The ‘drug war’ in Mexico is escalating as cartels also use drones and roadside bombs

Guillermo Valencia has not even been working on his tools for ten minutes when his assistant nervously shuffles towards him. “Mr. Valencia, we can’t stay here too long.” His two bodyguards, in plain clothes and carrying automatic weapons, are clearly uneasy as well. Valencia pushes one more time with his drill. Finally he gets a hole in the metal traffic sign.

There are four bullet holes at the bottom of the board. Clearly of a large caliber, which had less difficulty in riddling the steel. Valencia pushes his red warning sign half over it. “Be careful,” it says above a skull. “Area with mines.”

“This is not the first time I put a sign here,” says Valencia, wiping the sweat from his brow. “But the authorities have taken it away. Instead of clearing the explosives themselves, they are taking away the warnings. As if this is not the reality of this region.”

For years, Valencia, a member of the regional parliament, has been campaigning against the immense violence of cartels in Michoacán. (4.7 million inhabitants) is the scene of a bloody battle between criminal organizations, fighting over territory and smuggling routes. Extortion of lemon and avocado farmers, illegal mining, drug smuggling: whoever controls this vast, fertile state in western Mexico can make a big profit.

The bloody battle for control is being fought with increasingly heavy weapons, which cause a large number of civilian casualties. Valencia points to a lemon tree plantation, adjacent to the dirt road where he has hung his warning sign. “Here in February, 15-year-old Pablo, who was working as a day laborer, stood on a mine. An innocent, hard-working boy was blown up,” he says.

Mayra, Pablo’s mother, lives in the neighboring city of Apatzingán. Due to the presence of mines, she has still not been back to the scene of the disaster. While local residents have told her that her son’s body parts are still in the orchard. After much hesitation, she decides she doesn’t want to talk to NRC. For fear of reprisals from local criminal organizations.

Someone who did speak out against the criminal organizations in the region was Bernardo Bravo, president of the lemon farmers’ union from Apatzingán. In fiery pleas, including on social media, he denounced the extortion of farmers and the use of explosives on their land. Bernardo Bravo’s father did the same, and paid for it with his death. And the cartels of Michoacán now showed again that those who speak out will die.

A day before Valencia started placing its warning sign, Bravo was found dead. In a burnt-out car along a country road, with marks of torture on his body. “Bernardo was one of the few who still dared to speak openly about the crime,” says Valencia. He points to his bodyguards. “Now I’m the only one who says anything. But for how long, I don’t know.”

In Apatzingán, a city in the middle of the Michoacán mountains, the tension that day is palpable. Many shops are closed. Anyone who ventures onto the street does so with their heads bowed, avoiding eye contact. Prominently present are boys with shaved haircuts and tattooed arms, who drive around on mopeds and keep an eye on everything. They are not police officers, but in villages like these they can be considered the local authorities.

Apatzingán has long been plagued by violence. A look at the news reports from 2025 paints a gruesome picture. In January, four people’s heads were found in the local square. In July, soldiers were killed in explosive attacks on police posts. In October, army helicopters were deployed against armed gang members.

In two years, at least two thousand people have fled the region, moving to larger cities such as Uruapán and Morelia, elsewhere in Michoacán. But it is anything but safe there too: last weekend the mayor of Uruapán was assassinated in the street while taking part in Day of the Dead festivities in his city.

The mountainous region of which Apatzingán is part is called Tierra Caliente, Hot Ground. At least five major Mexican cartels are fighting for power here, including the all-powerful Jalisco Cartel. Violence by or between cartels is nothing new for Michoacán, but the form of violence has changed.

Mines are laid to mark territory or surprise the opponent. Homemade explosives are hung on drones and released over ‘enemy’ territory. Retired military personnel from Colombia and Guatemala are recruited and paid princely compensation to fight for cartels. Recently wrote the news site specialized in security issues that Mexican cartels are sending fighters to the front in Ukraine to gain experience piloting drones.

The militarization of drug cartels is a growing challenge for local and federal authorities. Since 2022, at least 32 people have been killed by landmines in Michoacán and neighboring Jalisco, possibly many more. And while military personnel are stationed in many places, they are far from in control of the less hospitable areas of Michoacán.

