Mexico Defence and Security Report 2009

The violent struggle between the government and Mexico’s drug cartels appeared to have reached a new level of ferocity in December 2008 when eight soldiers and one former police commander were kidnapped and decapitated in Guerrero state, in apparent retribution for the earlier death of three drug cartel members in a clash with soldiers in the town of Teloloapan. The heads were left before dawn in a busy street in Chilpancingo, another nearby town, with a note that said ‘for each member that you kill, we are going to kill ten of yours’. The incident caused outrage, with President Felipe Calderón insisting that the victims’ deaths would not be in vain and that no stone would be left unturned to hunt down those responsible. The President insisted that ‘we will not stand down and there will be no truce with enemies of the state’. At the same time as the Guerrero incident, 19 people were killed in drug-related violence in Chihuaha state, mostly in Ciudad Juarez on the US border, considered Mexico’s most violent city. Areas close to the US border were seen as particularly volatile as the gangs were fighting for control of key trafficking routes into the US. Ciudad Juarez had been the scene of a battle between the local Juarez drug cartel, led by Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, and the rival Sinaloa cartel led by Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.

On a national level the main fighting had been between these two cartels and a third, based around the Gulf of Mexico in the east of the country. Newspapers calculated that over 5,300 people were killed in drug related violence during 2008, a year in which the government deployed 45,000 troops across the country to crack down on the gangs. The number of deaths was double the figure for 2007.

Mexico maintains a small defence industry focusing mainly on the production of small arms and ammunition. Efforts to achieve a degree of self-sufficiency through co-operation with foreign firms floundered as a result of the economic difficulties of the early 1980s. Since then, Mexico has relied mainly on foreign, and in particular US, arms manufacturers for its large-scale weapons systems requirements.

Given that the US guarantees against external threats, Mexico has never needed a very large army. The armed forces are, however, in need of modernisation – Mexico’s army has no battle tanks in its inventory.

Mexican armed forces continue to monitor rebel enclaves and strongholds, mounting occasional ‘search and destroy’ missions and making arrests; generally, however, there is a stalemate. Regardless of the internal protests Mexico can rely on US support, political and military, to assist with security issues: good news given the condition of Mexico’s defence industry.