Mexico's descent into chaosDrug traffickers take on Mexican military
The steady descent of Mexico into chaos was accelerated this week when drug traffickers fighting to control northern Mexico have turned their guns and grenades on the Mexican army; gunmen in armored cars and equipped with grenade launchers fought army troops this week and attempted to trap some of them in two military bases by cutting off access and blocking highways
It was only a question of time. Mexican drug traffickers fighting to control northern Mexico have turned their guns and grenades on the Mexican army, authorities said, in an apparent escalation of warfare that played out across multiple cities in two border states.
In coordinated attacks, gunmen in armored cars and equipped with grenade launchers fought army troops this week and attempted to trap some of them in two military bases by cutting off access and blocking highways, a new tactic by Mexico’s organized criminals.
Los Angeles Times’s Tracy Wilkinson writes that in taking such aggressive action, the traffickers have shown that they are not reluctant to challenge the army head-on and that they possess good intelligence on where the army is, how it moves and when it operates.
At least eighteen alleged attackers were killed and one soldier wounded in the fighting that erupted Tuesday in half a dozen towns and cities in the states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, the army said, topping off one of the deadliest months yet in a drug war that has raged for nearly three-and-a-half years.
Wilkinson notes that traffickers previously have fought with army patrols, but the attempt to blockade garrisons came after weeks of an intense, bloody power struggle between two rival organizations, the Gulf cartel and its erstwhile paramilitary allies, the Zetas, to control the region bordering South Texas.
Part of the strategy of Tuesday’s assaults may have been to prevent the army from patrolling, to give the drug gangs a freer hand in their fight against each other. “This really speaks to the incredible organization and firepower that the drug-trafficking organizations have managed to muster,” said Tony Payan, a border expert at the University of Texas at El Paso. “These are organizations that are flexible, supple and quick to react and adapt. They no doubt represent a challenge to the Mexican state.”
In Reynosa, one of the scenes of Tuesday’s fighting, the local government put out alerts Thursday for residents to avoid parts of the city. Residents said they heard gunfire and saw military armored personnel carriers moving through neighborhoods.
