Young Hands in Mexico Feed Growing U.S. Demand for Heroin

NY Times: With her nimble hands, tiny feet and low center of gravity, Angelica Guerrero Ortega makes an excellent opium harvester.

Deployed along the Sierra Madre del Sur, where a record poppy crop covers the mountainsides in strokes of green, pink and purple, she navigates the inclines with the deftness of a ballerina. Read more. 

Slight decrease in the number of “Los Ninis” in Mexico

Geo-Mexico: Los ninis are young people (aged 15-29) that “ni trabaja, ni estudia” (neither work nor study). They have become the focus of much press attention in the past few years, often accompanied by the phrase “Mexico’s lost generation”.

According to a recent OECD report, “Education at Glance 2015″, two out of every ten Mexicans in the 15-29 age group neither studied nor worked in 2013, the latest year for which there is data. The report found that 22.3% of Mexican in that age category were ninis, a slight decrease compared to 25.0% in 2011. After population increase is taken into account, Mexico has about 200,000 fewer ninis than in 2011. Read more. 

Mexico Is Only OECD Country Where Work Trumps School Among Youth

Latin American Herald Tribune: Mexicans between the ages of 15 and 29 will spend an average 6.4 years working and 5.3 years studying, according to a report released Tuesday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The study, Education at a Glance 2014, found that Mexico is the only country among the 34 OECD members where youth spend less time in school than on the job.  Read more. 

Youth in Mexico Confront a Bleak Job Market

Vallarta Daily: The National Survey of Occupation and Employment (ENOE) indicated in late August that 85% of youth between the ages of 20 and 29 earn the lowest wages in the country, at 6,000 pesos (US$450) or less a month.

The youth unemployment rate nationally stood at 8.3 percent, equivalent to 349,000 young people between the ages of 14 and 29, of which 14.5 percent are college graduates.  Read more. 

The process Congress wants to use for child migrants is a disaster

Vox: Congress and the Obama administration are scrambling to respond to the humanitarian crisis of 57,000 unaccompanied Central American children who've crossed the border into the US this year.

One policy change that Republicans are expected to demand (in order to give the Obama administration the $3.7 billion in emergency funding it's asked for) has actually gotten the support of members of Congress from both parties, and encouraging hints from the White House. That change: updating a 2008 law so that Central American children could be returned to their home countries as quickly as Mexican children are today. Read more. 

A Bad Day or a New Bloodbath?

Frontera NorteSur: on-line, U.S.-Mexico border news
Center for Latin American and Border Studies
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, New Mexico

Ciudad Juarez News

May 28, 2014

In one of the bloodiest days in the last year or more, nine people were murdered Monday, May 26, in the northern Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez.  In separate incidents, guns, knives, hammers and possibly bare hands were the instruments of homicide.

A prominent lawyer, Salvador Urbina Quiroz, along with Judge Cesar Cordero, was gunned down by assassins as the two men were meeting in Urbina’s office on Monday afternoon.  The state prosecutor’s office (FGE), which is offering a $20,000 reward for the information leading to the arrests of the killers, said two suspects were captured on videotape at the crime scene.

Urbina was well-known in Ciudad Juarez for his leadership in professional associations, as well as his critical, published commentaries on legal affairs and the so-called drug war.

The 52-year-old criminal defense attorney handled controversial cases including the 2011 defenses of teacher Ana Isela Martinez, a young woman popularly known as “Miss Ana” who was imprisoned and falsely accused of trying to transport drugs to the United States, as well as four members of the Jaguars unit of the municipal police accused of killing four men.

McDonald's and Burger King Violate Labor and Human Rights

La Jornada
By Patricia Muñoz Rios
Americas Progam Original Translation

They were the first to apply hourly wages, a UAM study reveals. They use adolescents in temporary recruitment schemes.

México, DF. Payments of 15-16 pesos per hours worked, which mean fortnightly wages of 600 pesos on average; hiring as general employees, so that in a single day preparing food and washing bathrooms or floors causes constant accidents, especially falls and fractures; an obligation to sign blank resignations, are the working conditions of young people who work at McDonald's and Burger King.

