A SHOCKING WORLD OF VIOLENT CHILDREN

A VIDEO showing children as drug traffickers has sparked a fierce debate in Mexico, with some calling it a wake-up call while others described it as political manipulation or even child abuse.


Kids playing the roles of businessmen, criminals and corrupt officials are seen robbing, paying bribes and shooting it out in a mock Mexico made up entirely of children. Distributed over the internet, the video ends with a message to Mexico's July 1 presidential candidates.

• A little girl faces the camera and says: "If this is the future that awaits me, I don't want it. Enough of working for your political parties instead of for us. Enough of cosmetic changes."
• Dubbed "Ninos Incomodos" which translates as Discomforting Kids, the four-minute video opens with a child businessman waking up in the morning dragging on a cigarette and closes with a kiddie version of alleged drug lord Edgar Valdez, aka "La Barbie", being dragged off to an overcrowded jail.
• Despite the video's grim images of knife-wielding, migrant-smuggling, gun-toting kids, all the major candidates praised it.
• The former governing Institutional Revolutionary Party's candidate Enrique Pena Nieto tweeted: "I support the message of Discomforting Kids. I hear it all the time on the campaign trail, that time is running out. It's time to renew hope and change Mexico."

President Felipe Calderon's conservative National Action Party's candidate Josefina Vazquez Mota said: "The video of Discomforting Kids is a call that can't be ignored. I accept the challenge, I want to join you."
The video's vision of an apocalyptic, violent and corrupt Mexico is manipulative and no candidate could afford to criticise it, TV critic Alvaro Cueva said.

• "No sane candidate is going to say, 'I want a future with crime, a future with criminals'," he said.
• He called the video damaging and "a very clear violation of the (electoral) law".
• "The only thing this video does is to further muddy the election campaigns," he added. "This video does nothing but foment a sense of desperation and despair."
• The group behind the video, headed by Mexican insurance company GNP, said it was merely reflecting the concerns of millions of citizens "who want to see themselves living in a Mexico that has left behind crime, corruption poverty, unemployment, drug trafficking".

Others objected to the use of children, with Labor Party congressman Mario di Costanzo calling it "unacceptable, scandalous" while PRI congressman Miguel Angel Garcia Granados(left photo) wanted the government to ban it.
"We are not going to solve the big problems this country faces with sensationalism and shrillness, and certainly not by using underage children in documentaries," Mr Garcia Granados said.

Source: AP