While everyone salivates over the board game, ‘Cards Against Humanity’s’ latest political stunt in buying a small piece of border land in attempt prevent President Trump from erecting his proposed Mexican wall, there is a greater crisis lurking that no wall will stop: a Mexican drug-shooting Bazooka.
New evidence from Mexican daily El Universal suggests a wall would do very little to stem the flow of drugs across the border, as drug cartels have resorted to mobile vans using a tubular mechanism powdered by compressed-air to launch drugs and other illegal objects into the United States.
Last week, the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and the Mexican Army seized a mobile bazooka housed inside a van on the border town of Agua Prieta, Sonora, boarding Douglas, Arizona.
According to authorities, the contents with-in the van included not just the drug bazooka, but 825 kilos (1818.81 pounds) of marijuana, cartridges, and an array of firearms of different caliber.
Aseguran en #Sonora una bazuca para lanzar droga a Estados Unidos https://t.co/Bl5ivb5rlm pic.twitter.com/ibxZ5xe62R
— Noticieros Televisa (@NTelevisa_com) November 14, 2017
The Mexican daily El Universal provides additional detail of the military operation seizing the bazooka van:
It transpired that in a search diligence, authorized by a judge as part of a preliminary investigation of the Ministerial Agency for Criminal Investigations (AMIC), on November 09, agents discovered several packages of marijuana and the van designed with a sliding roof where a bazooka comes out to launch the drug packages to the United States.
The article ends to say, this is not the first time a drug bazooka has been found. Back in 2016, the same boarder municipality “secured” a vehicle with a “projectile type attachment for the launching of drug packages”.
Mexican drug cartels have been smuggling all types of illegal items into the United States for years. This is nothing new, but bazooka vans are a new phenomenon that no matter the height of the wall - drugs will be shot in. On the map below, bazooka vans have been seized on the Mexican border parallel to Douglas Arizona, which happens to be a major port of entry for drugs.
Mexican authorities have had a busy year with more than 24,000 homicides on pace for the most violent year in history, as you guested it - the drug war is fueling the crisis. Perhaps, that is why Mexican drug cartels are resorting to bold techniques such as bazooka vans and even drones - anything to stay ahead of the competition.
As we noted in October,
2017 might be the most violent year in Mexican history, one NGO claims. Semáforo Delictivo said that, due to the 24,000 homicides between January and September, the year is proving even worse than 2011, when President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs led to 22,000 homicides.
President of the organization, Santiago Roel, said that 73 percent of murders committed in the first eight months of the year were related to organized crime. He said that in 2007, there were 2,828 executions. Now, a decade later, 18,017 have been reported.
All high-impact crimes have increased during the current year, including abductions, homicides and grand theft auto at gunpoint. According to Roel, the main cause of violence and corruption is the “Mérida Plan,” which focuses on eradicating drug cartels.
Evidence above suggests Mexican drug cartels will continue to innovate through technology as the drug war spirals out of control.
For Trump’s current and possible future wall, it’s already obsolete, as cartels are now shooting in drug with a trajectory of over 500ft.
The evolutionary phase is quite clear– drones are next. So why even build a wall?