Mexican drug cartels use monster trucks like killing machines

If you’ve ever heard country music (it’s no shame to indulge your inner redneck), you’ve probably heard of cowboys customizing their trucks to have as much big-dick energy as possible. And when rapper DMX died in 2021 (Rest in Power), his bright red coffin was carried around his hometown of New York in a customized Ford F250 with “Long Live DMX” written on the side.

But in Mexico, drug cartels build monster trucks that can be used like tanks. The cartels are retrofitting pickup trucks with battering rams, four-inch thick steel plates welded to their chassis, complete with turrets for firing machine guns, the New York Times reports.

One of these savvy but criminal truck-converting gangs is the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, which uses the vehicles for shootouts with the police. The Treasury Department described the Jalisco New Generation Cartel as one of the “most prolific and violent drug trafficking organizations” in the world. They are known for their extreme violence, dealing primarily with cocaine and meth and allegedly forcing recruits into cannibalism by eating the flesh of murdered victims, reports The Daily Beast.

Others, including the Gulf Cartel (one of Mexico’s oldest and most original cartels) and the Northeast Cartel, bloody upgrade vehicles to fight each other. They too proudly adorn the trucks with their initials, and camouflage is also a popular design (and makes it difficult to tell the monster trucks from the police vehicles). Mexican security forces call these trucks monstruos (monsters), rinocerontes (rhinos), and narcotanques (drug tanks). Other weapons include (perhaps in the monster trucks) steel-piercing .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles, rocket launchers, and rocket-propelled grenades powerful enough to shoot down military helicopters.

It assumes that the cartels would use monster trucks. They have long used mechanical skills to convert cars for cross-border drug smuggling. Monster trucks really can be the war machine demolition derbies in the US, with car names like Reaper or Grave Digger one could wish for. “The monsters are the way to send out the message: ‘I’m in charge and I want everyone to see that I’m in charge,'” said Mr Le Cour, senior expert at the Switzerland-based Global Initiative Against Transnational Organisations organizations crime. “These are commando-style groups who aim to emulate special forces in their weaponry, training and appearance,” writes the New York Times.

But what’s happening to monster trucks in Mexico makes American demolition derbies look as innocent as a trip to DisneyLand. The cartel transforms trucks like the Ford Lobo (known as the Ford F-150 in the US), the Ford Raptor, the Chevrolet Tahoe, and even larger vehicles like dump trucks and heavy-duty trucks with large flatbeds and two rear wheels on each side. Technically, unauthorized armoring of a vehicle is a crime in Mexico, punishable by up to 15 years in prison. This law did not stop monster trucks from being armed.

Prosecutors in Tamaulipas, the state bordering northeast Mexico, issued a statement last year citing the “threat to community safety” posed by the modified vehicles, which are particularly conspicuous along the border. Since 2019, authorities have destroyed more than 260 of these armored monster trucks in Tamaulipas alone, one of the 31 states of Mexico that together with Mexico City make up the 32 States of Mexico.

As badass as the souped-up trucks may sound, even the cartel has problems with the car. Being weighed down by steel plates, the monsters can be heavy, slow and difficult to drive, especially in cities. In addition, all these modifications can lead to mechanical failures. “They are too slow, too heavy,” writes Alexei Chévez, a security analyst from Cuernavaca, Mexico, in the New York Times. And retrofitting vehicles causes some of their parts to fail. “We see that they are constantly breaking down and being abandoned,” Mr Chévez said.

But there’s another weapon the cartels have at their disposal to secure the legacy of the deadly monster truck: social media. On TikTok, the Monstruos appear often, tricked and deadly, accompanied by cartel rap songs. While the Mexican police will continue to fight them, it’s difficult to keep your cool.