The state of Guerrero is among the most marginalized in the country. According to the 2025 Annual Report on Poverty and Social Backwardness, prepared by the Ministry of Welfare, 60.4% of Guerrero’s population lives in poverty. Of that total, 38.1% live in moderate poverty and 22.2% live in extreme poverty. Nationally, only Chiapas and Oaxaca surpass Guerrero in these indicators.
This structural precariousness is exploited by organized crime. According to an investigation published by the newspaper El Financiero, by 2023, around 20 criminal groups operated in the state, extending their influence to all 81 municipalities. In these regions where resources are scarce, many families are trapped in an environment dominated by drug trafficking, in one of the key states for the production and transit of drugs to the United States.
“These groups fight for the cultivation, storage, and trafficking of narcotics, and the control of crimes such as kidnapping, extortion of individuals and authorities, extortion of property rights, vehicle theft, and fuel theft,” notes reporter David Saúl Vela in his article.
The training provided by these organizations in the Sierra de Guerrero has taken on an increasingly militarized character. In hidden camps in rural and mountainous areas, the cartels train their future hitmen. In these so-called “schools,” young people, and even minors, are prepared to operate as part of the armed wing of drug trafficking.
Although in many cases recruitment is forced to replace casualties or expand territorial control, there are also stories like that of Pedro, who was seduced by promises of immediate wealth and ended up coerced into joining one of the most violent cells in the state of Guerrero.
“My only fear is losing my mother.”
Pedro was born on October 28, 1996, in a small town nestled in the Sierra de Guerrero, a territory ignored by the State but not by organized crime. At 18, he was arrested and, by the time he told his story to psychologist and criminologist Mónica Ramírez Cano, he had already spent a year in a federal prison.
According to his account in the book “Las puertas del infierno” (The Gates of Hell) (2022), by psychologist Mónica Ramírez Cano, from a very young age, his life was marked by abandonment and marginalization. His father disappeared before he could remember him, and his mother, dedicated to domestic work, started another family. He was left in the care of his grandparents, who grew marijuana. After their deaths, Pedro was left completely alone.
At 13, he became close to a criminal group that had arrived in the town. “I approached them and asked how much they paid. They told me whatever I wanted to earn; there’s a good offer in the industry,” he recalls. That’s how he entered the world of drug trafficking. They gave him a rifle, sent him to a training camp in the mountains, and there his training began. “They teach you to survive, to kill without fear, and to eat human flesh,” Pedro confessed without hesitation.
His training, supervised by a former soldier, lasted just over three months. Recruited along with one of his half-brothers, he faced a brutal initiation test: “They gave us each a pistol and told us only one would survive. I had to kill my brother.”
A few days after being promoted, Pedro became a full-time hitman. “I lasted about a week with nightmares, but by now I’ve killed hundreds, it’s like drinking a Coca-Cola.” He was later promoted to plaza boss. “I worked for five years; I don’t know how many guys I killed. I was in charge of my town. It’s a problem bringing people into command, and it was complicated for me to manage expenses.”
Pedro explains how violence is institutionalized within organized crime. “I started earning four thousand pesos a fortnight for stalking; then, as a plaza boss, they paid me twenty-five thousand, and they gave me twelve thousand more for every guy I killed,” he explained.
He explained that during his training, he had to assemble a rifle in a few minutes, and if he failed, he was beaten with cables. “They trained ten at a time, for three months. They recruited teenagers mostly as hitmen, and then whatever else came their way.”
He knew how to handle weapons from childhood. His first execution within the criminal group was that of his own brother. “A few days after my training, we had a confrontation with the Navy, and we started shooting. I was always high on cocaine and marijuana… but I always preferred marijuana; it’s worth your life.”
In one of those operations, he was wounded. From then on, he was assigned to look after “the tied-up ones,” as the kidnapped people are called. “I had 23 tied-up ones… I liked killing in confrontations, but not the tied-up ones, who can’t even defend themselves.”
Pedro began smoking marijuana at the age of eight and dreamed of becoming a mobster. Isolated, with no rules at home, he lived among the drug plantations. “My only fear is losing my mother, although I love her only because she gave birth to me.”
The former hitman says that what he enjoyed most were the confrontations and the adrenaline rush. However, one of the losses that affected him most was that of his closest colleague, the same one who had introduced him to the organization. “He was the one I loved the most, but he was crazy. He tied up his family, tortured them, and ate parts of his victims’ bodies. Sometimes he ripped out their hearts and forced us to bite them. If you didn’t, he’d kill you. All I had to do was bite the heart. We ate it raw… it tasted really awful, like chicken fat.”
The Drug Lord’s Cannibalism
About cannibalism, he was blunt: “Fear; if you didn’t eat, they’d kill you. Although sometimes it sounded cool that his powers would disappear.” When Monica asked him if he thought what he was doing was wrong, he replied: “We don’t have those opportunities; it’s either screw you or fuck you.”
The executions were a ritual. The bodies were dismembered, packed in black bags, and thrown into clandestine graves or rivers. “The idea was that they wouldn’t be able to recognize the body… We killed others with a chainsaw, but those were the ones that took the longest to die. I killed some with machete blows.”
Pedro is awaiting sentencing for 23 kidnappings. He is convinced he was betrayed, and he maintains the idea of finding the person who “put him there” if he ever regains his freedom.
This testimony, collected by psychologist Mónica Ramírez Cano, reveals the brutal reality of many young people trapped by the drug industry in regions where the State is replaced by cartels. Ramírez Cano, with more than two decades of experience profiling high-powered criminals, points out that Pedro’s story illustrates how social breakdown, lack of opportunities, and desensitization to violence can turn a teenager into an executioner out of survival instinct.
How many cartels operate in the Sierra de Guerrero?
Violence in Guerrero intensified after 2009, when Arturo Beltrán Leyva was assassinated. His death fractured the Sinaloa Cartel and sparked a fierce dispute between smaller groups seeking control of Acapulco, as documented by the Tlachinollan Mountain Human Rights Center. Although drug trafficking has been present in the region since the 1990s, it was then that criminal organizations began to multiply.
Prominent among these groups are national cartels such as the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel and local gangs like Los Tequileros, who in 2020 announced an alliance to deprive the Familia Michoacana of its dominance in Tierra Caliente. However, much of the violence in Guerrero is explained by the actions of regional groups operating independently or as satellites of larger organizations.
Los Ardillos, which emerged in the 2000s as the armed wing of the Beltrán Leyva gang, now control much of the central part of the state. They are currently led by Celso Ortega Jiménez and his brothers. There is also Los Rusos, a cell associated with the Caborca Cartel, with a presence in Acapulco and Costa Chica. Its visible leader was Ramiro “N,” who was killed by the Prosecutor’s Office in November 2023 and accused of at least 34 murders.
Another influential group is Los Tlacos, formed in 2017 from a community police force in Heliodoro Castillo. They are currently clashing with La Familia Michoacana and Los Ardillos, and are also accused of threatening several mayors in the northern and Tierra Caliente regions. The Tlachinollan report indicates that at least 11 municipal presidents requested direct support from Governor Evelyn Salgado, although the agreements remain unknown.
Source: infobae
