Mexico's Child Prisoners

BORN INTO CELL BLOCKS
The pictures speak for themselves, a brief excerpt on the subject below, link above:

Charles Bowden
May/June 2006 Issue Mother Jones

"Now Nuevo Laredo has become the line between two major Mexican drug cartels, and every day new lyrics are written in blood to a lament we all know but fail to face.Bullets killed the police chief last summer, just a few hours after he took office. This brought in the Mexican army. The ongoing slaughter of many cops and citizens caused the U.S. government to shut down its consulate for a spell last August. This winter the local paper was visited by some strange men, presumably working for the cartels, and they fired dozens of rounds and tossed in a grenade. One reporter took five bullets. The editor promptly announced a new policy: His paper, one of the few Mexican publications on the line actually printing news about the drug cartels, would no longer report on the cartels. One major U.S. daily had to evacuate a reporter after getting what editors termed “creditable death threats.” Dozens of U.S. citizens from neighboring Laredo have vanished while visiting Nuevo Laredo. This January the city experienced, at a minimum, 20 cartel killings.Beneath this gore, women and children muddle on, some in Mexican jails. Incarceration, like law, is a bit different in Mexico. Conjugal visits are permitted; small children younger than six can be locked up with their moms; and men and women peddle goods and themselves within the walls in order to survive. Mexican prisons often do not provide grub. I’ve stood in line with family members who toted a week’s supply of food on visiting day, seen women reel out of cells in disarray after their weekly intercourse sessions with their men. Drugs are commonplace inside the walls, as are gangs. Money can buy anything. For years the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has complained about the posh quarters given to major drug players and how they continue to do business without interference while theoretically being under lock and key."