MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico wants an urgent investigation into how U.S. military-grade weapons are increasingly being found in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, Mexico’s top diplomat said.
Mexico’s army is finding belt-fed machine guns, rocket launchers and grenades that are not sold for civilian use in the United States.
“The (Mexican) Defense Department has warned the United States about weapons entering Mexico that are for the exclusive use of the U.S. army,” Foreign Relations Secretary Alicia Bárcena said. “It is very urgent that an investigation into this be carried out.”
The Mexican army said in June that it had seized 221 fully automatic machine guns, 56 grenade launchers and a dozen rocket launchers from drug cartels since late 2018.
The military-grade U.S. weaponry — which cartels have bragged about and openly displayed on social media — poses a special challenge for Mexico’s army, which along with police and the National Guard already faces cartels operating homemade armored vehicles and bomb-dropping drones.
In June, Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said five rocket launchers had been found in the possession of the Jalisco New Generation cartel, four were seized from the rival Sinaloa cartel and three more seized from other cartels. Sandoval did not specifically say the weapons were from U.S. military stockpiles.
There are a number of possible routes by which the weapons may have made their way to Mexico. Central America was awash with U.S. weaponry during the conflicts of the 1980s, military grade weapons sometimes go missing from stocks in the United States, and some manufacturers who sell arms to the U.S. military might also have sold some abroad or on the black market.
While the Mexican army and marines still have superior firepower, the drug cartels’ weaponry often now outclasses other branches of Mexican law enforcement.
Mexico has long had a problem with semi-automatic rifles that are permitted for civilian use in the United States being smuggled into Mexico, where only low-caliber firearms are permitted and strictly regulated. Mexico has launched legal actions against U.S. arms manufacturers and gun shops, arguing that they contribute to violence.
On Monday, an appeals court in Boston, Massachusetts handed Mexico a victory in one of those actions, reviving a $10 billion lawsuit against seven U.S. gun manufacturers and one distributor. Mexico argued the companies knew weapons were being sold to traffickers who smuggled them into Mexico and decided to cash in on that market.
The Mexican government estimates 70% of the weapons trafficked into Mexico come from the U.S., according to the Foreign Affairs Ministry.