Your life is every level of the cartel's deadliest hitman. The word Sicario comes from a language that is 2,000 years old. In ancient Hebrew, it meant dagger man, a member of a group of Jewish zealots who assassinated Roman soldiers and their sympathizers during the occupation of Judea. Today, the word means something different. In the cartel towns of northern Mexico, a sakario is the person who makes problems disappear. And by problems, they mean people. You do not apply for this job. There is no interview. There is no contract. You are chosen or more often you are taken. In Mexico, an estimated 30,000 children are currently working for drug cartels, not as dealers, not as lookouts, as soldiers, as killers. Some of them were recruited with promises of money, cars, and women. Others were recruited with a gun pointed at their head and two words, "Work or die." At the lowest level, you are a 14-year-old boy standing on a street corner with a prepaid phone watching for police. At the highest level, you command a private army. You have a body count that numbers in the hundreds. The Mexican government has placed a bounty on your head worth $10 million. And your average life expectancy from this point forward is measured not in decades or years, but in months. This is your life as every level of the cartel's deadliest hitman. And almost none of the people in this story, not a single one, make it to old age. Level one, the Halen. It starts on a street corner. You are 13 or 14 years old. You live in a town in northern Mexico where the cartel is not a criminal organization hiding in the shadows. It is the government. It runs the police. It pays the judges. It decides who lives and who dies. Your father works for a construction company that builds houses the cartel owns. Your mother cleans the house of a man who everyone in the neighborhood knows is a lieutenant, but nobody is stupid enough to name out loud. You grew up watching armored SUVs roll through your neighborhood at 2 in the morning. You know the sound of gunfire the way other children know the sound of a school bell. It is background noise. It is normal. A man approaches you outside a convenience store. He is in his 20s. He wears designer clothes and an expensive watch. He drives a truck that costs more than every house on your street combined. He asks you a simple question. Do you want to make money? He is not offering you a job at a restaurant. He is offering you a position as a falcon, a hawk, a lookout. Your job is to stand on a specific corner, watch for police or military vehicles, and call a number on a prepaid phone if you see anything. You make the call, you give the location and direction, and then you hang up and walk away. For this, you are paid the equivalent of $50 a week. That is more money than your father makes in a month. You stand on that corner every day after school. Sometimes nothing happens for hours. You lean against a wall, scroll through your phone, and look like every other bored teenager in the neighborhood. Sometimes a convoy of armored vehicles rolls through the intersection and you make the call. And 30 seconds later, the convoy turns down a side street and avoids a military checkpoint that was waiting for them two blocks ahead. You are the reason the shipment of 200 kilos of methamphetamine got through without being intercepted. You are the reason the boss did not get arrested today. And you are 14 years old. You tell yourself it is harmless. You are just watching. You are just making phone calls. You are not touching the product. You are not touching weapons. You have not hurt anyone. But you are already inside the machine. Your name is in someone's phone. Your face has been seen. People in the organization know who you are, where you live, and who your family is. That information is leverage. And from this point forward, leaving is not a decision you are allowed to make. The machine does not let people leave. Not willingly, not alive. Level two, the sold. By 16, you have been promoted. The phone calls were a test. They wanted to know if you could follow instructions, keep your mouth shut, and stay calm under pressure. You passed and now they need you for something more. You are now a soldato, a soldier. You are given a weapon, an AK-47 or an AR-15, depending on what the cartel has in stock this week. You are taught how to clean it, load it, and fire it. Your training lasts about 3 days, not 3 months, 3 days. Some cartels send their recruits to proper training camps in the mountains or the jungle, run by former military operatives or even former special forces soldiers who defected for the money. But most do not. Most hand you a rifle and point you at a problem. Your first assignment is convoy duty. You ride in the bed of a blacked out pickup truck with five other young men, all armed, all wearing dark clothing and bandanas pulled over their faces. The convoy consists of three vehicles. A lead truck, the cargo vehicle carrying the shipment, and your truck bringing up the rear as security. You are following a load of product from a warehouse on the outskirts of the city to a