The New Idea

Carlos’s vision is unique: instead of working against young perpetrators of violence, he works with them and tackles the problem of school violence from the inside. Through Cauce Ciudadano, Carlos transforms students involved in violent activity into nodes of nonviolent youth leadership. Once a victim and perpetrator of violence himself, Carlos has a personal understanding of the powerful role that formerly violent youth can play in changing the culture of violence around them.

Community efforts to crack down on gangs and support gang victims are nothing new. However, Carlos is restructuring previous strategies that deal with youth violence and introducing a potent source of inspiration: former gang members. According to Carlos, it is precisely those with a history of violent activity that can most effectively promote nonviolence. Because the Cauce methodology focuses on gang leadership within a student body, many of the individuals it targets have significant influence over large numbers of students who participate in organized violence. Cruz believes channeling gang leaders’ already powerful influence towards a movement of nonviolence is an effective strategy for change because at-risk youth will be more receptive to peer advice and collaboration than to school authorities and law enforcement.

The Problem

Mexican youth in urban areas suffer from chronic violence rooted in their schools. For many decades, powerful and politically allied gangs, which can incorporate as many as 200 students, have dominated school life. As a result, even those students who do not intentionally join gangs often form large groups for self-defense and inevitably fall into a cycle of violence themselves.

The direct impact of this violence includes physical and emotional damage, low matriculation resulting in lack of employability, and the familial and personal strife caused by incarceration. Statistics from 1998 record an 11 percent mortality rate among urban youth between the ages of 15 and 29. Homicide represents the second-largest cause of these deaths. Implications for the rest of society are also severe: Individuals under the age of 25 commit 61 percent of all crimes in Mexico City, with a rate as high as 90 percent in some parts of the city.

Current efforts to improve the situation typically deal with gang leaders by expelling or incarcerating them. But these efforts give far too much weight to punishment and not nearly enough to rehabilitation and reform. The fact is, key perpetrators of violence often experienced violence in their families, including sexual or physical abuse as children. In Mexican cities, these individuals grow up immersed in poverty and insecurity with little nurturing and few positive influences around them. Gangs become a natural avenue for them to find a role and build a community—an alternate family.

Recognizing that gang leaders have a great deal in common with the kinds of at-risk youth that Carlos works with is a critical step. But civil society organizations, government institutions, and youth development programs deliberately draw students away from these “negative” influences, eliminating any possibility of using gang leaders in a positive way to work with others who had similar upbringings. Sending young people to jail often exposes them to more violence in the prison system and does little to prevent them from ending up in jail again a few months later. What is more effective is channeling their influence directly back into schools with a message of nonviolence. While not all gang leaders will be receptive to the nonviolent mission of Cauce Ciudadano, it only takes a small number to have a significant influence on hundreds of Mexican students.

The Strategy

The foundation of Carlos’s work is Cauce Ciudadano, an association of volunteers and professionals that promote his model of intervention to quell the violence in Mexico’s schools. Initially, Carlos must search for and select the violent youth leaders he believes he can join forces with. Those who are receptive to his ideas—and often those who identify with Carlos’s own personal transformation—will be the most effective promoters of nonviolence. Frequently these individuals have recently been jailed, perhaps for the second or third time, and are more open to fundamental change in their lives. In fact, Cauce often takes responsibility for paying bail when families will not, using that opportunity to catch leaders at a time of transition and draw them into its program. In other cases, program staff at Cauce Ciudadano enter schools and work with officials to locate the few individuals who play central roles in different violent gangs.

The Cauce Community Center serves as a sanctuary responding to a wide range of youth needs. At its core is a series of workshops and activities based on methodology developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to combat addictions and alter dangerous behaviors. Doctors attend to immediate health problems and develop long-term plans for healthier lifestyles. Psychologists run individual and group therapy programs to address issues of self-worth and begin healing emotional damage that may have developed during a lifetime of exposure to violence. Perhaps most importantly, young people are exposed to ex-gang leaders like Carlos and others he has recruited, to learn from their stories of tragedy and recovery. These role models share a deep understanding with at-risk youth—often facing similar backgrounds of family poverty and abuse—and can therefore connect with them on an important level. The potency of this connection is at the heart of Carlos Cruz’s work.

In addition, the center continually works to integrate family into the process; often involving them in therapy sessions when appropriate. Carlos recognizes that violent behavior is often a direct result of family circumstances and that working with family can target the root of the problem.

On a practical level, the center sponsors extended skill-building workshops to prepare young Mexicans for employment or income generation and offers the services of volunteer attorneys when the student faces legal trouble. Most professionals involved in Cauce activities volunteer their services. However, in order to cover other operational costs, Carlos has successfully solicited funds from local business owners who have an interest in improving the safety of their neighborhoods.

Through the WHO-based workshops and other interventions, the youth involved commit themselves to a nonviolent future. Leaders of violent gangs remain in their positions of power but with a new focus on nonviolent resolution of conflict. Given their influence over other gang members, they can have an unprecedented effect on reducing the larger cycle of violence in Mexican schools. Also, the Cauce center’s close community motivates those who have been helped to return to the center as volunteers or staffers who can broaden the reach of Carlos’ efforts.

Already, that broadening is taking place. Carlos launched the first Cauce program in one of Mexico City’s most violent neighborhoods. Soon afterwards it was serving as the base for a training program targeting 18 new leaders committed to opening new centers in other parts of Mexico City and in two other major metropolitan areas. These trainees will attend six months of weekend workshops before opening centers of their own.

The Person

Carlos Cruz was born in Mexico City to a family of immigrants from the state of Chiapas. From the earliest years of his life, Carlos suffered from violence and abuse both in his household and the world around him. Like many children who live in such circumstances, he turned to violence because he thought it could solve his problems. This pattern intensified when Carlos entered a new high school in his late teens. Robbed on his first day of school and faced with violence everywhere, Carlos joined one of the largest school gangs as a way of protecting himself.

Carlos stayed in the gang for several years, both as an agent and as a victim of violence. His anger and need for revenge intensified after he was incarcerated and severely beaten for a week. But it was not until he was shot in the hip during an altercation at his school that Carlos’ life dramatically changed. As he recovered from his injury at the home of a friend in rural Veracruz, Carlos had the space and quiet to reflect on his situation for the first time in his life. Devastated by the suffering he had inflicted on others, and cognizant of the roadblock violence represented in his future, Carlos disavowed all violence and committed himself to working against it.

During his remaining years as a student, Carlos put his promise to action. He returned to Mexico City and slowly began forming an alliance of gang leaders from schools across the city to work against the violence they had lived with and perpetuated. The process was difficult and dangerous because numerous political leaders used their influence and money to quell the movement. The last thing the authorities wanted, Carlos realized, was a coalition of gang leaders who claimed to be working to prevent the very violence they had been responsible for. Carlos’s vision required an entirely new way of thinking about violence prevention, and few seemed open to his ideas. Demoralized, Carlos decided to step down and hand over leadership to another more committed member. The very next morning, this new leader and long-time friend was found shot dead in a gang-related incident. While others vowed revenge, Carlos kept his oath of nonviolence and instead decided to redouble his efforts. Later that year, Carlos founded Cauce Ciudadano and began slowly garnering support for his innovative approach to confront violence in Mexico’s schools.

Carlos’s personal experiences as a gang member play a significant role in his work. His empathy for those caught in the cycle of violence allows him to be less judgmental and more forgiving of gang members. And the story of his own transformation serves as an inspiration for the hundreds of young students that find themselves at the Cauce Community Center each year.