In one moment, a column of soldiers and military pickups creeps along a dirt road in western Mexico. In the next, a massive explosion sends debris and a body flying.
The ground where a soldier stood seconds earlier is a gaping hole, the aftermath of an improvised land mine planted by one of the region’s warring drug cartels.
That soldier was killed and four others were injured in the January explosion, which was captured in a grainy video that circulated on social media. Then last month, four more soldiers died and nine others were wounded when another explosive device detonated in the same region.
This week, three laborers were killed and two others injured by yet another mine, leaving a truck split in half and human remains scattered across a dusty road.
The series of blasts in the Tierra Caliente — an area along the border of Jalisco and Michoacán states that has long been a hot zone for cartel warfare — mark an alarming escalation of violence in Mexico as criminal groups arm themselves with ever-more sophisticated and deadly weaponry. The drug war in Mexico has come to resemble actual warfare.
Need to bring in US landmine experts. Plenty of experienced personnel from Iraq and Afghanistan
I suspect that Mexico would rather that the US choke off demand, since that’s where the cartels are getting their funds in the first place.
And that’s an American problem that’s spilling over into Mexico, something that I think that one could place a lot more responsibility on the US for than in ensuring Mexican internal security.
That won’t happen. The “war on drugs” let’s politicians feel morally superior while doing nothing to actually address the problem.