Guerrero: Impoverished youth recruited as cannon fodder are fighting back [video]

Chivis Martinez Borderland Beat-from Proceso

Read text to understand what is happening....



Translated by "Cruz" for Borderland Beat

"We are fucked, we shouldn't have come", says a young man to his colleague that is also under 20 years of age, both are carrying low caliber rifles, wearing a navy blue shirt that reads "Community Policing General Heliodoro Castillo". Together, they run towards a dozen combatants that seem to be overcome by a wave of a powerful blast and they manage to escape in the bed of a truck.

We are talking about one of the armed confrontations that have been registered in the mountains of the entity where members of criminal groups belonging to de Chichihualco and Tlacotepec dispute the turf of de Filo de Caballos and Carrizal in the borough of Leonardo Bravo.

In a video uploaded on social networks, you can see youngsters, for the most part, poor and without expectations of development, being recruited by organized crime to be used as cannon fodder.

The narrator of the story is a young combatant from the borough of Apaxtla de Castrejon, located in the north and where the control of its security is in the hands of a self-defense group that goes by Apaxtlense Movement Adrian Castrejon, who alongside The Tecampanera, the guards of Teloloapan, support the group from Tlacotepec in its attempt to take over the minging and poppy corridor of Xochipala - Filo de Caballos connects the mountain range to the central region.

The residents of communities in the borough of Leonardo Bravo are now fighting to return to their displaced families and to recover their patrimony in the areas that were taken by the Tlacotepec group.

You can see the youngsters in the images on the ground belly up on a dirt gap where they try to remain still during the hailstorm of bullets.

Next, a man wearing a tactical vest, a rifle and taking cover behind a truck, he demands that the recruits go to the battle zone to reinforce their peers.

-"They are scolding us. Telling us to go over there", says one of them.

-"Fuck lets go", responds the other, who warns him that the reason they are not fighting is that they have single shot .22 caliber rifles and the other combatants have high caliber automatic rifles.

The young man clearly states to the man that was demanding they go fight that his instructions are limited to only being there as "back up" in the absence of heavy weaponry and "the brave" referencing the ones that have the high power rifles, were already at the front line.

As the shrapnel gets stronger/louder, dozens of men, adults, and minors flee due to the dense shooting, running and aboard trucks.

The protagonists of this horrible scene decide to climb into the tray of a truck and they ask the driver to step on it in order to escape and save their lives.

-"Step on it Korean/looking", yells one of them.

-"We are fucked, we shouldn't have come", says the other with an expression that reflex nervousness.

Later, you can hear the voice of another man that contacts them through a portable radio and he orders them to cancel their retreat and to go back and fight, but he receives a negative response:

"The dudes from Apaxtla are going back. Everyone is going back man" states the youngster that holds a toy rifle compared to the caliber that the rest of his peers and enemies are carrying on them.

This violent act reflects the cruelty of a war fought by militiamen emerged from poverty who fight for interests that benefit leaders who they don't even know.