transfer point near the border. The route takes you through 200 km of desert highway through territory that is contested by at least two rival organizations. Your job is to protect the cargo with your life. If anyone tries to intercept the shipment, police, military, federal agents, or a rival cartel, you shoot. That is the entire briefing. There are no rules of engagement beyond that. You are not given rules of engagement. You are not given legal protections. You are not given body armor or medical support. If you are shot, the convoy does not stop. You either survive or you do not. And if you do not, another 16-year-old with an AK-47 will take your seat in the truck tomorrow morning. The first time you fire your weapon in a real situation, everything you thought you knew about violence disappears in an instant. The movies did not prepare you. The video games you played as a child did not prepare you. The sound of a rifle firing in an enclosed space is not a crack. It is a physical force that hits your eardrums like a fist. The recoil slams into your shoulder hard enough to leave a bruise that lasts a week. The muzzle flash at night is blinding. And the way a human body reacts to being hit by a high velocity rifle round at close range is nothing like anything you have ever imagined. It is not clean. It is not cinematic. It is the most terrible thing you have ever seen. And the smell, the smell of burned gunpowder mixed with copper scented blood mixed with engine exhaust and desert dust and the chemical tang of adrenaline pouring out of your own body. That smell will follow you for the rest of your life. You will smell it in your dreams. You will catch a whiff of it on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon and your heart will start pounding for no reason your body can explain. It will find you wherever you go, however long you have left. The pay is better now. A few hundred dollars a week paid in cash in a plastic bag. Enough to buy clothes that your school friends cannot afford. Enough to buy the shoes you used to stare at through shop windows. Enough to impress girls who would not have looked at you a year ago when you were just another poor kid in a poor town with no future. Enough to give money to your mother every Friday who takes it with shaking hands and puts it in a drawer in the kitchen without asking where it came from. She already knows. Everyone in the neighborhood knows. and she cannot afford to say no because the money from the cartel is now the only thing keeping the electricity on and food in the refrigerator. But the money comes with a price. You have seen things that cannot be unseen. You have done things that cannot be undone. And every day you are surrounded by men who are watching you, testing you, deciding whether you are loyal enough to be trusted with what comes next. Level three, the Sicario. You have proven yourself. You have survived convoy duty. You have been in firefights. You have shown the cartel that you can follow orders, handle a weapon, and keep your composure when everything around you is chaos. And now you are offered a promotion that will change who you are at the most fundamental level. You are now a sakario, a hitman. Your job is no longer to protect shipments or defend territory. Your job is to kill specific people on the orders of the cartel's leadership. Your first assignment comes as a phone call at 11 at night. A voice you have never heard gives you a name, a photograph sent to a messaging app that deletes itself after 30 seconds, and an address in a city 2 hours away. That is all. No explanation, no context, no reason why this particular person has been marked for death. You do not ask. You have been told in terms that left no room for misunderstanding that asking questions in this organization is the fastest and most reliable way to become a target yourself. You drive to the address. You park on a side street. You sit in your vehicle for hours watching the building, studying the targets routine, what time they leave in the morning, what time they return at night, who is with them, whether they carry a weapon, whether they check their mirrors, whether they vary their route. And then at a moment chosen for maximum impact and minimum number of witnesses in a location where escape routes have been mapped and a second vehicle is waiting two blocks away with the engine running, you act. The psychology of killing changes you in ways that no one talks about. After the first time, something inside you breaks. Not loudly, not dramatically, quietly. A piece of your humanity disconnects. You learn to compartmentalize to separate the person you are at home, the son who eats dinner with his mother, the boyfriend who watches movies on the couch from the person who stares through a car windshield at 2 in the morning waiting for a target to appear. The cartel counts on this disconnection. They need you to be able to walk into a restaurant, shoot a man at a table in front of his family, walk out, drive two blocks, park the car, and call your girlfriend to ask what she wants for dinner. If you cannot do that, if the