Nope, the parents give the children away because they are their ticket into the US. I guess they pick the worst one. Or they promise a neighbor to take one of their kids and use it to bribe the cartel. And they know that girls and women will all get raped on the trip. The adult women take birth control pills for the trip.

Mexico has changed a lot since the cartels took over and did unspeakable things to everyone who opposed them. The gentle, catholic families from the old days when I traveled through mexico are gone. TV was the beginning. They watched it nonstop and saw what they were missing. Whenever we would go to small towns in the middle of nowhere, one family would buy a tv and they would all watch it. I'm so glad I saw Latin America before the tv sets arrived.