El Pais Mexico, January 10, 2023
By Carmen Moran Brena
Let's take a look at the prison records of the men who escaped from the Ciudad Juárez prison last week [on Jan. 1, in the State of Chihuahua]. They certainly did it by force. But men? Their average age could not have exceeded 20. Pompín is 21 years old and convicted of homicide. Luis Carlos is 19. David, 22, is convicted of murder and is two years younger than Adam, also with a death to his credit. Edgar, 23, also has a homicide conviction. At 18, Brian found himself in jail for carrying a gun. El Pecas turned 24 in prison; he was dealing drugs. Manguera, 25, has a kidnapping on his criminal record... Why continue, right? This is hard data and real names.
There is a problem here that has nothing to do with the police. Too many young people grow old in jail. It is said that they are cannon fodder, as if they were born to commit crimes and no one could change that course. They live very fast because they know their future will be either bars or bullets.
El Neto came of age as the leader of a criminal gang. He was locked up for kidnapping for more than a decade, until on New Year's Day he organized a spectacular riot, in which 17 people died, in order to get to the streets. And he, himself, only found defeat. A few hours after the police pursuit began, this 29-year-old fell, one by one, to bullets. He sported a black eyepatch that he was not wearing when he was first arrested. Who knows how El Neto grew up?
You can guess the life of El Ratón [The Rat, Ovidio Guzmán], one of the sons of El Chapo [Shorty] Guzmán [former head of the powerful Sinaloa Cartel, arrested and extradited to the U.S. for trial in 2019], who was captured in Culiacán [in the State of Sinaloa] on January 5. If El Ratón had wanted to study, he could have done it. He didn't go into crime for the money. As a child, he could have had a bicycle, or video game machines of the latest generation, then, as an adolescent, clothes, motorcycles, and cars. Drugs would not be missing at home, nor food. Women, parties, and luxuries, all were available to him. He would say, "You have to live very fast," because, at 32, he is already in jail, like his father.
But who sent El Neto out to get into trouble in the streets? It is usually blamed on poverty and being very foolish. Thousands of hitmen throughout Mexico are as much el pueblo [everyday people] as those who make up the ranks of the Army [volunteering for the Army is one of the few options for youth for employment]. They are all plain, simple, miserable or malnourished people.
They were children who one day exchanged a life empty of almost everything for a few pesos [usually first employed by a cartel to be a "halcón", "hawk", i.e. a lookout], to show off their motorcycle on the street while others walked. They ate well, and as time goes on, who knows how many women they might have, or perhaps a tiger in their garden or a tacky-colored pool where they could pass the time during their cocaine comedown. They are the youth of the darkest Mexican night.
The riot at Cereso ["Center for Social Readaptation",i.e, Prision] #3 began with the noise of bullets outside the Ciudad Juárez prison, where several vans had arrived. Neighbors saw them and told the media that "punks, pure punks" came out of the armored vehicles that contributed to the chaos arranged for the riot.
Only four days later, in the roar of the machine guns and the fires that were unleashed in Culiacán with the arrest of Ovidio Guzmán, the residents were evicted from their cars at gunpoint by the Los Chapitos [The Little Ones, nickname for the section of the Sinaloa Cartel headed by the sons of El Chapo] recounted the same thing: the attackers were barely out of their adolescence.
The problem here is one of justice, but one needed long before these young people see themselves before their first hearing at the Prosecutor's Office. It is the best kind of justice, the one that distributes benefits without paying attention to the social class in which one is born. Mexico is full of borders--forget the one with the United States.
Who drew the line that separates the rich from the poor, those who study from those who kick stones through the streets every afternoon, those who had a father from the abandoned, those who have everything done for them from those who had to do everything? That is the question.
Where will the 29 who escaped from prison with El Neto be today? On whom will they plot revenge? How many have searched for their mother, spying without entering the same street where she saw them born? Namely, they are simply more work for a poorly paid police force that sometimes goes the way of the criminals.
In a country with little or no corruption, one would say: take the budget from other departments and add it to education, to health, to wellfare. Then, hurry up and remove them from the Army, for example, before you see 10 more young uniformed men die in a confrontation against one of the youngest drug lords. They are all ordinary people, just like one another. It seems to be an unsolvable equation.
It is impossible not to remember the great Spanish thinker, legal expert, and brilliant writer, Concepción Arenal (1820-1893), who dedicated her life to improving the conditions of the imprisoned. "Hate the crime and sympathize with the offender," she said.