This article discusses the impact of three important factors on the minors’ social and emotional development that promote their involvement, whether forced or consensual, in Mexican drug cartels. The first factor is family violence, which causes problems such as family disintegration, child abandonment, labor exploitation and sex work. The second factor is social violence, which generates evident problems of inequality that increase poverty, school dropout and gender violence rates throughout the country. Within the context of social violence, the northern border tackles a very particular situation that turns it into a red flag of insecurity as it is the cradle of the awful drug lords, which has caused the distortion of culture to a narcoculture as a side effect. The third factor is institutional violence against minors, which is reflected in acts of corruption, government collusion with drug trafficking groups, failure in security policies such as the "War on Drug Trafficking" in 2006, military involvement with the organized crime groups, and so on. This structural violence, which has been recurrent for years, has presently become in contact with a sensitive point in Mexican society: children and adolescents involved in drug trafficking, who have been criminalized and stigmatized. Nevertheless, both society and the government itself have not inquired about the reasons for a minor to participate in drug trafficking and what is behind the face of a child drug dealer. Conversely, society in general seems to be scandalized, drug traffickers have made a big profit from this illegal activity and the government has minimized and made this problem invisible.