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Comment by LinuxBender | Hacker News Reader

The US currently have several spy planes over Mexico with cooperation from the Mexican government. Information is being relayed to the Mexican military and cartels are being neutralized as we speak. There just isn't much news about this at the moment. The US / Mexican military and law enforcement are all currently working together in both training exercises and cartel take-downs. The only thing missing is US military boots on the ground. My only known-unknown is how long this will take given the large numbers of cartel members that have splintered off from their original groups.

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That has been the case for decades. And they also have boots on the ground. How else do they arrest the head of the cartels and fly them to the US all these years ?

I don’t see your point.

That has been the case for decades.

False. The US just deployed spy planes to Mexico in the last couple of months after approval by Mexico. Doing so without their permission would have been an act of war.

In 1992 the CIA was flying planes over Medellin, and the intel (along with DEA boots on the ground) eventually helped with taking down Escobar.

A simple google search can show articles from the era.

Medellin is Colombia, not Mexico.

Also, the Colombian Cartels are a different set of organizations that have different origins from the Mexican Cartels - the former being a side effect of the Colombian Civil War and the latter being a side effect of the 1990s Peso Crisis and the mass layoffs in the Mexican Army and Petrochemicals industry

Read or watch "100 Years of Solitude" by Gabriel García Márquez. The fissures of the 1899-1903 Colombian Civil War (4-10% of Colombians died) were never resolved and it morphed into "La Violencia" which then morphed into the ongoing Colombian conflict.

You need money to buy weapons, so Colombian insurgent groups (right and left leaning) entered the drug trade to arm themselves - especially after the USSR reduced funding in the 70s-80s to concentrate on Afghanistan.

You see the same dynamics in Afghanistan, Syria, and Myanmar.

The point I was replying to was that deployment of spy planes against cartels was something that happened first time in February of 2025. The parent claimed that this has never happened before because it would have been considered an act of war.

This is not the case. The US intelligence has been deploying forces in Latin America against cartels for long long time.

The US had the permission of Colombia's government at the time because the US was already there helping with the Colombian Conflict. It was part of SOUTHCOM [0].

Mexico withheld permission for American military and intelligence deployments from 1990 to 2025 (DEA and other law enforcement was allowed), but they changed recently.

> The parent claimed that this has never happened before because it would have been considered an act of war.

Because it has never happened before in Mexico. It has been political suicide to even consider allowing foreign troops in Mexico because of the memory of the French Occupation.

You cannot treat "Latin America" as a monolith. Each country has a different sociopolitical background and history.

[0] - https://www.southcom.mil/About/History/SOUTHCOMs-60th-Annive...

Come on these are just semantics. There are literally photos of Americans in unmarked uniforms at the arrest of Guzman. You can slap the DEA logo to anyone and carry on your mil operation. I understand that no country wants the US military getting involved, so DEA is the best PR formula. Solves the problem and your people do not revolt.

But let's not fool ourselves. These are American operations taking place in Mexican soil (with the cooperation of the Mexican forces of course, it was not an attack against Mexico).

Maybe you should admit you confused mexico and Colombia. The difference is not just a semantics. They are different countries.

No? I just mentioned the earliest case of US vs cartels I am aware of. I could have used any of the Mexican drug lord cases available (and they are many).

All including dea with intel and actual boots in Mexico.

The semantics comment was on the point that this is not technically the US military. Sure it is not the military it just has access to its personel and equipment.

> Sure it is not the military it just has access to its personel and equipment.

It does not have access to the same equipment or (more critically) personel - especially in intelligence, as intelligence ops were not allowed either until the Sheinbaum admin.

I was referring to "all these years" as in happening all the time, not that it has never occurred. The US has always requested permission to enter the Mexican air space.

The CIA operated as a rogue organization for many decades and that has been curtailed in the last couple of decades. As a side note I am still of the opinion that is who actually created bitcoin and what replaced the drug money which I am in support of as there are less lives lost and they just get the desperate people. That should significantly reduce their dependency on South America as a source of income but now I am delving into whacky-ping-pong-ding-dong conspiracy theories.

It seems you think the cartel and the government are separate. They are actually one, mexico is a narco state.

I love mexico btw

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