TORIBIO, COLOMBIA — Craving adventure and escape from his broken home, Jerson enlisted with leftist guerrillas when he was in his early teens. He saw it as a way to emulate Che Guevara and bring social justice to this impoverished region of Colombia.
Plus the rebels offered him new clothes and a cellphone.
So three years ago the indigenous youth found himself in the Sixth Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, which patrols the mountains of Cauca state. Two months later, chafing under strict rules and horrified by the killing of a childhood friend and fellow recruit by Colombian soldiers, he fled the rebel ranks.
"I was just a mule forced to carry water to the camps, look for firewood and move things to keep a step ahead of the army. All you do is obey orders," said Jerson, now a 17-year-old high school student in Toribio, a town 150 miles southwest of Bogota, the capital. "But I couldn't forget how my friend was killed. I knew death was waiting for me if I stayed."
Studies by Colombia's public defender and independent researchers indicate that the FARC and other armed groups increasingly are focusing their recruiting efforts on youths like Jerson, who declined to give his full name for fear of reprisal. Their success underscores the difficulty of ending the country's decades-long violence.
Based on interviews with 8,000 rebels who have been captured or have surrendered since 2002, a recent study found that 64% were 14 or younger when recruited, said Natalia Springer, a dean at Jorge Tadeo Lozano University in Bogota and an expert on children and armed groups.
The FARC, right-wing paramilitary groups and drug traffickers see young people as prime candidates for recruitment because of their poverty, poor education opportunities and isolation, Springer said.
Even the military at times presses youths to serve as informants or spies, human rights groups say.
"The kids are attracted by the arms, the uniforms, the adventure and the money they are offered," Springer said in an interview in Bogota. "But they don't have the intellectual tools or maturity to make a decision by themselves. They are seduced."
Young people living on Indian reservations, which provide indigenous Colombians with a degree of autonomy, are increasingly targeted by recruiters.
Springer said nearly half of all those joining armed groups have indigenous backgrounds.
