Foreign Fighters in the Mexican Cartel War
Mercenaries from Colombia, Guatemala and the U.S.A. shed blood on Mexican soil
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In May, Mexico City detectives were tracking drug sellers in the plush Roma Norte neighborhood when they jumped out on a suspect heading down Oaxaca Street. As well as yanking fifty baggies of weed from his pockets, they pulled out a Colombian passport with the name John Fredy Quintero. After an “interrogation,” Mexico City prosecutors said Quintero (above) was an ex-soldier from the Colombian army and went by the nickname, “El Gatillo” or “The Trigger.” He had been in Mexico, they claimed, fighting alongside other Colombian mercenaries in the state of Michoacán for a force called Carteles Unidos, or Cartels United.
Michoacán gangsters hire these Colombian mercenaries to train their sicarios, or gunmen, in military tactics, including the use of sniper rifles and improvised explosives, in their war against the rival Jalisco cartel. However, the Jalisco mob has also recruited foreign mercenaries into its paramilitary forces, which wield weaponized drones and rocket-propelled grenades in the fight.
Since last year, Mexican soldiers have nabbed at least a dozen Colombian mercenaries in action in Michoacán. The latest fighter was caught on Monday near the town of Ruana following a shoot-out with troops. He had been working out of a “narcocampiento” (a narco guerrilla encampment) in the forest with a stack of rifles and piles of ammo under a tarpaulin.
Foreign mercenaries throw oil on the already blazing fire of the Mexican Cartel War. They bring experience from other battlegrounds and knowledge in battle tech, from car bombs to improvised land mines. Colombians have a particular reputation after 60 years of armed conflict in their homeland. But they are not the only foreign fighters to shed blood for Mexican cartels.
Veterans from Guatemala’s Kaibil special forces first helped raise the bar of violence while fighting in the Zetas mob and they continue to battle on the Chiapas-Guatemala border. Honduran and Salvadoran gang bangers have been enlisted into cartel squads and sent to the front lines. And veterans of the U.S. army also play their role in shooting sprees south of the Rio Grande.
It has long been established that U.S. veterans have been deported to Mexico and recruited by cartels. But a powerful trafficker in a U.S. prison also revealed to me how cartels have a history of hiring U.S. military veterans in the United States itself to travel into Mexico to fight. He described how…
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