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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico -- The number of minors swept up in Mexico's drug wars -- as killers and victims -- is soaring, with U.S. and Mexican officials warning that a toxic culture of fast money, drug abuse and murder is creating a "lost generation."
Although the exploitation of children by criminals is timeless, authorities say the cartels have stepped up recruiting to replace tens of thousands of members who have been killed or arrested during President Felipe Calderon's U.S.-backed war against the traffickers.
The crackdown has led the cartels to diversify their operations, moving from the transshipment of narcotics to extortion, immigrant smuggling and kidnapping. It also has sparked intense rivalries, with youngsters serving as expendable foot soldiers in battles over trafficking routes to the United States and local markets that serve a growing number of Mexican drug users.
"The cartels recruit by first involving them in some drug trafficking, then in selling drugs and finally, in some cases for as little as $160 a week, they are given the job of tracking down people the cartel wants to assassinate," said Victor Valencia, public security secretary in Chihuahua state, where Ciudad Juarez -- Mexico's most violent city -- is located.
In the past year, 134 minors have been killed in drug-related violence in Juarez, according to El Diario, a local newspaper.
Young drug dealers often operate out of unlicensed addiction treatment facilities, which the cartels use as recruitment centers, frequently unleashing terror in those places.
More than the violence, U.S. and Mexican officials and youth advocates said they fear that the rampant criminality is producing a generation that venerates cartel barons and views trafficking as a form of rebellion -- as well as an escape from poverty.
To counter the lure of the cartels, the U.S. State Department last month organized a meeting of international youth groups in Mexico City to encourage the use of social networks to oppose violence. The co-founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, was mobbed by students asking for advice on how to build online communities to distribute positive messages and counter the cartels' propaganda.
In Culiacan, a city in the western state of Sinaloa where many of Mexico's most notorious traffickers grew up, teen-agers view the drug bosses as "heroes," said an 18-year-old woman who asked not to be identified. She said teenagers talk openly about the thrill of smuggling, work that can earn them about $500 a trip.
"Everyone around here talks about it, especially the kids," she said in an interview. "It's like -- I'm not sure how to describe it -- but they look at it like the ultimate wow."
Hundreds of minors, including U.S. citizens, some as young as 12, have been arrested this year for drug smuggling. In San Diego County, 26 minors were caught last year trying to bring drugs across the border; this year authorities have arrested 124.
"They'll risk their futures for an iPod," said Joe Garcia, a supervisory agent at Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego. "And there is almost an endless supply of teenagers."
