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

Among the many horrifying videos posted online amid Mexico’s drug cartel violence, few have been as profoundly shocking as that of a 14-year-old boy kidnapped in late October along with about a dozen family members in the country’s south.

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

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

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

The boy’s family was traveling on Oct. 21 to Chilapa to sell their stock of plastic household items – buckets, dishes and other containers – at an open-air market when they were abducted by The Ardillos, a local cartel that controls Chilapa and has been fighting the rival Tlacos for control of Chilpancingo.

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

The video posted online suggests the family may have originally been kidnapped because one of their members had taken a cellphone photograph of the wrong person in town.

It is not clear what happened to the other two members of the group – 13 disappeared and 11 bodies were found, including three women and another boy who was 13.

The family’s tragedy did not end with the 11 killed. On Oct. 27, four relatives went to look for the missing family, and were themselves abducted. They haven’t been heard from since.

Until Nov. 6, when the bodies were found, state authorities had claimed they were searching far and wide in what had become a missing persons’ case with 17 people, all relatives.

Prosecutors posted photos of police officers, soldiers, vehicles and drones fanning out over dirt roads and into the brush. The army called in helicopters, and a reward of about $50,000 was offered for information on the missing, but couldn’t find them.

Apparently, the cartel likely 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 first gruesome killing by the cartel.

In early October, the city’s mayor was killed and beheaded just a week after he took office. Alejandro Arcos took office on Oct. 1 in Chilpancingo. His body was found in a pickup truck a week later, his head placed on the vehicle’s roof. Days later, four mayors asked federal authorities for protection.

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

“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 car, blocked a major highway and took police hostage to win the release of arrested suspects.

The rights activist explained that the Ardillos control a large swath of the state’s mountains, where they call obligatory community assemblies and force local residents to cooperate with the gang.

Mexican cartels frequently dump bodies of their hostages – or post grisly videos of torture, interrogation and decapitations of their victims – to intimidate their rivals and authorities. Messages are often left on victims’ bodies by cartels seeking to threaten their rivals or punish behavior they claim violates their rules.