Mexico is a country with a lot of history and culture. They have delicious foods like tacos, tortillas and quesadillas. The sights are also pretty good, like how Cancun is a great snorkeling spot. But it is also notorious for various reasons. Drug cartels are one of those reasons. Recently, these cartels have taken the American concept of “monster trucks” to a whole new world. Pickups are now being retrofitted with battering rams, four-inch steel plates on chassis’ and turrets for machine gun firing.
Some of the most feared criminal groups like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel are using these new monster trucks in pitched police battles. Other crime organizations such as the Gulf Cartel and Northeast Cartel are using them for fights against each other. Security forces in Mexico have dubbed these hulking metal monstrosities monstruos (monster), rinocerontes (rhinos) and narcotanques (narco-tanks). The exteriors are emblazoned with the cartel’s initials or covered up with camouflage.
The interiors are different. Some front seats have a cockpit theme with numerous lights and buttons. The middle has a hatch much like a tank, while metal seats offer gun holes to shoot through. People can’t help but attribute the “Mad Max” vibe to these terrors when they roll out on the street. That’s just proof that cartels are willing to go to rather extreme lengths “to try to enforce by violent means their dominance against adversary gangs and against authority,’’ said Jorge Septién, a Mexico-City expert in ballistics and armaments to the New York Times.
Other than that, the spread of monster trucks also shows the dying effort to try and go against criminal groups. Amongst the weapons available to cartels, monster trucks stand high up on the chart of intimidation. Cartels can also use Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles that can penetrate steel, rocket-propelled grenades, rocket launchers, roadside anti-vehicle mines and drones with remote-detonated explosives.
What’s truly rather shocking though, is the fact that monster trucks are only a little more than a decade old. Their growth rate and sophistication are much like that of the narco-submarines built by cartels adaptations to elude capture.
In the 1990s, a paramilitary operation containing Mexico’s special forces turned into the Zetas cartel. Since then, the progression of monster trucks has followed the flow of elite soldiers into cartels, from weapons used to vehicles driven. Special forces’ involvement in criminal activity have led the groups they are in to compete with and emulate the elite forces of Mexico, including ramping up their arsenal with more militaristic things.
Many forces have gone to work destroying, confiscating, demolishing, etc. to monster trucks. That is quite a hefty bill to foot, as armoring a single truck uses up 2 million pesos, or roughly $117,000 U.S. dollars. More features like bulletproof tires, turrets and battering rams further up the cost.
The basics, which include steel plates, can take up to 60-70 days. Often done in rural workshops, such modifications rely on the skills of cartel mechanics, with a car having 5-6 welders and mechanics. And despite the fact that armoring a vehicle without authorization is a crime that can net you 15 years in prison, that’s done little to stop their robust production.
A publication from an American source in Small Wars Journal had an analysis that concluded: “such armored vehicles far outclass standard Mexican police armaments.” Given that these guys are typically made from standard-issue pickups, that doesn’t seem like a drastic difference. But cartels choose heavily armored “dump truck variants” for their jobs and only anti-vehicle weapons possessed by Mexico’s armed forces can harm them. Some models used are the Ford Lobo (basically a Ford F-150 in the U.S.,) Ford Raptor, Chevrolet Tahoe and generic kinds like larger flatbeds, dump trucks or heavy-duty “dually” trucks.
Even though it may seem like the end of the world will come if they are mass-produced, monster trucks do have some disadvantages. They can be sluggish and hard to maneuver, especially in urban settings, unlike the swift and nimble Toyota Hilux pickups with mounted machine guns used by most of the armed groups in the world. Other than that, monster trucks can frequently break down and be abandoned, due to parts malfunctioning during retrofitting.
Despite that, they’ve kind of become symbols, violent ones at that. Many social media websites have monster trucks appearing on them, TikTok included. It has to do with a status symbol, as the first trucks seen were basically blow-torched and welded shoddily. Nowadays, they look like military vehicles from a distance.
Some of the most feared criminal groups like the Jalisco New Generation Cartel are using these new monster trucks in pitched police battles. Other crime organizations such as the Gulf Cartel and Northeast Cartel are using them for fights against each other. Security forces in Mexico have dubbed these hulking metal monstrosities monstruos (monster), rinocerontes (rhinos) and narcotanques (narco-tanks). The exteriors are emblazoned with the cartel’s initials or covered up with camouflage.
The interiors are different. Some front seats have a cockpit theme with numerous lights and buttons. The middle has a hatch much like a tank, while metal seats offer gun holes to shoot through. People can’t help but attribute the “Mad Max” vibe to these terrors when they roll out on the street. That’s just proof that cartels are willing to go to rather extreme lengths “to try to enforce by violent means their dominance against adversary gangs and against authority,’’ said Jorge Septién, a Mexico-City expert in ballistics and armaments to the New York Times.
Other than that, the spread of monster trucks also shows the dying effort to try and go against criminal groups. Amongst the weapons available to cartels, monster trucks stand high up on the chart of intimidation. Cartels can also use Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifles that can penetrate steel, rocket-propelled grenades, rocket launchers, roadside anti-vehicle mines and drones with remote-detonated explosives.
What’s truly rather shocking though, is the fact that monster trucks are only a little more than a decade old. Their growth rate and sophistication are much like that of the narco-submarines built by cartels adaptations to elude capture.
In the 1990s, a paramilitary operation containing Mexico’s special forces turned into the Zetas cartel. Since then, the progression of monster trucks has followed the flow of elite soldiers into cartels, from weapons used to vehicles driven. Special forces’ involvement in criminal activity have led the groups they are in to compete with and emulate the elite forces of Mexico, including ramping up their arsenal with more militaristic things.
Many forces have gone to work destroying, confiscating, demolishing, etc. to monster trucks. That is quite a hefty bill to foot, as armoring a single truck uses up 2 million pesos, or roughly $117,000 U.S. dollars. More features like bulletproof tires, turrets and battering rams further up the cost.
The basics, which include steel plates, can take up to 60-70 days. Often done in rural workshops, such modifications rely on the skills of cartel mechanics, with a car having 5-6 welders and mechanics. And despite the fact that armoring a vehicle without authorization is a crime that can net you 15 years in prison, that’s done little to stop their robust production.
A publication from an American source in Small Wars Journal had an analysis that concluded: “such armored vehicles far outclass standard Mexican police armaments.” Given that these guys are typically made from standard-issue pickups, that doesn’t seem like a drastic difference. But cartels choose heavily armored “dump truck variants” for their jobs and only anti-vehicle weapons possessed by Mexico’s armed forces can harm them. Some models used are the Ford Lobo (basically a Ford F-150 in the U.S.,) Ford Raptor, Chevrolet Tahoe and generic kinds like larger flatbeds, dump trucks or heavy-duty “dually” trucks.
Even though it may seem like the end of the world will come if they are mass-produced, monster trucks do have some disadvantages. They can be sluggish and hard to maneuver, especially in urban settings, unlike the swift and nimble Toyota Hilux pickups with mounted machine guns used by most of the armed groups in the world. Other than that, monster trucks can frequently break down and be abandoned, due to parts malfunctioning during retrofitting.
Despite that, they’ve kind of become symbols, violent ones at that. Many social media websites have monster trucks appearing on them, TikTok included. It has to do with a status symbol, as the first trucks seen were basically blow-torched and welded shoddily. Nowadays, they look like military vehicles from a distance.
