MONSTER TRUCKS ON THE ROAD, FROM GANGS IN MEXICO

MEXICO CITY -- Rhino trucks, narco tanks, Mad Mex-inismos? No one can
agree on what to call the armored monster vehicles that Mexican
criminal groups have been welding together in recent months, but this
much is clear -- they are building more of them.

Over the weekend, Mexican authorities found two more of these
makeshift road warriors in Tamaulipas, the same northern border state
where the first armored vehicle appeared in April after a battle
between the Gulf Cartel and the Zetas gang. In the latest case, the
Mexican Defense Department said, the armored trucks were found in a
metalworking shop in Camargo, which also held at least two other
partly modified monsters and 23 additional trucks.

The completed versions were bigger than what has been found before.
Built on three-axle truck beds, they had room for 20 armed men, one
official said. They were covered with inch-thick steel, which could
withstand 50-caliber fire, and each had been equipped with insulation.

Sanho Tree, a drug policy expert at the Institute for Policy Studies,
a Washington-based research group, said the vehicles reminded him of
the Monitor and the Merrimack, two American warships that fought the
first naval battle between ironclad ships during the Civil War.

"This is first-generation technology, like the Monitor and Merrimack,"
he said. And because the drug business is so Darwinian, he added, with
submarines replacing smuggling boats, and light, quiet aircraft
replacing heavy, loud ones, the trucks will quite likely mutate to
include "shielding for tires, their Achilles' heel, blast pads in the
flooring, up-armoring, et cetera."

The Mexican Army officials do not seem particularly intimidated. They
have criticized the machines for being difficult to maneuver, noting
that they are designed to frighten rivals.

But for most Mexicans, the mere sight of the seized narco-rhino
monsters in military photographs offers a stark reminder that in the
battle against crime here there is no place more dangerous than
Mexico's roads.