From Pablo Escobar to the Algorithm: This is How the Drug Cartels' "Sophistication" Works to Recruit Minors in Mexico

“Sol Prendido” for Borderland Beat 

Pablo Escobar recruited underprivileged children into the ranks of drug trafficking in 1989, and more than 30 years later, the Colombian's method has become more sophisticated thanks to the efficiency of the social media algorithm, especially in Mexico, where drug cartels have become the country's fifth-largest employer, warns one expert.

"Violent crime tends to be very adaptable to new technologies in different contexts. In the case of recruitment, the technological advancement of social media, which acts as a facilitator, is combined with appeals to emotional and identity-related dimensions," researcher Rodrigo Peña explained to EFE.

To understand this sophistication in Mexico, Peña, along with a group of researchers from the Colegio de México (Colmex), analyzed 100 TikTok accounts where drug cartels, primarily the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), have developed a “digital language” using emojis, hashtags, and corridos tumbados (a type of Mexican folk song) to recruit members.

“We know for certain that there are messages sent on behalf of criminal groups, as well as cases of young people who have responded to be recruited,” he asserts regarding this process, in which the cartel can offer recruits up to 15,000 pesos per week (US$875), while the minimum wage in the country is 315 pesos (US$18.30) per day.

One example of this language is the use of emojis, which allows the cartels to differentiate themselves.

Pizza is associated with "Chapizza," a reference to the Sinaloa Cartel faction led by Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, while the rooster is linked to Nemesio Oseguera, alias "El Mencho" or "The Lord of the Roosters," leader of the CJNG.

Filter Bubbles

With this "sophistication of language" and the "algorithm's filter bubbles," Peña warns that drug trafficking is reaching an audience that was previously inaccessible, since this content captures an "audience" that transcends national and socioeconomic boundaries, potentially reaching young people of any social class and educational level.

In this regard, he recalls the case documented by The New York Times, in which chemistry students were recruited by the Sinaloa Cartel to work as fentanyl cooks.

To explain how the algorithm keeps users trapped in content generated by criminal organizations, researchers are using the concept of “filter bubbles.”

Peña explains that these bubbles group people in an ecosystem based on their interactions, and that the danger, especially on TikTok, is “the difficulty of escaping them.”

The academic argues that the user's continued presence in these bubbles has changed the “narrative of recruitment,” since now it is young people who are seeking to be recruited, an aspect they are analyzing in a second study, to be published this year.

“We analyzed a large number of responses and interactions in the videos, where young people ask to be recruited, writing messages like: ‘I’m interested,’ ‘I want a job,’” the expert describes.

New forms of violence

Peña cannot say for sure how fast this problem is growing in Mexico, but he guarantees that it continues to occur.

He even argues that 50 percent of these videos were published after the discovery of the property attributed to the CJNG cartel in Rancho Izaguirre (Jalisco) in March 2025.

“This problem isn’t stopping, it’s just becoming more sophisticated: there are other forms of violence besides physical and direct violence; that is, criminal groups no longer necessarily have to put a gun to young people’s heads to recruit them,” he emphasized.

To this type of violence, Peña adds structural violence, which affects minors marked by “poverty and a lack of opportunities.”

He also mentions symbolic violence, linked to “identity or masculinity issues,” since most of those recruited are men immersed in a “hypersexualized” digital context.

In his opinion, this problem isn’t t solved by closing internet accounts, as the federal government has done, but by educating minors who live in a country where eight out of ten children aged 3 to 12 have access to a smartphone.

Source: Milenio