Interviews conducted to these employees in an investigation by the Metropolitan Autonomous University and the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ProDESC), revealed that the working conditions of the young people employed  in these fast food restaurants, which have protective unions that ensure non-labor organization, are rarely checked by inspectors of the Ministry of Labor.

Mexico 'remaking' itself, Obama tells students

Los Angeles Times 
By Kathleen Hennessey and Tracy Wilkinson
May 3, 2013

Mexico City -- President Obama painted a sunny picture of a modern, “emerging” Mexico in a speech before an audience of young people Friday, his second day of a three-day swing through Latin America.

Speaking at the National Museum of Anthropology, the president expressed optimism about the push for reforms led by the new administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto and called on young people to be persistent.

“You honor your heritage, thousands of years old, but you are also part of something new, a nation that’s in the process of remaking itself,” Obama said, speaking in a central courtyard of the iconic museum with Mexican and American flags hanging behind him. “And as our modern world changes around us, it is the spirit of young people, your optimism and idealism, that will drive the world forward.”

The president’s message of a rising Mexico serves both his and his counterpart’s domestic agendas. Obama is pushing for immigration reform, and is seeking to reassure skeptics at home that the root causes of illegal immigration – poverty, violence and corrupt institutions in Mexico – are easing under new leadership.  Read more. 

Mexico Goes After the Narcos—Before They Join the Gangs

Time

By Ioan Grillo and Dolly Mascareñas / Nezahualcóyotl
Feb. 25, 2013

The gunshots at dawn woke residents of the cinder block homes in Nezahualcóyotl, a working-class city on the edge of the Mexican capital, making a few people duck for cover behind their beds. When they finally peered out their windows, they saw the corpses of two young men, one stacked over the other, besides a threatening note written on cardboard and signed by the drug cartel called La Familia. The double murder, which took place on Feb. 16, was the latest in a series of killings that have brought the drug war to the edges of Mexico City – the mountain capital that has long been viewed as a safe haven from cartel violence ravaging other parts of Mexico.

Recently installed President Enrique Peña Nieto hopes to reverse this trend with a new anti crime strategy – transforming poor neighborhoods like Nezahualcóyotl where cartels make their bastions and preventing young people from joining their criminal armies. On Feb. 12, Peña Nieto announced there would be more than $9 billion for crime prevention aimed at 57 hotspots. “We must put special emphasis on prevention, because we can’t only keep employing more sophisticated weapons, better equipment, more police, a higher presence of the armed forces in the country as the only form of combating organized crime,” Peña Nieto said. Rather than just shooting or incarcerating the seemingly endless ranks of cartel gunmen, the president hopes to stop young people from becoming assassins in the first place.  Read more.

Unemployed Youth Are Fighters, Victims in Mexico Drug War

InSight Crime: By Geoffrey Ramsey. Reports that the number of unemployed youths in Mexico stands at 8 million and is set to rise are bad news for security, as this group makes up the majority of combatants and victims in the country's drug war.

Excelsior published a report saying that there are currently 8 million Mexicans aged 18 to 30 who are not in work or education -- known as “ni-nis” (so labeled because they neither study or work, "ni estudian ni trabajan"). This is equivalent to more than 20 percent of the age group, and is on the rise, according to the newspaper.

InSight Crime Analysis
The high level of youth unemployment in Mexico is not only a social problem but a factor driving violence and organized crime. Ni-nis are the main prey of drug trafficking organizations, making up the majority of victims of drug-related violence, and also serve as the pool from which they draw their workforce, commonly serving as the expendable foot soldiers of gangs and cartels. Crime pays; an enforcer for a large cartel can make nearly three times as much per month as the national average, as demonstrated by the story of six female adolescent Zetas-in-training captured last year. Read more.

New Home for Juveniles Recruited to Drug Trade

Texas Tribune: EAGLE PASS, Tex. — Freddie knows he is lucky. If he were six months older, he could be in a state prison.
Or he could have been labeled a snitch and treated as such by Mexican cartel operatives.

