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

A former cartel member, who requested to be identified as Isabel, speaks during an interview with Reuters at an undisclosed location in Mexico April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Raquel Cunha

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - 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 outside a local bar. She started as a lookout, but rose fast.