January 11, 2008:
The kind of terror we
associate with Afghanistan, Iraq and Colombia can show up a lot closer to home.
Take, for example, the recent "Tamaulipas Drug War" just south of the U.S. border
in Mexico. In an era of "small war," what amounts to a major battle
took place on January 7th, in Rio Bravo, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Mexican Federal Police personnel spotted a
van carrying three men, who were openly carrying automatic weapons. When the police attempted to stop the van,
the men opened fire, abandoned their vehicle, and fled into a nearby house,
which was apparently the headquarters of a drug gang. Heavy fire was soon coming from the building,
which like most Mexican houses was of cement-cinder block-rebar construction,
and thus essentially a bunker. The
police called for reinforcements. As
scores of Federal Police and some troops responded, the action grew into a
major fire fight. The fight lasted a
little over a half hour, as the security forces quickly gained the upper hand,
helped by RPGs and, reportedly, machine gun fire, provided by the troops.
When the fighting ended, ten police
officers and soldiers had been wounded, but three of the drug gang were dead
and ten more, some of them wounded, were in custody. A considerable arsenal was confiscated,
including 7 automatic weapons, 16 "sniper rifles," a dozen automatic pistols,
and a grenade launcher, plus grenades and ammunition, as well as flack jackets
and some radios. Much of the equipment
appeared to have come from the U.S.
They were identified as operatives of
the Heriberto Lazcano drug gang, commonly known as the "Gulf Cartel." Among the prisoners were three
Mexican-Americans, apparently all U.S. citizens, one from Texas and two from
Michigan, apparently professional criminals hired to provided additional muscle
Lazcano, known as "El Lazco," controls
the drug trade in Tamaulipas, and his gunmen have killed large numbers of
police officers, local officials, and other drug dealers. In November, following the murder of a
prominent local anti-drug politician and several of his aides, Mexican
President Felipe Calderon dispatched thousands of additional federal police and
troops to the state.
Given that it began when armed men were
seen driving through the streets, and that it occurred in close proximity to
what appears to have been a major drug operations center, it's possible that
incident may have been a deliberate effort by "El Lazco" to provoke a shootout
with the Federal Police, in an attempt to intimidate them, as he done with many
of the local police forces in the area. Even this is not the case, the
likelihood is that there will be more such battles, as the current Mexican
government seems to be serious about dealing with the drug cartels
One thing the Mexican government has
not gotten serious about is increasing security at the border. Legally going from Mexico into the U.S. has
become extremely time consuming, with long lines at the border crossings,
frequent customs inspections, and computerized databases ("Been to Texas three
times in the four days . . . why?"). But
crossing from the U.S. to Mexico in most cases is no more difficult than
crossing from New York to New Jersey; maybe a tie up at the crossing, and, of
course, a stop at the toll booth.
Inspections of vehicles are rare, nor does Mexico maintain a database of
vehicle crossings. Mexican laws about
bringing weapons into the country are stiff (folks have been sent to jail for
just having two or three bullets in their possession), but since inspections
are so infrequent, the laws have not had much impact on the movement of weapons
from the U.S.