Drug cartels getting most heavy weapons from Central America

US embassy in Mexico CityImage via Wikipedia
Fox News:

The most fearsome weapons wielded by Mexico's drug cartels enter the country from Central America, not the United States, according to U.S. diplomatic cables disseminated by WikiLeaks and published here Tuesday by La Jornada newspaper.

Items such as grenades and rocket-launchers are stolen from Central American armies and smuggled into Mexico via neighboring Guatemala, the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City reported to Washington.

The assertions appear in embassy cables written after three bilateral conferences on arms trafficking that took place between March 2009 and January 2010 in Cuernavaca, Mexico; Phoenix; and Tapachula, Mexico, respectively.

The cables' authors note that Mexican officials and politicians never hesitate to remind U.S. diplomats that Mexico's drug war - which has claimed 35,000 lives in the last four years - is fueled by Americans' demand for illegal drugs and by guns bought in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Yet one of the cables maintains that 90 percent of the heavy armament Mexican security forces seize from cartel gunmen comes from Central America.

...
This is a point I have argued for sometime, because most of these heavy weapons are not available through US gun stores. It is also much easier for the bad guys to steal the weapons in Central America or even buy them their from corrupt officials than it is for them to buy them in the US then get them back over the border.

While they are clearly getting some new weapons from purchases in the US, they are usually hand guns and semi automatic rifles. The machine guns and grenade launchers are coming from elsewhere.
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