'NARCO JUNIORS' PAID TO DO THE DIRTY WORK

Mexican teenagers as young as 15 are killing rivals for a few hundred
dollars in a brutal drug war on the U. S. border that is increasingly
sucking in young people. Feuding gangs in the violent cities of
Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez prize teenage drug cartel members, known as
"narco juniors," because they give the attacks an added element of
surprise and because they can't be given long prison sentences, police
and social workers say.

"There are lots of us, and we get $300 for each kill," said Eduardo,
17, a middle-class student who was arrested in December after an army
raid on a drug safe house in Tijuana.

Police say he was working for Tijuana's Arellano Felix drug cartel
that is battling Mexico's most-wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman,
for control of the city's smuggling routes into California.

"I had been doing it for about five months, it was easy money," he
said in a police detention centre, wearing designer clothing. Police
said he killed at least one man.

About 5,700 people were killed in Mexico's drug war last year as drug
gangs fought each other and battled troops and federal police sent in
by President Felipe Calderon.

Police found two teenage boys beheaded in Tijuana this month and said
they were murdered for selling drugs in a rival gang's territory.

In Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Tex., 16-year-old boys wielding
guns last year forced their way into a bar where they cannot legally
drink alcohol. On the orders of drug traffickers, they shot dead two
adult men playing pool.

The young drug gangsters first appeared in the 1990s, when the
Arellano Felix family recruited some of their sons and daughters and
their affluent friends to run drugs and do their killing.

But a dramatic escalation of the drug war since 2005 has lured many
more youngsters to work for gangs across Mexico.

Drug killings have scared off much-needed foreign tourists and
investors at a time when Mexico's economy is falling into a recession
because of the global economic crisis.

But many teenagers in depressed border towns like Tijuana, where
factories are laying off workers as the U. S. recession bites, are
easy prey for wealthy drug lords.

Many are lured not so much by money, but by the daredevil life of
cocaine smuggling, gold-plated weapons, fast women and lavish parties
lionized in popular music drug ballads, known as narco corridos.

"We see a lot of youngsters who don't have anything else to do,
including children of working professionals who aren't the least bit
interested in the money," said Juan Miguel Guillen, head of state
police in Baja California, home to Tijuana.

Some are also pressed into crime by relatives working for the
cartels.

At a detention centre in Tijuana, Jesus, 16, said his stepfather
forced him and a friend to wrap a murdered drug gang member in tape
before dumping the body.

"He didn't pay me anything, I had to do it," he added.

"These kids are cheap labour who cannot be imprisoned. More and more
of them being used by the drug gangs," Mr. Guillen said.