Sinaloa Cartel, CJNG and Los Zetas empower Colombian criminals in exchange for cocaine

The Sinaloa Cartel, Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and remnants of the Zetas have empowered criminal groups in Colombia by increasing their capacity to fire with large-caliber rifles in exchange for cocaine shipments, increasing violence in the South American country.

A dozen police officials commented to the Reuters agency that Mexican cartel emissaries increasingly pay for drug shipments with weapons, in part, not to move large amounts of cash across borders.

That business has caused local cells to remain in bloody disputes over the control of drug trafficking and its routes. At the same time, the supplied arsenal puts security agents at risk and could further complicate the implementation of a 2016 peace agreement with the demobilized guerrilla of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

Most of the 1,478 heavy-caliber weapons that were seized between 2020 and 2021 were manufactured abroad and clandestinely imported by the same steps used to take out drug shipments, according to military and police sources.

One of the factors that significantly influences the operations that transnational crime groups based in Mexico have easy access to the U.S. arms market with traffickers who supply them. They have also established commercial relations with Colombian armed groups for decades to acquire cocaine.

They also exchange machine guns, assault rifles and semiautomatic weapons, but one of the recurrent ones is the Belgian-made FN Five-seven pistol, known as the police killer. It is a 5.7 caliber with the ability to penetrate bulletproof vests.

Information in development...