The Number Of Orphans Increases Because Of Organized Crime

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat 

This weekend, after nine o'clock at night on Saturday, November 13, an eight-month-old baby lost her mother, before her eyes and without knowing what was happening, armed men broke into her house and murdered her mother at close range in Apaseo el Grande, Guanajuato.

In total, the armed criminal cell riddled three adult women and two minors, with large-caliber weapons and then fled. The surviving baby remains hospitalized because a bullet shard caused a wound in one of her arms. 

The baby is now under the protection of the state Attorney General's Office waiting for her to recover, but the aftermath will be beyond physical injuries, this baby was left without the most important pillar of her life: her mother.

But he was not the only minor who was orphaned that Saturday, hours before, at six in the afternoon, two other children lost their mother. It happened during a children's party in Silao, in the same state, another armed criminal cell who arrived on motorcycles broke into and shot at the guests, leaving six dead and three injured.

The most serious thing of all is that the boys and girls who have lost their parents number in dozens, and there is not even a real record of these minors.

Infants who can suffer at the hands of organized crime, but also, once they grow up a little, become part of these groups. Unfortunately, they have no other choice in life.

These orphans are not even taken into account, it’s not even known how many exist.

They lose their families either because of an adjustment of accounts or because they are left in the middle of crossfire.

Currently there are no official figures on how many children remain in orphanhood, but according to the Network for the Rights of the Child in Mexico (Redim), from 2006 to date there are between 30 and 40,000 children orphaned by organized crime.

This is a moderate figure, because the System for the Integral Development of the Family (DIF) also does not have a basis on these cases, because there are no trained personnel or resources, and because each DIF, at the state level, is managed independently.

These children end up in homes or relatives who cannot take care of them either, either because of economic situation or because they also have their own children, this makes them more vulnerable and even end up integrating criminal cells.

The organization Citizen Security in Latin America indicates that Mexico is among the five countries in the region where minors do not feel safe, the group is headed by Venezuela, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Peru and our country.

And then comes the other side of this terrible situation and it is the minors who swell the ranks of drug trafficking.

According to the most recent study by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, gangs take advantage of the lack of opportunities and the lack of mechanisms to provide support to minors, which allows criminal groups to recruit and train poor and orphaned children and adolescents in the use of weapons and drug trafficking.

They are children who from the age of 10 or 11 are integrated into organized crime to be spies, move drugs and even start using weapons.

But there are other children who far from starting crimes that deserve low sanctions are taken to training to use weapons, even long weapons immediately, these children are in Montaña de Guerrero and Tierra Caliente, Michoacán.

They make them participate in violence.

In January 2020 and April of this year, minors from Chilapa, Guerrero, were presented as part of the so-called community police; however, several of those leaders are related to criminal groups.

These minors joined the self-defense groups because the group called Los Ardillos, which operate in Montaña, Guerrero, killed their parents, so today it is estimated that in that area there are just over two thousand minors orphaned by father or mother.

Meanwhile, in Michoacán, the situation is also worrying because groups such as Los Viagra, Caballeros Templarios and La Familia Michoacana take advantage of the fact that they are from the region to convince minors to join their groups and fight the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.

However, the recruitment of minors in this entity is not recent and worsened in 2012 with the creation of the so-called self-defense groups, which began in Tepalcatepec and Buenavista Tomatlán.

There is a man who is dedicated to helping through the Cristos association, he is the priest Gregorio López Gerónimo, better known as Father Goyo, who estimates that in 2014 there were already 4,800 orphans in Michoacán and more than 2,500 widows.

The figures continue to grow.

Other states where criminal groups look for vulnerable minors to take over their services are Tamaulipas, where the Gulf Cartel also searches for children to turn them into spies and hitmen. Even this cartel distributes toys and pantries and provides support to society, of course nothing is free.

The state has not managed to take care of these minors, who have been orphaned by the violence we live in.

Without safeguarding and protecting them, the only thing that has been achieved is that they become vulnerable and that they can be captured by criminal groups.

There are no follow-up protocols, care, and these children end up trapped in a system that does not allow them to have stability or a better option, so many choose to look for a family within criminal groups.

In a report we did many years ago, in 2009, in Ciudad Juárez it was seen how this phenomenon began to grow. There we talked to minors who had been left alone because their parents had either abandoned them or died and their mothers worked in the factories.

Those young people told me a phrase that I will never forget: "We went in with them (with crime), because a life as a king is better than a lifetime working as an ox."

These children and young people who enter organized crime, often times it’s  because they have been stripped of their families, mothers, fathers or grandparents, have a life expectancy of about three years.

Today there are more and more helpless minors who must be cared for and protected, for them and for the safety of many others.

It is urgent that these little ones be visualized as a state policy and that they be given another way of life.

Bibiana Belsasso