two worlds start bleeding into each other, if you start having nightmares that wake you up screaming, if you start drinking before missions to steady your hands, if you hesitate for even a fraction of a second at the wrong moment, you are no longer an asset. You are a liability. And the cartel handles liabilities the same way it handles everything else. Quickly, permanently, and without discussion. There is no therapy. There is no leave of absence. There is no human resources department you can call. There is only the next assignment. And if you cannot complete it, there is a phone call to someone who can and their first assignment will be you. Level four, the heakarios. You have survived longer than most. The average life expectancy of a cartel sakario is not measured in decades. It is measured in months. Most are dead or in prison before they turn 25. But you are still here. And because you are still here, because you have completed every assignment, survived every ambush, and never talked to the police, the military, or the press, you are promoted to Hefearios, boss of the hitmen. You now command a squad of 10 to 30 killers. You do not pull the trigger yourself anymore. You point and others pull it for you. Your squad is responsible for enforcing the cartel's authority across an entire region. When a rival organization moves product through your territory, your squad responds. When a local politician refuses a bribe, your squad sends a message. When a journalist publishes a story that names a cartel leader, your squad pays them a visit. The messages are not subtle. They are designed to terrify. Bodies left in public places. Heads separated from bodies. Messages written on cardboard and hung from highway overpasses. The violence is not random. It is strategic. Every act of brutality is a calculated communication designed to ensure that the next person who is asked to cooperate with the cartel says yes without hesitation. You now have money. Real money. Not the $50 a week you made as a Halcon standing on a street corner after school. Not the few hundred you made as a sold riding in the back of a truck with a borrowed rifle. You are earning thousands of dollars a month in cash that you cannot deposit in any bank because you do not officially have a job. and the money has no legitimate origin. You buy a house with cash. You buy multiple vehicles, blacked out trucks with tinted windows and reinforced doors. You buy designer clothes, gold chains, luxury watches, custom boots made from exotic leather. Women are drawn to the power you represent, or they are too afraid to say no to a man who controls a squad of armed killers. From the outside, you look like a success, like someone who has made it. But inside, you are deteriorating. You drink heavily. You use the product you are supposed to be protecting. You trust nobody because in this world, the person sitting next to you at dinner could be the person sent to kill you tomorrow. Your friends are dead. Your enemies are everywhere. And every time your phone rings, you do not know if it is an order to kill someone or if someone has been given an order to kill you. Level five, the right hand. At this level, you serve the boss directly, the cartel's leader, the man whose face appears on wanted posters and whose name is spoken in whispers. You are his right hand, his chief enforcer, his most trusted weapon. When the boss has a problem that requires violence, and in the cartel, every problem eventually requires violence. You are the person he calls. You oversee not just your own squad, but the cartel's entire enforcement apparatus across multiple states. Hundreds of armed men answer to you. You coordinate with other hefees in other territories, managing the logistics of violence the way a corporate executive manages supply chains. You oversee weapons procurement, purchasing assault rifles, grenades, rocket propelled grenades, armored vehicles, and in some cases 50 caliber machine guns and military grade explosives from corrupt army officers, international arms dealers, and in at least one documented case directly from a Central American military armory. You oversee the construction of tunnels and safe houses. You manage the network of corrupt police and military officers who provide information and protection in exchange for cash. You are in every meaningful sense a general running a war that the government of your country cannot admit it is losing. The boss trusts you because you have proven your loyalty through years of blood. You have killed for him. You have been wounded for him. You have spent time in prison and said nothing. You are the man who walks into a room and everyone else goes quiet. But trust in this world is the most temporary currency there is. The boss is always watching. His other lieutenants are always jockeying for position. And the government is always looking for a way in. An informant, a weak link, a disgruntled lieutenant who can be turned. If the government cannot get to the boss, they will try to get to you. And if the boss ever suspects, even for a moment that you have been talking to the wrong