Using drones, tunnels and new routes, Mexico’s drug cartels seek to fend off the COVID’s economic fallout

CULIACAN, MEXICO: The coronavirus pandemic had an unprecedented impact on the global economy, thrusting economies into uncharted territory - and drug cartels were no different.

Government measures to contain the spread of the virus proved to be a serious impediment to the drug trade, interrupting the supply of chemicals used in the manufacturing of synthetic drugs such as fentanyl and methamphetamine - subsequently cutting off trafficking routes from international borders.

However, the cartel - being one of the world's most powerful drug trafficking groups - used a mix of ingenuity and business acumen to adapt to the rapidly changing circumstances in a pandemic-stricken world.

According to Scott Brown, Head of the Homeland Security Investigations Office in Arizona, “The cartels have long demonstrated their resiliency [...] they are going to continue to find new and innovative ways to try to move their product".

As reported by the New York Times, according to sources close to the Sinaloa Cartel and various security analysts, drug trafficking organisations have cut payrolls, and devised various loopholes to traffic drugs across the border and get them to consumers; relying on advanced tools such as drones and cryptocurrency, and creative uses of pre-existing approaches such as underground tunnels and sea routes.

Furthermore, officials in the United States have observed the cartel's emphasis towards the recruitment of impoverished and poverty-stricken Americans, in smuggling the drugs in their body cavities.

These changes have allowed Sinaloa Cartel and the region's other drug trafficking groups to rebound quickly, even as pandemic continues to ravage the global economy.

The adaptive measures from these trafficking groups has forced authorities to adjust their own tactics, yet the lack of resources (constricted by the pandemic) and the shift in attention towards pandemic-related duties has rendered any preventive measures by the authorities to be woefully limited.

According to Michael Donahue, Deputy Chief of Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration, even prior to the pandemic drugs cartels have remained "fluid", adding that "You can’t have one answer and live by it. It could change tomorrow".