The state of Sonora became a hotbed for cartel gun battles due to its location near the US–Mexico border.
HERMOSILLO, Mexico—The moment a pistol was pressed against the side of cattle rancher Aaron Cameron’s head two years ago, he knew that the business he and his family had worked so hard for was about to be taken away.
Dozens of cartel gunmen drove onto his property in armored vehicles, some mounted with .50-caliber machine guns. They took over the site for more than a year, until state police officers were able to clear them out. Other residents in the area were also targeted.
“Having guns pointed at my head just became normal out here after the cartels began to steal our properties and businesses,” Cameron told The Epoch Times in Spanish through a translator.
“It was not just cattle ranches but also mining and deer hunting tourism [that] came to a stop in this area. We were just trying to make a living.”
The Mexican state of Sonora became a hotbed for gun battles in the country’s violent drug war in recent years because of the state’s location on the southern U.S. border, according to Sonora state police officials.
For many ranchers like Cameron, the violence worsened over time as cartels began breaking off into factions to battle not only police, but also each other.
Just a 30-minute drive from Cameron’s ranch, along unpaved dirt roads, an abandoned home sat plastered with hundreds of bullet holes. Nearby sat burned-out vehicles left by warring cartels.
A Sonora state police officer pointed at a small pile of bullet casings scattered along the ground, including 7.62 mm rounds fired from AK-47 automatic rifles—the signature firearm of Sonoran cartels, according to the officers.
Although drug trafficking has always been a key business for the cartels operating in the region, the drug of choice has switched from marijuana and cocaine to fentanyl, an opiate 50 times more potent than heroin.
Fentanyl trafficking became a crisis in the United States in 2014, and deaths from fentanyl began to soar, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Intelligence Program. In about 2019, Mexico surpassed China as the primary source of U.S.-bound illegal fentanyl.
Accidental opioid overdose, mostly involving fentanyl, is now the leading cause of death for people aged 18 to 45 in the United States.
‘El Super Policia’ Turns the Tide
Loaded with an M4 carbine rifle to the right of the steering wheel of his armored police vehicle, Sonora Secretary of Public Security Víctor Hugo Enríquez García had a smile of satisfaction on his face as he drove into the small town of Altar.
“About two years ago, this area was under the control of the cartels,” Enríquez García told The Epoch Times. “When we [state police] took it back from them, the operation was not even that hard for us.”