Or he could be dead. Instead, Freddie will be free in December after finishing a year of court-ordered juvenile probation in his drug smuggling case. And he owes his good fortune to Bruce Ballou, the chief juvenile probation officer for Maverick, Zavala and Dimmit Counties. Read more.

Gang of gunmen go on rape, robbery, beating rampage at church youth camp-out near Mexico City

AP: TOLUCA, Mexico — A gang of about a dozen armed people stormed into a church youth camp-out near Mexico City and went on an hours-long rampage of beatings, robberies and rape, authorities said Saturday.

Seven girls were raped during the Friday attack and several campers were beaten, according to the state prosecutors office in Mexico State, which surrounds the Mexican capital. Read more.

Mexico's Youth Make Voices Heard Ahead Of Vote

NPR: Mexicans go to the polls July 1 to choose their next president, and polls show that voters seem inclined to embrace the past. The center-left Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which ruled the country for more than seven decades before being ousted 12 years ago, holds a solid lead.

But Mexico's young are making their voices heard: Some fear a return of authoritarian rule; others simply want jobs.

Making Noise
For the past few weeks, two things have been happening quite a lot in the Mexican capital: rain and protests. Hitting the streets are students from some of Mexico's most elite universities. Read more.

Fear of past, ire at present divide young Mexicans

AP: MEXICO CITY - With signs shouting "No to repression!" and "Down with the PRI!" the angry students who have taken the streets of Mexico with flash protests have become the most visible face of youth in this election.

They have challenged the presidential candidates to debates, urged others their age to pay attention to the campaign, and sought to fight off the return of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which held power for 71 years until its ouster in 2000.

The college students marching in the protests are among the most privileged of the 24 million young people registered to cast ballots on July 1. At the other end of the spectrum sit the majority of Mexico's young who live in poverty, did not graduate from high school, and earn less than $10 a day. Read more. Read more.

Young migrants make perilous US-Mexico journey

BBC: Born in Nayarit, on Mexico's west coast, Daniel had planned for months to organise a trip to the US to find himself a job in construction.

He thought of taking a small boat up the coast from Tijuana to San Diego. But he got frightened and instead hired a coyote who took him across the Rio Grande by boat.

He eventually landed on the other side but was spotted by the border patrol, handcuffed and taken to a station to be interrogated. He was 16 years old. Read more.

Disenchantment may keep Mexico's young voters on sidelines

Los Angeles Times: They are Mexico's "democracy babies" — a generation that grew up just as the nation broke free of decades of all-encompassing one-party rule.

Only 12 years ago, young people flocked to the polls with high hopes as part of what would be a historic ouster of the long-ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI. Now, as the country prepares to pick a new president in July,Mexico's young sound mostly disillusioned by the choices before them, and by joblessness and skyrocketing drug violence that have hit them especially hard.

On paper at least, these 24 million voters under 30 — nearly a third of the electorate — could be a powerful voice for change. But many have come to view the democratic transition as so much blah-blah-blah in the face of a system that remains deeply marred by corruption and filled with politicians who are as self-interested as ever.

"Why go vote? It's only a waste of time. They're all the same — they all lie, they all steal and no one helps you," said 20-year-old Sergio Guerrero, who on a recent day was selling lamb tacos at a street market here. read more

Drug War Damage: Mexico's children hope that "They don't kill me or cut off my head"

"From the mouths of babes"

La Jornada: "The levels of violence, especially in the north of Mexico, have, to a notable degree, permeated into the view of reality of children and young people, and into their perception of what they expect of the future:  "That it may be clean" ... "that they don't kill me" ... "no more crime" ... "no more shootings" ... "that they don't cut off my head" ... "that they don't kill my uncles" ... "that they don´t rob".

The above are responses of children between 6 and 9 years old, to a questionaire used by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), in preparation for the holding of its children's and women's consultation on April 29.

