Joshua Seemu­n­gal

As much of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean con­tin­ue to ex­pe­ri­ence el­e­vat­ed lev­els of gun vi­o­lence linked to weapons brought in il­le­gal­ly from the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co says it is go­ing full steam ahead–backed by Trinidad and To­ba­go–with its US$10 bil­lion law­suit against sev­en US ma­jor gun man­u­fac­tur­ers and one gun whole­saler and dis­trib­u­tor.

T&T, Ba­hamas, An­tigua and Bar­bu­da, Be­lize, St Vin­cent and the Grenadines, and the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean Net­work for Hu­man Se­cu­ri­ty (SEHLAC) are al­so de­fen­dants in the suit filed in the US Court of Ap­peal.

The civ­il law­suit seeks com­pen­sa­tion for the costs that Mex­i­co and the oth­er de­fen­dants in­curred in their at­tempts to pre­vent gun vi­o­lence, as well as the funds al­lo­cat­ed to com­bat il­lic­it gun traf­fick­ing in­stead of send­ing those re­sources to health, ed­u­ca­tion, in­fra­struc­ture and oth­er po­ten­tial de­vel­op­ment projects.

Deputy Le­gal Ad­vis­er at the Sec­re­tari­at of For­eign Re­la­tions of Mex­i­co Miguel Reyes told the Sun­day Guardian in an in­ter­view dur­ing the re­gion­al crime sym­po­sium last week that he had a long and pro­duc­tive con­ver­sa­tion with Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day.

“And first of all, he shared some in­for­ma­tion that I was not aware of, the mag­ni­tude of the prob­lems here in Trinidad and To­ba­go. I was re­al­ly sur­prised about the lev­els of il­lic­it traf­fick­ing that you have ex­pe­ri­enced in the pre­vi­ous years and in­creased pret­ty much like Mex­i­co and the oth­er coun­tries of the re­gion. Sec­ond­ly, he was re­al­ly en­thu­si­as­tic about what Mex­i­co is do­ing and he de­clared that he is a nat­ur­al al­ly for Mex­i­co in this fight,” Reyes said.

“The nar­ra­tive on drugs ... it’s close­ly re­lat­ed to the traf­fick­ing of firearms. I mean you can see that crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions have a re­al­ly high lev­el of pow­er and that high lev­el of pow­er en­ables them to con­tin­ue their il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ties re­gard­ing drug traf­fick­ing. So there is a re­al­ly close re­la­tion­ship be­tween drug traf­fick­ing, drug vi­o­lence and per­haps un­doc­u­ment­ed im­mi­gra­tion be­cause peo­ple flee from vi­o­lence.”

Last Sep­tem­ber, a US judge dis­missed the ini­tial law­suit (Mex­i­co vs Smith & Wes­son Brands, Inc et al) filed in Boston in Au­gust 2021, but Mex­i­co ap­pealed the de­ci­sion last March in the first cir­cuit court.

An­oth­er mat­ter was filed by the Mex­i­can Gov­ern­ment in Ari­zona in Oc­to­ber 2022 –Mex­i­co vs Di­a­mond Back Shoot­ing Sports et al.

“The sup­port that we have from Trinidad, we are re­al­ly ho­n­oured to have that. Trinidad and To­ba­go and four oth­er coun­tries re­quest­ed from an Amer­i­can judge that the law­suit filed by Mex­i­co needs to move for­ward. And why does it need to move for­ward? Be­cause the il­lic­it traf­fick­ing of firearms does not on­ly af­fect Mex­i­co but the whole re­gion of Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean,” Reyes said

“So it was re­al­ly shock­ing and im­pres­sive be­cause the in­for­ma­tion that the Caribbean coun­tries sent to the Amer­i­can judge were sta­tis­tics on the im­pact of gun vi­o­lence in the re­gion. So we ex­pect that the judge or the pan­el of three judges that are go­ing to de­cide whether the case of Mex­i­co moves for­ward or not, be re­al­ly sen­si­tive to the sit­u­a­tion that oc­curs out­side US bor­ders.”

The Mex­i­can Gov­ern­ment’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive at the crime sym­po­sium said they were ex­pect­ing that the out­come of the ap­peal will be de­cid­ed by mid-2024.

Reyes said the law­suits are part of a re­al­ly much big­ger strat­e­gy to come.

Mex­i­co is re­quest­ing that the gun com­pa­nies im­ple­ment safe­ty mea­sures to their prod­ucts, he said. They fund pro­grammes, stud­ies, and aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies par­tic­u­lar­ly, in or­der to pre­vent gun traf­fick­ing and gun vi­o­lence. And Mex­i­co is al­so re­quest­ing that the in­dus­try self-reg­u­lates, self-dis­ci­plines and mon­i­tors.

“Sev­er­al prime min­is­ters would have men­tioned in this sym­po­sium that over the years Amer­i­ca tried to push mem­bers of the re­gion to fight in the glob­al war on drugs. And now they’re say­ing that it’s time to em­brace the fight against guns, the war on guns,” he said.

Reyes said ac­cord­ing to the Mex­i­can Gov­ern­ment’s in­tel­li­gence and re­search, the guns en­ter­ing their coun­try are com­ing from all over the Unit­ed States, but many of the guns were de­signed and pro­duced in Mass­a­chu­setts.

Their in­tel found that many traf­fick­ers were pur­chas­ing gun stores a few miles away from the Mex­i­can bor­der in Ari­zona, Cal­i­for­nia, Texas and New Mex­i­co and traf­fick­ing them across the bor­der in­to Mex­i­co.

"I could see that the weapons that reach the Caribbean re­gion come main­ly from the Gulf States of the Unit­ed States, as you have al­ready men­tioned, Flori­da, which is the nat­ur­al neigh­bour, the nat­ur­al bor­der with the Caribbean. In the case of Mex­i­co, as I just men­tioned, we have iden­ti­fied some weapons com­ing from Flori­da, but the main in­flux comes from the states that are much clos­er to Mex­i­co.

"I will give you an ex­am­ple. A per­son who goes to a store lo­cat­ed in the state of Ari­zona, which is bor­dered by the state of Sono­ra in Mex­i­co. He ar­rives on Mon­day and he pur­chas­es, for ex­am­ple, three AR-15-style weapons. Then the fol­low­ing day, he pur­chas­es two 50-cal­i­bre weapons that can shoot a he­li­copter down. And the fol­low­ing day he pur­chas­es per­haps 15 pis­tols and every­thing is paid in cash. And then he qui­et­ly puts them in con­cealed com­part­ments in their ve­hi­cles and then cross­es in­to Mex­i­co," Reyes said.

"But, of course, crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions al­ways get cre­ative ways in or­der to con­tin­ue their il­lic­it busi­ness­es. So we have iden­ti­fied, for ex­am­ple, not in our coun­try, but in the bor­der of the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, the weapons are be­ing traf­ficked with drones."

Reyes said while it was hard to know il­le­gal cost of guns from black mar­ket ac­tiv­i­ties, it is es­ti­mat­ed that the weapons are sold for three or four times the price traf­fick­ers paid for the guns in the US.