Chetumal, Quintana Roo — Authorities in Quintana Roo exchanged 600 toy guns for educational toys last year as part of a campaign to prevent children from normalizing violence and weapon use, officials announced.
Adrián Martínez Ortega, head of the State Secretariat for Citizen Security (SESESC), said the program targets schools, rural communities, neighborhoods, parks, and public spaces across the state. The initiative also runs alongside Mexican Army disarmament campaigns.
“We’ve had this exchange program for several years, where we invite the public to bring any weapons they have at home and we give them a financial incentive,” Martínez Ortega said. “But we also invite children—last year alone we exchanged 600 toys to include them in this prevention campaign.”
He emphasized that the goal is to prevent minors from viewing weapons as a means to resolve conflicts, encouraging them instead to play with educational toys rather than toy gun replicas.
Research in social prevention indicates that early exposure to weapon replicas can normalize violent behavior, making childhood intervention crucial for promoting peaceful coexistence, dialogue, and non-violent conflict resolution.
The SESESC has a dedicated department for crime prevention and peacebuilding efforts.
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