RINCON DE CHAUTLA — When the 56-year-old mother-in-law of David Sanchez Luna was tortured and killed after venturing out of her small Mexican community encircled by drug cartels, he let his seven- and ten-year-old daughters receive military-style weapons training.
“They are killing children. We have to arm children,” Isabel Márquez, 25, a mother of two, told the Wall Street Journal. The attack followed a spate of murders in recent years, including a beheading, that rattled the 6,500 residents whose lush land sits amid fertile poppy-growing farmland that feed Guerrero’s heroin trade and supply routes to the United States.
“Giving children weapons and taking videos is an act of cruelty,” he said, the Washington Post reported. One child, Alex, 13, told the Washington Post that the training felt real, his gun heavy under the weight of its ammunition.“There was no fear in his eyes,” said Santos Martinez, the boy’s father. “That’s how I knew he was ready.”Residents remain deeply suspicious of regional authorities and the smattering of local policemen in their villages, who they accuse of being the eyes and ears of the Los Ardillos.
One man's child soldier is another man's last line of defence to save his family.
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