The demands include dismantling Los Ardillos, long linked to poppy and marijuana cultivation, heroin trafficking, extortion schemes and other rackets.

In addition to the 10 band members and crew slain last month, Sánchez said, 16 other residents of the vigilantes’ territory have been killed and 14 more disappeared in the conflict with Los Ardillos since the beginning of 2018.Ĭommunity leaders have since closed off media access to the gun-toting children - 28 are being trained, officials said - as representatives negotiate with the state officials on a list of demands. “The government is doing nothing to keep us safe.” “The fact is, our children have a right to defend their families,” said Sánchez, 48, who carries a walkie-talkie keeping him in touch with other units. At the entrance to each is a guard post with sandbags. Situated at the end of a winding mountain road flanked by fields of grazing cows and goats, it is one of 16 villages - with a total population of 6,000 - patrolled by the militia.

“They ask, ‘Why are we training children?’ So that they pay attention to us,” explained Sánchez, wearing sandals as he stood guard with a shotgun at the entrance to Rincon de Chautla, population 115. The goal: to pressure the government to intervene on their behalf in their bloody feud with Los Ardillos. “How are kids and children going to defend themselves if they are not prepared?”īut he and other leaders also acknowledged that trotting out the child combatants in front of the media was a public relations ploy. “We are preparing the children because we don’t know if today or tomorrow they are going to come to kill us,” said Bernardino Sánchez Luna, the charismatic vigilante group founder. The Mexican Constitution allows indigenous communities - such as the Nahuas, who reside in this part of Guerrero - a measure of limited self-government, including formation of their own police units. There were no apologies from the vigilante group, which claims 300 members and calls itself the Regional Coordinator of Community Authorities of the Founding Villages.įounded in 2014, the militia is part of a proliferation of such groups in Guerrero. “Showing off children with arms and taking videos is an arrogant act.” “They should be ashamed,” President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said of the community leaders. Images of more than a dozen children, including at least one who was 6, wielding rifles made international news and drew widespread condemnation. The award supports efforts to improve investigations of disappearances through case litigation, monitoring compliance with a new federal protocol, and advocating effective policies and procedures in searching for victims.The roadside slaughter of the band last month might have been just another grisly episode if the victims hadn’t included at least two members of a vigilante group - which responded by announcing that it had started training children to join the battle against Los Ardillos and invited the news media to a conscription ceremony. $80,000īased in Guerrero state, Centro Regional de Defensa de los Derechos Humanos José María Morelos y Pavón is an organization whose mission is to address impunity in violence and human rights abuses toward vulnerable populations. It also supports monitoring of the state’s work to identify remains and establish the whereabouts of dozens of disappeared persons in areas surrounding Chilapa, Guerrero. This project supports case documentation and litigation in order to help advance improved policies and practices by the prosecutor’s office. Founded in 1997, the organization has provided continued support to victims of human rights abuses for the past two decades, including the relatives of the 43 Ayotzinapa students that were forcefully disappeared in 2014. Centro Regional de Defensa de Derechos Humanos Jose María Morelos y Pavón works to advance rights in Guerrero state through legal representation, policy advocacy, and assistance to victims.

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