people, you will not get a trial. You will not get an explanation. You will get a phone call telling you to go to a specific address. And when you arrive, the men waiting for you will be the same men you trained. Level six, the most wanted. At the very top of the enforcement hierarchy, you become a national target. The Mexican government places a bounty on your head. Your photograph is distributed to every military and police unit in the country. American intelligence agencies are sharing satellite imagery and intercepted communications with Mexican authorities to track your movements. You cannot sleep in the same place two nights in a row. You cannot use a cellular phone for more than 30 seconds without risking a location trace by the military signals intelligence units which are working with American technology and American advisers. You move through the mountains and the jungle with a small team of bodyguards who are the last people in the world you trust. And even them you watch carefully. You sleep in safe houses that change every night. Ranch compounds deep in the Sierra. Apartments in cities where you have never been seen before. Hidden rooms behind false walls and houses that look abandoned from the outside. You eat food that someone else has tasted first. You drink water from sealed bottles that you opened yourself. Paranoia is no longer a psychological condition. It is a survival strategy. The men who reached this level before you are all gone. Some were killed in shootouts with military special operations units specifically trained and equipped to hunt cartel leadership. Elite Marines and soldiers who arrived by helicopter in the middle of the night and overwhelmed safe houses with superior firepower and tactical precision. Some were betrayed by their own people. Lieutenants who cut deals with the government. Bodyguards who were paid to leave a door unlocked. Wives who made a phone call to a prosecutor because they could not take one more night of wondering when the violence would come home. Some were captured alive and extradited to the United States where they are now serving sentences of 40, 50, or 60 years in American federal supermax prisons where they have no power, no army, no influence, and no one who fears their name. One of them, a hitman known by a nickname that referenced his appearance, was sentenced to 49 years in a facility in Florida. He will die in prison. They all die in prison. Or they die in the mountains surrounded by Marines in a firefight that lasts less than 4 minutes. And here is the truth that the cartel will never tell you. The truth that the man with the expensive watch who recruited you outside that convenience store when you were 14 years old will never mention. There is no retirement plan. There is no exit. There is no scenario in which you serve the cartel faithfully for 20 years and then walk away to live on a beach somewhere. The cartel does not have former employees. It has active employees and dead employees. Those are the only two categories. And every single person who has ever held the rank you hold right now, every hefe, every enforcer, every Sakario who rose high enough to become a name that the government knew is in the second category, dead, imprisoned for decades in a foreign country or disappeared into a shallow grave in the desert, buried by the same organization they gave their life to. There are no exceptions. There are no success stories. There is only the question of how it ends, not whether. In Mexico, an estimated 30,000 children are working for drug cartels right now. Some of them are standing on street corners making phone calls. Some of them are riding in the backs of pickup trucks with assault rifles. Some of them are being handed photographs and addresses and told to make someone disappear. Most of them will not live to see 30. Most of them did not choose this life. They were recruited by men in expensive trucks who offered them $50 and a sense of belonging. They were recruited because their fathers were already inside the organization and refusing was not an option. They were recruited because there was no school, no job, no future, and no alternative in a town where the cartel is the only employer that is hiring. And most of them, if you sat them down honestly in a quiet room where the cartel could not hear with no microphones and no consequences for telling the truth, would tell you they want out. They would tell you they are tired. They would tell you they are afraid. They would tell you they have nightmares about the things they have done and the things they have seen. But there is no out. There never was. There is only forward deeper into the machine until the Marines come or the rival cartel comes or the boss decides you know too much and then there is nothing at all just silence and a shallow grave somewhere in the desert that nobody will ever look for and nobody will ever find. If you made it this far, subscribe and drop a comment telling me which level you would tap out. And check out our video on every level of an agent for the agency that does not exist. I'll see you in the next