Long piece about the militarization of the cartels. Figured this was the best place for this. And, given the increased calls for US military action in Mexico, it should be on our radar.
https://archive.is/dPX5Z
The explosions began before dawn, shaking the ground and rattling windows in the darkness. With them, residents said, came the telltale buzz of drones.
“We knew the devil was coming,” said Ana, a mother of six who grabbed her children and ran as gunmen moved in to do battle.
Weeks later, her town still bore scars. Holes were blasted into roofs where drones had dropped bombs. Craters gaped where land mines had exploded. Spent .50-caliber shells glinted in the dirt.
The clash was not in a war zone of Ukraine or the Middle East, and the combatants did not belong to any army. They were criminal groups, armed with military-grade weapons and fighting just a few hundred miles from the U.S. border, in Mexico’s western state of Michoacán.
Ana, a mother of six, looking out of a window in a wall scarred by bullet holes at her home in El Guayabo.
Some of Mexico’s most formidable cartels are locked in a vicious arms race on multiple fronts. On one side, they are battling the Mexican government, which is under intense pressure from the United States to crack down on the drug trade. But they are also fighting one another for territory and resources, leaving a deadly toll among their members and the civilians caught in between.
Now, President Trump has ordered the Pentagon to begin using military force against certain drug cartels designated as terrorist groups. The directive has infuriated Mexico’s leaders, who have rejected the idea of U.S. forces on Mexican soil. But despite their disagreements about what actions to take, officials and security analysts in both countries agree that cartels are amassing new levels of firepower, transforming some groups into full-fledged paramilitary forces.
Drug smugglers and cartel gunmen no longer wield just handguns or automatic rifles, officials and experts say, but also Claymore land mines, rocket-propelled grenades, mortars built from gas-tank tubes and armored trucks mounted with heavy machine guns. They are burying improvised explosive devices to kill their rivals and modifying drones bought online to make attack drones, loaded with toxic chemicals and bombs.
An array of recovered improvised explosives recovered by the state police force bomb squad in Morelia, Michoacán. Casings are commonly made from plastic bottles, cut drainpipes and even fire extinguishers.
“We cannot continue to just treat these guys as local street gangs,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with EWTN, a Catholic television network, last month. “They have weaponry that looks like what terrorists, in some cases armies, have.”
Mexican officials say that most of the military-grade weapons that powerful groups have acquired originated in the United States, and that up to half a million firearms are smuggled south each year. The officials say that criminals also reverse-engineer weapons, sometimes 3-D printing parts to build them.
Nowhere are the consequences of this varied and growing arsenal starker than in the rugged hills of Tierra Caliente in Michoacán, a swath of fertile farmland and lush mountains that has become a strategic corridor for drug cultivation.
The battle for control there between rival groups — including the Knights Templar, La Familia Michoacana and the group with the most military power, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel — has pushed the fight into a new, more brutal era.
cont'd