That is also the experience of Carlos Roberto Gómez, leader of the explosive ordnance disposal unit of the Michoacán state police. “I was in the army for 27 years. But what I have experienced here in the past two years is many times more intense than what I experienced as a soldier,” says the cheerful Roberto Gómez.

On his phone he shows images of an ambush that he and his unit walked into after being called to defuse two roadside bombs. “We had to call in two helicopters to get out of here,” he says.

Almost every day, Roberto Gómez takes action to defuse explosives. Although the military has its own explosives unit, so many unexploded bombs are found in Michoacán that both services are busy. “I have been here for two years now. I think I have defused three thousand explosives in that period. And I still know the story of each explosive.”

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Roberto Gómez points to the tables at the back of the barracks. Homemade explosives of all shapes and sizes are on display. A sawn open car exhaust. A gas bomb. A paint can. They are each equipped with a detonation mechanism and filled with explosives. The police captain points to a steel pipe. “Look, here you see how simple it is. Nails are stuck to this tube with tape. Below is the explosive, with the detonator attached to it. You drop it from a drone, and you have an explosion,” he says.

According to Roberto Gómez, explosives are becoming more and more professional. He blames it on the influence of foreign ex-military personnel hired by cartels. “We are increasingly encountering bombs that can be detonated remotely. Then you have to be able to do more than just a hobby. You have to have military knowledge,” he says.

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Drone attacks are particularly common in states such as Michoacán, Jalisco and Guerrero, where cartel conflicts are most intense. There are also drone attacks elsewhere in Mexico. In October, the prosecutor’s office building in the border city of Tijuana was attacked with a drone carrying three explosives. The number of incidents increases every year. According to the Ministry of Defense, five attacks were reported in 2020, up from 260 in the first half of 2025.

Self-defense forces

One of the villages where gang violence has worsened in recent years is La Ruana, an hour’s drive from Apatzingán. The village’s mayor is Guadalupe Mora, an older man who is constantly flanked by six heavily armed men. “It’s like I’ve gained family,” laughs Mora, when asked about the presence of the bodyguards.

Mora has been under permanent surveillance since his brother Hipolitó Mora was shot dead three years ago. Hipolitó had already survived two attacks before that. He was a target of almost all criminal organizations in the region after he was killed in 2013 autodefensas had created, on the square of La Ruana.

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This autodefensas were citizen militias, often armed farmers, who were tired of the violence and extortion of criminal organizations. They took up arms and drove the cartels out of the streets in many places, including La Ruana. Lupe Mora fought alongside his brother. The autodefensas van La Ruana, however, have not been active for several years, and now it happens almost every day in the village, says Mora. “Yesterday afternoon, at four o’clock, there was a huge shooting. Last week the fighting lasted even ten hours. And when I call the barracks for support, there is no answer.”

According to Mora, it is only a matter of time before people in the village take up arms again. “We are completely alone. The government acts as if nothing is wrong. Military personnel stay in their barracks out of fear. And the local police are corrupt or do not have the weapons to take on explosives,” he says.

‘American army is welcome’

For Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, the militarization of the drug cartels in Mexico is a major problem. Since Donald Trump took office, the United States has exerted great pressure on its government to crack down on powerful criminal organizations. The Republican Party has been threatening military intervention in Mexico to tackle cartels for some time, a threat that is only being taken more seriously after the recent attacks on suspected drug boats near Venezuela and Colombia.

In June, Lupe Mora hit national TV shows with a call for international intervention. He spoke of the “highest level of alarm” in La Ruana and called on the United Nations to intervene. In the call, Mora criticized the “total absence of the state and federal government, which has not sent any troops or support.”

“Earlier this year, armed Colombians were arrested here. We have had drone attacks on houses. We are farmers. We live off the land. We are powerless to repel this violence,” he says. Mora points to the United States. “The president [Trump] has said he wants to send the army. If he wants to come and clean up the place, he is very welcome as far as I’m concerned.”

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