Carried out in 22 groups, the views of children between 6 and 15 linked to drug trafficking were explored. "Where do you feel insecure?"  "The street", invariably. "Why?" Because there may be a shooting ... with bullets" .... (Your fear?) "that they may rob me" ... "that I may find stray bullets"  .. "they may kill me with a bazooka" ... "that they kill my mom ... my family".

... And how to solve the problems? Perceptions vary among children by age, but the answers given to IFE present opposing solutions to the problem. "Speak with Los Zetas," replies a girl. "Ask them for help," is another answer. Others believe the way is to ask the police, the army and the navy to intervene in conflicts.

Appeal to police forces is not seen as a good option by all respondents, because "the police cause the problems" ... "I saw how they asked a guy for money ... yes, in the bus terminal to Mexico, the police came up to my grandfather and they took him somewhere and took his money, so I avoid going there, I'm afraid ... Sometimes the police are the ones that make the problems ... I see then asking for money ... Police cannot be trusted ... There are bad cops, I don't trust them."

However, there are other children for whom the answer to the problem of violence is simply killing those who create or belong to criminal gangs. "When I want to kill a man," says a child, "I exchange his gun for one of water, then he shoots me with the water, but then I take the pistol that he left and I kill him."

The consultation with the children and young people was conducted in Tijuana, Baja California; Campeche, Campeche; Torreon, Coahuila; Tepoztlan, Morelos; Merida, Yucatan and Mexico City.

Its aim was to research the situations where children feel more comfortable and confident (usually the home); where the risk areas are; whom do they trust; how do they seek to resolve problems; what decisions they make; how they perceive discrimination; their perception of change and the future.

... Their aspirations for the future. ... "That the politicians no longer be associated with the narcos, more equality, more social security, no more rape and unemployment , that there is no poverty and that the President change, that the police not take bribes and there is no discrimination."

About what they would like to be: .. the responses of of the children are linked to their current situation of insecurity and violence. "I would like to be a federal police or a soldier, in order to be between life and death." They want "to live without violence, that there are no shootings, that we may be safe ... have a peaceful future so that my children do not fall into this" ..." Spanish original

Drug War: Young people increasingly being used by Mexico’s drug gangs for smuggling and selling

The Washington Post: "Luis Alberto is only 14 but has the wizened gaze of a grown-up hardened by life. He never met his father, worked as a child, was hired by a gang to sell drugs and then got addicted to them.

In October he checked into Cirad, a rehab center west of this border city that handles about 500 drug addicts at a time, a fifth of them younger than 17."

“They brought me here because I was using and selling ‘criloco,’” Luis Alberto said, referring to methamphetamine, the drug of choice for 90 percent of adolescents in detox because of its low cost and easy availability.

Luis Alberto is just one of an increasing number of young people being used as “mules” to ferry drugs across the border into the U.S. or sell them in nearby Mexican towns, said Victor Clark, an anthropologist who studies drug trafficking." read more

Immigration Crackdown: US Hands Over 14,237 Unaccompanied Minors to Mexico in 2011

Fox News Latino: "U.S. authorities handed over 14,237 unaccompanied children and teenagers of different nationalities found traveling alone on the border to Mexico last year, the National Migration Institute, or INM, said. Of the minors handed over to authorities in Mexico, 11,520, or nearly 81 percent, were Mexican and the other 2,717 were of various unspecified nationalities." read more

Mexico Education: New film shows Mexico's failing education system

AP/SanFrancisco Chronicle: "Mexican teens can't solve long-multiplication problems. Education authorities don't know how many teachers work in Mexico. Teachers often miss class, and some who do show up have long conversations on their cellphones. This is the harsh reality of Mexico's education system, both public and private, as displayed in a new documentary titled "De Panzazo!" — roughly meaning "Barely passing."

Directed by filmmaker Juan Carlos Rulfo and journalist Carlos Loret de Mola, the film blames the deficiencies of Mexican schools on teachers unions and on government officials who give in to the unions' pressure to avoid changes in the system." read more