Claim #1
The number one cause for people to join a drug cartel or to start trafficking drugs is poverty. About 17.6% of Mexican citizens live in extreme poverty and about 21% live in moderate poverty. In 2004 the minimum wage was about 56 pesos which is around 5 dollars in US currency. The drug cartels take advantage of that and recruit adolescents, teenagers, and whoever they can due to the poverty (Miranda, 2010). The majority of the cities, towns, or villages that have been completely run by the drug cartels are all cities/towns/villages of mostly poor people. The drug cartels target those specific territories because they know that those teens are more likely to fall into their pressure and join them or begin to traffick drugs. Like in the case of 16 year old Maria Celeste Mendoza who while in a post-arrest press proudly admitted to the camera that she was a hitwoman for Los Zetas and she had been in training for about 2 months and had only been an actual hitwoman for about 3 or 4 days. When asked how much she got paid she said 12,000 pesos a month,which is about $1,200 in US currency (Ramsey, 2011). To them the income outweighs the dangers.