Mexican Drug War Orphans 10,000 Children in One Year

By Jenny Inglee
June 16, 2010
1 comments
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The head of a teddy bear adorns a child's grave at San Rafael Cemetary outside Ciudad Juarez. (Photo: Claudia Daut/Reuters)

In 2009 alone, 10,000 children were orphaned due to the Mexican drug war in the U.S border city of Ciudad Juárez. The city has the distinction of being the most violent in Mexico.

The children's parents have been executed or have disappeared. Reported by Impresiones Latinas, Aurelio Paez, director of a local orphanage, Wine, Wheat and Oil, says: "We live in a state of war and children are left to drift." Of the 90 children housed at the orphanage, 63 have lost their parents to organized crime.

Some of the children are in shelters and orphanages; many are on the streets.

Considering the high rates of drug-related crime and poverty in Jaurez, many of the orphans seem destined to follow in their dead parents' footsteps.

Armando Patrón from Mexico's National Council Against Addictions says one problem is that "parents are setting an example." Patrón explained that not only have children become orphans, living with the rage of losing their parents, they also know that the situation they are living in may not change.

This week, Mexican legislators are taking action for these children. Deputy Erandi Bermúdez Méndez states, "It is our duty as legislators not to leave forgotten the plight of orphaned children in our country. Childhood is the future of Mexico."

The hope is to include orphaned children as beneficiaries of the Mexican federal program, Oportunidades. The program is aimed at reducing poverty and improving health and education across Mexico.

The program may be some help to the children who have lost their parents, but for the citizens of Ciudad Juárez, ending the drug violence is key.

The U.S. consumes 50 percent of the world's cocaine, and the availability of meth is at a five-year high, according to The Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center's report obtained by The New York Times. The meth increase is mainly due to large-scale drug production in Mexico.

Patricia Galarza of the Human Rights Center Paso Del Norte warned Impresiones Latinas that the violence must end soon if these children are to have a chance at a life free of drugs and violence.

Comments

1
Prohibition is a sickening horror and the ocean of incompetence, corruption and human wreckage it has left in its wake is almost endless. Prohibition has decimated generations and criminalized millions for a behavior which is entwined in human existence, and for what other purpose than to uphold the defunct and corrupt thinking of a minority of misguided, self-righteous Neo-Puritans and degenerate demagogues who wish nothing but unadulterated destruction on the rest of us. Based on the unalterable proviso that drug use is essentially an unstoppable and ongoing human behavior which has been with us since the dawn of time, any serious reading on the subject of past attempts at any form of drug prohibition would point most normal thinking people in the direction of sensible regulation. By its very nature, prohibition cannot fail but create a vast increase in criminal activity, and rather than preventing society from descending into anarchy, it actually fosters an anarchic business model - the international Drug Trade. Any decisions concerning quality, quantity, distribution and availability are then left in the hands of unregulated, anonymous and ruthless drug dealers, who are interested only in the huge profits involved. Thus, the allure of this reliably and lucrative industry, with it's enormous income potential that consistently outweighs the risks associated with the illegal operations that such a trade entails, will remain with us until we are collectively forced to admit the obvious. A great many of us are slowly but surely wising up to the fact that the best avenue towards realistically dealing with drug use and addiction is through proper regulation which is what we already do with alcohol & tobacco, clearly two of our most dangerous mood altering substances. But for those of you whose ignorant and irrational minds traverse a fantasy plane of existence, you will no doubt remain sorely upset with any type of solution that does not seem to lead to your absurd and unattainable utopia of a drug free society. There is therefore an irrefutable connection between drug prohibition and the crime, corruption, disease and death it causes. Anybody 'halfway bright', and who's not psychologically challenged, should be capable of understanding that it is not simply the demand for drugs that creates the mayhem, it is our refusal to allow legal businesses to meet that demand. If you are not capable of understanding this connection then maybe you're using something far stronger than the rest of us. So put away your pipe, lock yourself away in a small room with some tinned soup and water, and try to crawl back into reality A.S.A.P.
malcolmkyle
posted on Jun 19, 2010