REYNOSA, Mexico — In a ratcheting-up of tactics in a long, bloody war, drug-cartel gunmen made seven especially brazen assaults on Mexican soldiers in one day this week, throwing up roadblocks near army garrisons and spraying checkpoints with automatic-weapons fire.
The apparently coordinated assaults raise the prospect that parts of Mexico could be descending into open warfare between the cartels and the government.
Drug bosses appeared to have little to show for Tuesday’s attacks near the Texas border except a body count for their own side: 18 attackers dead, while the military said its own casualties were limited to one soldier with a wounded toe.
But there have been more attacks since, and the battles have shown that gang henchmen are as well armed, if not as well trained, as the soldiers. Armored vehicles, explosive devices and grenade launchers were among the items the military seized.
The attacks are occurring as two cartels are engaged in a violent power struggle of their own. Experts on the drug war say drug lords are trying to get military patrols out of the way of the gangs’ increasingly bloody battle for trafficking routes in the northern border states of Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas.
The battles indicate that at present, cartels are no real match for Mexico’s army — even when soldiers can’t call reinforcements from nearby army bases. The cartels, however, do match Mexico’s military in firepower.
