Zacatecas: Cartels Kidnap Adolescents To Fill Their Ranks

"Sol Prendido" for Borderland Beat

 Inhabitants of southwestern Zacatecas asked the government for support to rescue dozens of young people and adolescents from that area who are victims of forced recruitment by organized crime groups operating in central and western Mexico, a criminal practice that has increased in recent months. 

Residents of the region said that the state prosecutor's office does not act. An example is that of Cecilio Acevedo González and Angélica María Sánchez, parents of Aldo Acevedo Sánchez, 17, who was kidnapped on July 16 in the municipality of Tepetongo.

This is a problem that many families in the region suffer from, the couple said at a press conference on Wednesday. Let society know that the young people, children of families belonging to the communities of Juancho Rey, Sierra Fría, El Salitre, El Venado and others, in the municipalities of Sierra de Jerez, Villanueva and Valparaíso, are being taken away by force and urgently require government support to rescue them.

Cuauhtémoc Espinoza Jaime, leader of the Peasant Parliament of Zacatecas social organization, lamented the violence and insecurity prevailing in the southeast and the indigenous areas that share this entity, Durango, Jalisco and Nayarit; likewise, he expressed his support to the loved ones of the hostages.

My family and I want the society of Zacatecas to know that the families of these communities are being attacked, kidnapped and robbed by criminal groups that abuse us. We are people who are not protected by the authorities, assured Cecilio Acevedo.

The criminals, he explained, enter our communities in vehicles, telling our young people that they are lost and that they cannot leave, and our boys in their innocence accompany them to take them out to the intersections and we never see them again.

He said that in this manner they duped his son Aldo on July 16. He was always a very serious boy, dedicated to his study, calm, who also helped me to work and dreamed of being a doctor. With deep sadness we say that, to date, we have no news of him.

Acevedo González accused personnel from the Zacatecas Attorney General's Office of acting in a despotic and inefficient manner with those who have filed complaints, which aggravates “our pain and desperation.

We also see with concern that the bad elements of the state prosecutor's office and the investigative police are sent punished to the most distant judicial districts of the state, without realizing that the truly punished turn out to be the citizens.

He added that, in her case, the prosecutor of the Public Ministry in Jerez (the judicial district to which Tepetongo belongs), named Leticia, took more than four hours to file the complaint for Aldo's disappearance.

"She did not explain the procedures to us," said Acevedo González. It took more than 12 hours to publish our son's missing record, hours that could have been essential to find him."

On the contrary, “we had to wait four hours and see how she worried about personal matters during her work hours and, without any empathy, talked to her colleagues about my son.

Aldo could have been a young man found dead or executed minutes before, his father recalled. But the prosecutor even made phone calls in which she joked and laughed, while we sadly and desperately listened to her, she said with regret.

Acevedo maintained that in the search for disappeared persons we see unequal, political and unfair treatment.

He recalled that several days after the kidnapping of his son, a Wixárika leader known as Venado Azul was abducted.

In that case there was an intense operation, with more than 85 elements of the Mexican Army and the National Guard. They did locate him in less than three days. Good for him, but for my son and for many other disappeared minors throughout the region there is no justice, he concluded.

Realidad Zacatecas