Breathe
By Desirée Navarro
- They embraced the wrong ones.
Criminals should never have been the ones who felt pampered. "Hugs, not bullets" was the perfect name to implement a government program that embraced our children, our youth and everyone who was adrift.
The truth be told: the cancer of organized crime in Mexico has already metastasized. March 2025 will be remembered in the annals of our country's history as the month in which the Izaguirre Ranch in Teuchitlán, Jalisco was discovered, revealing the horror of an extermination camp in which, it is speculated, hundreds of Mexicans lost their lives.
Most were young people full of dreams and illusions, seeking a better future for themselves and their families. For thousands, being born in a Mexico with few opportunities and having the drive to improve their quality of life ends up being the main factor that places them in the ranks of criminal groups.
Criminal recruitment does not only occur through deception or manipulation that makes them fall into places like Rancho Izaguirre or de la Vega, there is also a much bigger problem: voluntary recruitment.
A few days ago, videos began to circulate of young people telling their age, the state to which they belonged and with great certainty stating that they wanted to join the ranks of hired assassins in an organization. This should lead us to ask ourselves: what have we done wrong as a society and how much death, how much pain has been normalized and how much has the image of criminals been aggrandized so that our children dream of being one of them?
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