Claim #3
Although poverty is one of the main reasons that many young people join the cartels another big factor is that they either join or they get killed. Fourteen year-old Edgar Jimenez Lugo known as “El Ponchis” was allegedly kidnapped by the South Pacific Cartel and was forced to kill or else he would be killed. He said that he had been killing since he was eleven years old. He got arrested at the age of fourteen and he said he had only murdered four people and all while he was high off drugs (Cuevas, et. al., 2013). He isn’t the only one that has been forced into joining a cartel, there are about 55,000 people who have been enslaved by the cartels and forced to work at gunpoint for them. Out of those 55,000 people 25,000 of them are minors. The minors are kidnapped and forced to either sell other children, drugs, or kill people (Esclavos del Narco). The minors do all of their dirty work only because their life is in danger if they don’t follow their orders.