Arturo Rodriguez heads up an elite tactical unit,
tasked with targeting the cartels.
Look at the name of them! Black Mamba!
So, this is a hardcore vehicle.
Bloody hell!
You see, this is not OK.
Look at this.
It's an impact from the AK-47. From a Kalashnikov.
That's right.
You can probably see on the top there, this is a... Is it a
Barrett Light Fifty? Yes, it's a .50 calibre barrel, .50 calibre.
.50 calibre bullet. So that's serious firepower.
Yes, very serious.
You are not dealing with 14-year-olds, are you?
You're dealing with trained gunmen, often.
We have dealt with both. Right. Yes.
We have that problem. Sometimes, they are just kids.
A kid with a gun, an AK-47, on a truck, receiving orders,
go and shoot, go and shoot those guys, go and shoot these guys.
I mean, you have to fight back.
Unfortunately, they die, but, I mean, there's no options.
They come and shoot you, you have to shoot back.
Obviously, we want to save your life.
The Mexican government has spent millions training
and equipping this special forces unit.
But in some ways, the cartels are better resourced.
They even run sophisticated intelligence
and surveillance operations.
OK. Show us this, what are these?
Last year, we found these boxes, which are like phone company boxes.
Right. Some of them with even the brand of the phone company. Mm-hm.
And you see they are just like regular phone box. Mm-hm.
But there's some cameras inside.
Look at that! Look! They were watching to us.
We remove all of them. Mm-hm.
What happened, just one month ago,
we find out they've got a new technology, they use these lamps.
It's a street light. Yes.
On the... Look at this! It's the street light here, look at that!
It's a bloody camera!
It's one way of enabling them to terrorise a community.
Oh, yes. Ingenious. Oh, yeah.
But when you see this sort of sophistication,
does that frighten you?
We take it seriously, for sure. But, I mean...
Let me show you one that we just... Yesterday.
We're coming into your bedroom, here? Yeah, you can come!
These rifles were captured yesterday. This is AR-15.
But it's 300, the calibre.
This does say on it, curiously, restricted for military,
government, law enforcement export use only.
And it's very quickly found its way into the hands of the bad guys.
It has a laser. A laser on it.
So, is the laser still operational? Yes. Can you switch it on? Yeah.
You see that?
This is a sophisticated and obviously
ludicrously deadly assault rifle.
You are up against weapons of war.
This is what a soldier, a special forces soldier,
would take into a tactical situation.
That's correct.
There's now more than 30,000 killings in Mexico a year.
It's thought around 70% of gun crime involves weapons brought
and smuggled from the United States.
Cartels and corruption drive violence here,
but so does US demand for drugs and the supply of American firearms.
This is the guys.. The times we have been involved with in a shooting
situation. 41 shoot-outs. Yes.
This is the guy we have arrested.
This is the guy that unfortunately they have died, shooting against us.
So that's the number of combat deaths, effectively. Yes. 83.
My goodness! And this is in a small period of time, eight months.
And this is just your unit, in this area. This is talking about 40 guys.
Of one state in Mexico. Yes.
So, we're heading out on patrol with them.
We've got to get our PPE on,
our body armour.
Gracias.
Bloody hell!
There's some serious hardware coming with us.
I think realistically this is all partly to show that
the Mexican state is here in force.
And it is also partly needed.
This is a dangerous place.
It's been more than a decade since the Mexican government
declared all-out war on the drug cartels.
In the chaos that's followed, it's thought up to 200,000 people
have died, mainly in battles between the cartel gangs.
The American government classifies this area of Mexico
as a category four conflict zone,
on a par with war-torn countries like Somalia or Yemen.
The United States is not just an observer to this situation.
America and Americans have helped to fuel the drugs trade.
As a country, they sell huge amounts of weapons that ends
up in the hands of drug gangs, that result in this sort of situation.
The violence has left much of the economy here shattered.
Foreign companies have left, factories have shut down.
The state government of Tamaulipas is desperate for investment.
In a heavily armed convoy, Victor took me to see a flagship project,
one he hopes will turn the entire region around.
OK. So, we've arrived.
I can take this off.
Why did you think we should come here?
Against all the odds, around 500 wind turbines are being
installed here, providing green energy to the region.
Victor believes this will become the largest wind farm
project in the whole of Latin America.
He hopes it will change everything, bringing power,
jobs and hope to a troubled area.
If we come back in ten years, what do you hope we will see?
There are few things more normal, I think,
than a wind turbine turning now.
It does look very peaceful, it's industry, it's progress,
it's the future.
Even with our heavily armed escort and armoured cars,
my bodyguards were worried about our safety.
After just 15 minutes, we had to leave
because of the threat from cartels.
It was a sign of just how far this area
is from anything like normality.