By: Isabelle Wang

In Mexico, drug dealing criminals have found more ways to get the drugs they want by using monster trucks. The trucks have battering rams, four-inch steel plates, and turrets for firing guns.

Mexico’s most feared drug dealing organizations such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel are using monster trucks to fight against the police and other drug dealing associations. The Mexican security forces call these trucks monstruos (monsters), but they are also called rinocerontes (rhinos) and narcotanqes (narco tanks). These trucks are normally camouflage green and are indistinguishable from real military vehicles. The interiors of the truck have front seats like a cockpit and metal seats where armed men can sit and use their rifles to shoot out of the vehicle’s windows.

In the state of Tamaulipas alone, more than 260 monster trucks were destroyed after being discovered by Mexican security. Arming a monster truck costs around two million pesos, roughly $117,000, and takes 60 to 70 days if there are 5 to 6 welders and mechanics. The price is more expensive if you add battering rams, bulletproof tires, and turrets. Arming a monster truck without authorization is illegal and can land you 15 years behind bars.

Many drug dealing associations arm “dump truck variants” for their monster trucks because the trucks are immune to almost anything except the anti-vehicle weapons which the Mexican armed forces own. Since the discovery of monster trucks, some of the Mexican armed forces now carry shoulder-fired rocket launchers capable of the destruction of monster trucks.

The trucks became prominent in 2020 when a video on social media showed Mr. Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes, the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and one of the most wanted men in the U.S. and Mexico, parading his army, which had a number of monster trucks, on the border of the Mexican states, Michoacán and Guanajuato.