The fact that fifty-percent of those killed in violent incidents with organized crime are young people, as are thirty-five-percent of the perpetrators, clearly shows the failure of the Mexican government to provide education and employment opportunities to a sector that it has ignored and criminalized, pointed out academics specialized in the issue.
Alfredo Nateras, professor at the Autonomous Metropolitan University (UAM), Iztapalapa campus, indicated that figures released by the Secretariat of Social Development merely confirm the neglect in which institutions have left young people who, in the absence of decent life options, have chosen to enter the ranks of organized crime.
"It is estimated that during Felipe Calderón's [PAN, National Alliance Party] administration, criminal groups recruited between 60,000 and 70,000 young people of both sexes [for criminal activities] ranging from drug smuggling to contract killings, trafficking and abduction of migrants and theft of luxury cars. Similarly, in the same six years, between 1500 and 2000 children died in violence," he lamented.
"The figure that fifty-percent of violent deaths involve young people constitutes a humanitarian crisis. What is most paradoxical is that neither does the neoliberal project of the PRI [Party of the Institutional Revolution] give them any opportunity to build a life in the present," warned the expert.
They continue offering young people the worst jobs with lousy pay--those in fast food chains, supermarkets and the entertainment industry; thus, many youth prefer to become criminals and make money, regardless of whether they are risking their lives or that they must kill other children and young people like themselves, Nateras stated.
Enrique Cuna, also a professor at the UAM Iztapalapa, agreed in pointing out that the emergence of youth as both victims and victimizers is a product of the lack of government policies to integrate them socially by means of employment and education.
"For the political and economic worlds, the young people are invisible, but this invisibility ends with the onset of violence. Then begins the stigmatization and criminalization, as when Felipe Calderón said that the boys killed at Villas de Salvarcar (January 31, 2010) were drug traffickers," he recalled.
*MV Note: It was determined that the mastermind of the massacre was an agent of the Public Ministry (Investigative Police), and a paramilitary group executed the plan. Source: Wikipedia.
In the absence of alternatives, many young people adopt crime as a way of living on the edge and getting the material goods that the consumer society shows them are symbols of success and social status.
"It is not a matter of policing, but of re-educating the adult world to start viewing its young people differently," he affirmed.