MEXICO CITY — In one moment, a column of soldiers and military pickups creeps along a dirt road in western Mexico. In the next, a massive explosion sends debris and a body flying.
The ground where a soldier stood seconds earlier is a gaping hole, the aftermath of an improvised land mine planted by one of the region’s warring drug cartels.
That soldier was killed and four others were injured in the January explosion, which was captured in a grainy video that circulated on social media. Then last month, four more soldiers died and nine others were wounded when another explosive device detonated in the same region.
So far in March, three laborers have been killed and two others injured by yet another mine, leaving a truck split in half and human remains scattered across a dusty road.
The series of blasts in the Tierra Caliente — an area along the border of Jalisco and Michoacán states that has long been a hot zone for cartel warfare — mark an alarming escalation of violence in Mexico as criminal groups arm themselves with ever-more sophisticated and deadly weaponry. The drug war in Mexico has come to resemble actual warfare.
For years the cartels have been engaged in an arms race, building powerful arsenals that now include grenade launchers, drones rigged with explosives and tank-like vehicles known as “monsters” that are equipped with machine gun turrets and steel armor.
But the widespread use of improvised land mines is…
