but rose fast. The cartel liked her childish enthusiasm for learning new skills, her unquestioning loyalty, and perhaps most importantly, her status as a minor protected her from severe punishment if the cops ever caught her. "I obeyed the boss blindly," Sol, now 20 years old, told Reuters, speaking from the rehabilitation center in central Mexico where she is trying to patch her life back together. "I thought they loved me." Sol declined to say how many people she killed during her time in the cartel. She said she'd been addicted to methamphetamine from the age of nine. When she was 16 she was arrested for kidnapping - her only criminal conviction - and spent three years in juvenile detention, according to her lawyer. Reuters is withholding Sol's full name, and the names of the city where she worked and the cartel she joined, to protect her. The news agency was unable to independently verify the details of Sol's account, although psychologists at the center and her lawyer said they believed it was accurate. Security experts say children like Sol are a casualty of a deliberate strategy by Mexican organized crime groups to recruit minors into their ranks by preying on their hunger for status and camaraderie. In cartel slang they are known as 'pollitos de colores' or 'colorful chicks,' after the fluffy baby chicks sprayed with lurid toxic colors and sold at Mexican fairgrounds. They're cheap, burn bright, and don't live long. Reuters spoke to 10 current and six former child assassins, as well as four senior cartel operatives, who said cartels are increasingly recruiting and grooming young killers. Their experiences reveal 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 their extensive cultural hold too. Mexico's presidency and interior ministry did not reply to requests for comment. The news agency contacted active cartel members through Facebook and TikTok. Many shared pictures of themselves holding rifles, one had a cap emblazoned with a cartoon chicken firing off automatic rounds - a reference to the 'colorful chicks.' They were aged between 14 and 17. Most said they had been recruited by relatives or friends, joining principally out of a desire to belong to something. They usually came from homes wrecked by violence and drugs. Many were already battling addictions of their own to drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine. "You join with your death sentence already signed," said one 14-year-old child killer who has worked for a cartel for eight months, requesting anonymity to protect themselves. "But it's worth it," they said. Now they're no longer hungry and have a sense of family. FAILED POLICIES Although 15 security experts and those within the cartels say child recruitment is becoming more common, a lack of hard data makes the issue difficult to track. The U.S. government's Bureau of International Labor Affairs estimates that some 30,000 children have joined criminal groups in Mexico. Advocacy groups say the number of vulnerable children prone to being recruited is as high as 200,000. It is not clear how these numbers have changed over time, though experts say child recruits are getting younger. A Mexican government report into the cartel recruitment of children published last year found minors as young as six have joined organized crime and also highlighted the growing use of technology, like video games and social media, to draw in young recruits. The report said 70% of adolescents pulled into the cartels grew up surrounded by high levels of extreme violence. In 2021, Mexican authorities intercepted three boys between the ages of 11 and 14 in the state of Oaxaca who they said were about to join a cartel after being recruited through the violent multiplayer game "Free Fire." Mexico's National Guard has since issued guidelines on the safe use of video games, while a legislative proposal is currently before the Lower House seeking to criminalize the cultural glorification of crime in music, TV, and video games. "We see more and more criminal groups co-opting ever younger children," said Dulce Leal, a director at Reinserta, an advocacy group focused on children who have been victims of organized crime. She said this trend has grown alongside the use of new technologies like video games with integrated chat messaging systems. At the rehabilitation center in central Mexico, another former child killer, Isabel, 19, who is being treated for extreme trauma and depression said her uncle recruited her when she was 14. The uncle helped her murder a former teacher who had raped her, she said, and they then became a couple despite him being 20 years her senior. He got her pregnant but she miscarried, she thinks because of her heavy drug use. Reuters was unable to corroborate all of Isabel's account, but her arrest as an unnamed child cartel member was published in news reports at the time. Isabel had tattoos with her uncle's name removed, but still bears a stencil of his faceless silhouette. 'DISPOSABLE' KIDS While the youngest kids might only be useful for simpler tasks, like delivering messages or working as look-outs, their loyalty and malleability quickly make them an asset. They're also cheap and easily replaceable. By the time they're eight-years-old, they can usually handle a gun and kill, one cartel member said. There are some parallels with child soldiers fighting in places like Sudan and Syria, but Mexican cartels differ in their for-profit nature and arguably in the cultural sway they exert. Cases of child killers have emerged in other places too, including Sweden. "These kids are disposable, they can be used... but in the end, all they await is death," said Gabriela Ruiz, a specialist in youth issues at Mexico's National Autonomous University. In 2021, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Mexico to combat the forced recruitment of minors after reports of children in the state of Guerrero joining a community defense force to fight criminal groups in the area. Despite a government focus under former President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and now under Sheinbaum, on combating the social roots of cartel violence--including