Boy last seen in kidnapping video posted by drug cartel among 11 found dead in pickup truck in Mexico

Of the many gruesome videos posted online amid Mexican drug cartel violence, few are as shocking as that of a 14-year-old boy who was kidnapped along with a dozen family members in the south of the country in late October.

In the video, posted by his captors, the skinny, shoeless boy is seen sitting against a tree, his hands tied with rope and quietly saying he works for a rival drug gang. The boy spoke clearly under duress, his schoolboy face hesitant and cautious.

Authorities confirmed Friday that 14-year-old Ángel Barrera Millán was among four minors and seven adults whose dismembered bodies were found dumped in the back of a pickup truck along the highway this week.

The deaths underline the brutal power of the local drug cartels and the powerlessness of the government in the area around Chilpancingo – the capital of the state of Guerrero, where the seaside resort Acapulco is located – and the nearby municipality of Chilapa.

The boy’s family traveled to Chilapa on October 21 to sell their stock of plastic household items (buckets, plates and other containers) at an open-air market when they were kidnapped by The Ardillos, a local cartel that controls Chilapa and is fighting the rival Tlacos for control of Chilpancingo.

“The state authorities have allowed these organized crime groups to gain very entrenched control over these areas,” an activist from the Tlachinollan human rights group said on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “This area is completely controlled by the Ardillos,” including some areas he said officials were reluctant to enter.

The video posted online suggests that the family was originally kidnapped because one of their members took a cell phone photo of the wrong person in town.

It is not clear what happened to the other two members of the group: thirteen disappeared and eleven bodies were found, including three women and another boy of thirteen.

The family’s tragedy did not end with the eleven deaths. On October 27, four family members went looking for the missing family, but were kidnapped themselves. Nothing has been heard from them since.

Until November 6, when the bodies were found, authorities claimed they were searching far and wide for what had become a missing persons case involving seventeen people, all family members.

Prosecutors posted photos of police, soldiers, vehicles and drones fanning out over dirt roads and into brush. The military called in helicopters and offered a reward of about $50,000 for information about the missing, but they were unable to find them.

Apparently the cartel probably killed them in Chilpancingo, the state capital with a population of 300,000. Their bodies were left on the main boulevard leading through the city, which also serves as the main north-south highway to Acapulco.

The family’s death was not the cartel’s first gruesome murder.

At the beginning of October the mayor of the city was inaugurated killed and beheaded just a week after he took office. Alejandro Arcos took office in Chilpancingo on October 1. His body was found a week later in a pickup truck, with his head on the roof of the vehicle. Days later, four mayors asked federal authorities to do so protection.

According to Institutional Revolutionary Party President Alejandro Moreno, Arcos’ killing came days after the killing of another city official, Francisco Tapia.

“They had been in office for less than a week. Young and honest officials who sought progress for their community,” Moreno said on X.

In 2023, another gang hijacked a government armored vehicle, blocked a major highway and took police hostage to secure the release of arrested suspects.

The rights activist explained that the Ardillos control much of the state’s mountains, where they call mandatory community meetings and force local residents to cooperate with the gang.

Mexican cartels regularly dump the bodies of their hostages – or post gruesome videos of torture, interrogations and beheadings of their victims – to intimidate their rivals and authorities. Messages are often left on the bodies of victims by cartels seeking to threaten their rivals or punish behavior they claim violates their rules.