Ioan Grillo: “In the United States, they kill children with assault rifles and the laws don’t change… Why would they care about Mexico?”

Strange times for the American continent, particularly for Mexico, the hinge between the Latin and Anglo worlds, a favorite punching bag for the world superpower, the United States, which sees in its southern neighbor the source of all its ills. Tariff threats and military intervention hints shape today’s bilateral relationship, built on the Manichean idea of a problematic south, an inexhaustible source of drugs and migrants, the great nightmare of the all-powerful Republican Party. Mexico defends itself as best it can, with restraint, attempting to shed light on the other side of the coin, the conflicts flowing from the north that barely interest Washington.

It is the foundational paradox: Donald Trump’s United States demands that Mexico resolve common problems—drugs, migrants—without considering its own responsibility. From these coordinates lies the work of Ioan Grillo, journalist, writer, globetrotter, who has spent the last 24 years documenting the dynamics of crime in North America, drug trafficking, violence, the logics, currents, and misunderstandings of criminal groups in this new century, the legs, in short, of a huge and vaporous economy, which knows no borders, interested solely in the market and profit.

Grillo (England, 1973) is currently resting in his hometown, near the coastal city of Brighton, while promoting the translation of one of the three books he has dedicated to the topic, Blood, Money, and Guns. How Cartels and Gangs Are Armed, published in Spanish by Trillas. The author speaks with Adolfo Kunjuk News via video call, just a few days after the U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the Mexican government’s lawsuit against a handful of gun manufacturers for their alleged responsibility in the wave of violence facing the country. “I don’t think it’s a failure,” he says, “because it has put the topic of control back on the table.”

Question. I remembered this morning the Fast and Furious operation, in which U.S. authorities allowed the shipment of guns to Mexico, supposedly to track trafficking networks… It was a disaster, but it only became a scandal when one of the guns was used in the murder of a Border Patrol agent in 2011. What hope is there that the U.S. will understand that part of the binational crisis is its fault?

Answer. I’ve always thought about this. I’ve been working here in Mexico and the U.S. for 25 years. Since 2004 and 2005, I was looking at the issue of guns, trafficking. I wondered, what can we do? And look… Even with the massacre at the Connecticut elementary school in 2012 [where 20 children were killed] they didn’t want to review the law… They’re killing American kids, and they don’t change the law; what will it matter to them about Mexico?

Later, I interviewed an arms trafficker from Ciudad Juárez, who explained to me very well how trafficking works. I realized that they are almost giving the guns to the cartels, as if they were easy fruit to grab from the tree.

It’s true that U.S. authorities now have more tools to act. There are two new laws that can help against trafficking: one is the federal firearms trafficking law from 2022, and the other is the designation of cartels as terrorists from the Trump administration. Will they use them? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be that difficult… With a few cases, they could have a huge impact. Because penalties have increased dramatically, even up to life imprisonment if there are deaths [due to gunfire from trafficked guns]. Mexico has room to pressure on this.

Q. In 2022, 15 million guns were sold in the U.S. Arizona and Texas were the origin of most, specifically 10 towns or counties. Why doesn’t the U.S. increase controls in these places?

A. The agency responsible for that is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Historically, the agency has dedicated relatively few agents to that. After all, in the U.S., guns are a legal trade… One of the places where trafficking is highest is Phoenix, Arizona, but the ATF only has 20 agents there for thousands of stores. To give you an idea, there are five times more gun stores in the U.S. than McDonald’s restaurants.

The cartels use four methods to acquire guns, the most common is using straw buyers [people with U.S. nationality who can buy as many guns as they want without any problem]. When they find them, there are often no punishments. For example, look at the case of ICE agent Jaime Zapata, murdered in Mexico in 2011 with a gun that came from the U.S. The straw buyer didn’t even go to jail. He was given probation. It’s not an issue that interests them because there are no penalties for those responsible. Now it could change, due to the designation of cartels as terrorist organizations.

The second method is known as the private sale loophole, a legal loophole that facilitates the sale of guns between individuals. When one buys a gun in the U.S., they must show identification and pass a background check, but there are exceptions, like sales between individuals. And at gun fairs, this happens; they sell new AR-15s under the pretext that they are for collecting. The trafficker from Juárez [whom I interviewed for the book] did this. One solution is to close that loophole, the sale between individuals. But millions of guns are sold this way, a method that also gets support from the National Rifle Association. They defend it because they oppose any reform.

Q. The AR-15 is the symbol of massive trafficking from the U.S. to Mexico, for 21 years, since the end of restrictions on the sale of automatic weapons in the U.S. Is there a solution or a way back?

A. The restriction ended in 2004. And the drug war, violence in Mexico has escalated, even before Felipe Calderón’s administration (2006-2012). During that time, execution metrics began to appear… I’m sure the end of the restriction contributes to this. But it’s not the only factor; it’s a process also influenced by political change, changes in cocaine routes, from the Florida connection to land routes through Mexico…

If you go back to the 80s and 70s in the U.S., the AR-15 wasn’t that popular. People had hunting rifles, pistols. But when the restriction ends, production increases vastly. Obama comes in and says, ‘Hey, I’m going to impose restrictions, and people buy a lot… I see it hard for them to prohibit the sale of assault weapons again. Trump is not going to do that.

Q. Estimates suggest that each year, 200,000 guns are trafficked from the U.S. to Mexico. Are the borders only for migrants and drugs?

A. The figure I often use is this: from 2007 to 2023, 227,000 guns seized in Mexico have been traced to U.S. factories. That’s a fact, hard data. Mexico and the media must pressure on this. The lawsuit Mexico filed against gun manufacturers was effective, even though it failed after four years. But it succeeded in bringing this issue into the media and discussions. And it needs to insist on it.

Q. You mentioned the story of Jorge, who leaves a construction job earning 6,000 pesos a month to earn 10,000 dollars per arms trip. How does he come to this?

A. I was researching the arms trafficking issue. I went to Juárez and made contact with the director of the state prison, and inquired about this topic. He told me he had a prisoner incarcerated for that. It was Jorge. He gave us access for the interview, and he was very open, sharing his entire story, every detail. On that same trip, we went to the gun fair in Mesquite, Texas. We filmed undercover there. Later, I went to Romania, where they manufacture AK-47s, and explored the story of the factory.

Q. What is this gun fair like?

A. It’s a town that hosts many gun fairs. At the fair, there are hundreds of tables. All types of weapons, AK-47, AR-15, antiques, new ones, a large quantity of guns. There are many people, gun enthusiasts, because there’s an impressive subculture there, people who love them, use them for sport, as symbols of freedom… Later, I went to a larger one, in Las Vegas, called Shot Show, which is not open to the public, only for wholesalers. By the way, the fair is very close to where a man shot more than 50 people at a music festival in 2017.