programs aimed at keeping children away from drugs and crime--little measurable progress appears to have been made, the 15 experts who spoke with Reuters said. There are no specific government programs aimed at rescuing recruited children, they added. One problem is a lack of clear criminal law banning the recruitment of minors into organized crime. Another is the broader problem of child labor in Mexico. In 2022, the most recent official data available, 3.7 million children aged between 5 and 17 were already working, about 13% of that total age group in Mexico. By law, children in Mexico can work from the age of 15 if they meet certain criteria, including signed parental approval. FLEEING FROM DEATH Daniel was 16 when he joined a cartel in a state on Mexico's Pacific coast in 2021. The group turned up to a party he was at and forced the kids to join at gun point. For the next three years Daniel worked for the cartel - starting as a lookout, becoming an enforcer collecting protection money, and eventually a cartel killer. Many of his friends died along the way, some at the hands of rivals, some by his own cartel - murdered to set an example, because they refused to follow orders or because they were maneuvering to rise up the ranks. Last November, he fled the cartel - leaving his partner and three-year-old son behind - and escaped to Mexico's north, applying for a U.S. asylum appointment through the Biden-era government app CBP One. The program was dismantled when Trump took office. He's now hiding near the border. Afraid for his life and even more scared his old cartel will come after his partner and child. He's saving to pay a smuggler to get him to the United States. "I have no choice, I'm scared to die," he told Reuters at the migrant shelter where he was staying. For Sol, her focus is on starting her life over in Mexico. She is studying for a law degree and wants to build a career and stable life away from the death and violence she wrought and suffered as a child. She hopes to specialize in juvenile law and serve as a mentor for younger children tempted by a life of crime. "I never thought I would make it to 20, I always thought I would die before," she said, fighting back tears.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
U.N. refugee agency to close four offices in Mexico amid funding crunch
By Lizbeth Diaz MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -The U.N. refugee agency in Mexico plans to close four offices in the Latin American country due to a "serious funding crisis" the agency is facing, a UNHCR official told Reuters. Two of the offices are in the southern Mexican cities of Palenque and Tenosique, near the border with Guatemala. The agency has also laid off 190 employees due to the funding crunch, the official said. UNHCR's operation in Mexico has been heavily dependent on U.S. funding, which has been hit by President Donald Trump's global funding freeze. On January 20, hours after taking office, Trump ordered a pause in foreign aid to review if it was aligned with his foreign policy priorities. Trump also enacted a sweeping crackdown at the U.S.-Mexico border, aimed at slowing migration into the United States.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Yahoo
Mexicans hope uncovered mass grave sheds light on missing relatives
By Lizbeth Diaz MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -The families of many Mexicans who have been missing for years are looking for answers in the discovery of piles of clothes, shoes and skeletal remains at a ranch in western Mexico that may have been a base to burn bodies and bury the remains. Civilian activists searching for missing loved ones discovered the mass grave last week in Teuchitlan, Jalisco state, along with ovens possibly used to cremate bodies. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. "This has given hope to many people looking for their relatives so they can find their loved ones," said Raul Servin, a member of a group of people searching for lost family members, who has been trying to find his son for seven years. Servin said many people from all over Mexico had contacted his group to say they had identified clothes, shoes, backpacks or other objects their relatives were wearing on the days they disappeared. Mexico's Attorney General's Office did not immediately respond to Reuters' request for comment on the case, a day after top prosecutor Alejandro Gertz pledged a full investigation and said it would have been impossible for Jalisco's state authorities to not have been aware of what was happening. Jalisco's state prosecutor's office told Reuters it would have results in two weeks on tests being carried out on hundreds of items of clothing, bullet casings of various calibers and skeleton fragments found in Teuchitlan. The state prosecutor's office said it had set up a public platform with nearly 600 items recovered at the scene, such as suitcases, backpacks and pieces of clothing, so people could identify belongings online. Located by the Pacific coast, Jalisco is home to the powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a criminal organization that authorities accuse of forcibly recruiting young people and being behind the state's high number of missing persons reports. Virginia Garay, whose son has been missing since 2018, said her group in neighboring Nayarit was preparing for the arrival of representatives of other groups from across Mexico, hoping to identify lost family members. "We are looking for the resources so we can go and personally review the clothing and all the evidence at the site," Garay said. Amnesty International's Mexico chief Edith Olivares urged the Mexican government to clarify the facts and provide the necessary resources to do so, as well as give dignified treatment to people who recognized relatives' clothing. "The Mexican state has been the great absentee in the problem of forced disappearance," Olivares said. She added that community groups, made up mostly of women, had helped locate hundreds of bodies and people were turning to them rather than the government. Mexico counts over 124,000 missing people, according to government data.
