Using intelligence gathered from employees either intimidated or paid off to leak transport routes, the well-connected groups can hijack a truck making a pit stop, empty out the cargo and dump the driver on an abandoned road.
In a series of hijackings late last year, bands of dozens of people, armed sometimes with machetes and rocks, sacked entire trainloads of corn and beans.
Martin commentary:
In the last few months, there have been two unrelated bank robberies in the small town where I live. Bank robberies? Do people still do those? The perpetrators were both caught within a few weeks (of course). Now the NYTimes reports that train robberies are on the rise in Mexico. Doesn’t it feel as if the desparation of the economic downturn is somehow spinning time backwards?
