Firefights, raids, and assassinations: tactical forms of cartel violence and their underpinnings

Abstract

This article examines some specific types of narco-generated combat, assault, and brutality that over the last decade have acquired an increasingly organized and paramilitary character. The planning; training; intelligence and counterintelligence preparation; mobility; communications; type of weaponry; levels of intensity; and sheer audacity substantially exceed the threats with which traditional law enforcement had been trained and equipped to deal. It matches the apt Drug Enforcement Administration description of a ‘transition from the gangsterism of traditional narco hit men to paramilitary terrorism with guerrilla tactics’. These methods have become a mainstay in the struggle of narco-traffickers against law enforcement, the military, and to a major degree among the competing drug-trafficking organizations themselves. While the infrastructure and practice of paramilitary violence is established in Mexico in seemingly unprecedented ways, the concern north of the border is its potential transportability. Many law enforcement personnel have compared 1980s Miami – with its running drug firefights, revenge raids, and bloody assassinations by Colombian cocaine traffickers – to Mexican drug violence. There are enough precursors north of the Rio Grande now to make the potential for something analogous more than empty speculation.