Nuevo Caracol, a community in the state of Guerrero, was the target of an attack with gunfire and bombs dropped from drones over the weekend. The alert was issued by the “Minerva Bello” Center for the Rights of Victims of Violence, which received complaints from the residents.
It is not the first time that drone attacks have been reported in Mexico, in the context of conflicts between organized crime gangs or against the security forces. The use of these unmanned aerial devices has been increasing.
At first, they were used to smuggle drugs, and later to carry out surveillance tasks. Years later, criminal groups began to use them as weapons as well.
“The two main transnational criminal networks in Mexico, the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (and other transnational criminal networks of Brazilian, Venezuelan, Peruvian, Albanian, Chinese and Russian origin), have been using drones for at least 7 years. ”, indicates Dr. Edgardo Buscaglia, senior academic in Law and Economics at Columbia University, in New York, and president of the Institute of Citizen Action, of Mexico.
He explains that they have served for the “surveillance of transport of migrants, drugs, weapons, illegally extracted minerals” and also for “tactical-offensive purposes, with the use of plastic explosives against other competing criminal networks and against state authorities.” These drones also serve to collect intelligence information.
Easy access
Not surprisingly, criminal groups also use available technology, in this case, drones. “To the extent that they are easy to acquire and there is no cost to use them, it is very likely that they will be used more frequently,” says Dr. Cecilia Farfán Méndez, head of research in security programs at the Center for Mexico- United States from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), and affiliated researcher at the Center for Studies on Security, Intelligence and Governance of the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico.
For Guadalupe Correa Cabrera, PhD in Political Science and Professor of Politics and Government at George Mason University, in the United States, “it is an advance in technology that is seen in all kinds of conflicts where there are weapons.”
He notes that “there is a lot of access to this type of technology, it is bought by Amazon. You buy it on these platforms and then you can add equipment to it.” Thus, these devices, legally acquired, can be turned into combat weapons, if explosives are attached to them.
Apart from these “homemade bombs”, much more sophisticated drones have also been detected. “It is surprising that in some confrontations we are seeing that part of these groups have access to this material. Where does this military equipment come from that only the armed forces could have access to? Where does it come from?” asks Guadalupe Correa, author of the book Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexicoamong other publications.
The fact is that technology is getting more and more sophisticated. “The offensive capacity of these drones has increased exponentially and they operate across the border of Mexico with the United States and that of Guatemala with Mexico,” says Edgardo Buscaglia.
Greater apparent power
However, it cannot be said that all organized crime groups are in a position to use them in any part of the country’s territory. There are many differences, even within each group, and the structures are not very clear either, according to Guadalupe Correa.
“The way in which the cartels operate is not as consistent as if they were groups that have a particular leadership,” he stresses. And he adds that there are also small groups that call themselves members of the Sinaloa Cartel or the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, or even contractors. “The form of training is quite irregular, and there are some more specialized ones. But we are not talking about hyper-expert groups across the country operating tactically as if they were an army, ”he underlines.
What is clear is that the use of drones also has a psychological advantage. Not in vain, “even the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel has presented several videos with them using this type of more sophisticated equipment,” he says.
Cecilia Farfán affirms that, “in terms of weapons, the Mexican armed forces have technology to counteract the use of drones by criminal groups.” However, “from the point of view of perception, 70 percent of Mexican men and women think that criminal groups have more and better weapons.”
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