Drug Cartels

How Mexico’s cartels recruit children and groom them into killers

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How Mexico’s cartels recruit children and groom them into killers

Sol remembers her first kill for a Mexican cartel: a kidnapping she committed with a handful of other young recruits that twisted into torture and bled into murder. She was 12 years old. Sol had joined the drug cartel a few months earlier, recruited by someone she knew as she sold roses on the sidewalk … Read more

Gangs battling for control over port city leaves Ecuador broken

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Gangs battling for control over port city leaves Ecuador broken

With slow yet heavy steps, Herlinda walks through the rubble of what used to be her house. Her footsteps reverberate in what was her room, now empty, the windows covered with sheet metal. A nervous gaze scans the bare walls and the tangles of metal that slip between the walls. The humble two-story building was … Read more