
Colombian soldiers fought guerrillas. Now they're fighting for Mexican cartels
MEXICO CITY — Dangerous new hired guns have arrived on the battlefield of Mexico's cartel wars: Colombian mercenaries.
Former combatants in Colombia's long-standing internal conflict are increasingly being lured to Mexico by criminal groups to train hitmen, build bombs and fight bloody turf battles.
Eleven Colombians were arrested in Michoacán state last week in connection to a roadside bomb attack that killed eight members of Mexico's National Guard. Colombia's foreign ministry said all of the detained men had once been soldiers.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro said on X that a cartel known as Los Reyes had 'hired the Colombian mercenaries to confront the Mexican state.'
The phenomenon highlights the growing intensity of Mexico's cartel warfare as well as the expanding role of Colombian combatants in conflicts globally. Recruited via private companies and even via TikTok, Colombians have fought in Sudan, Yemen and Ukraine.
More than 300 Colombian fighters have died defending Ukraine from Russian attacks, Colombian officials say.
Haitian authorities allege 26 Colombian mercenaries participated in the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise. Colombians also were implicated in the 2023 killing of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
Many of the fighters are former military personnel with meager or no pensions and little training for any activity other than war.
'You have this pool of human resources that is poorly compensated and not utilized to their full potential,' said Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst with the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit think tank. 'They're being swept up with these attractive offers, both by states, by defense companies and also by criminal groups.'
The soldiers are in demand because they have real-life experience battling narcos and guerrillas in their home country. Colombia's army is the largest and most professional in Latin America, the recipient of billions dollars in aid from the United States.
Compared with American or European security contractors, Colombian fighters are cheap, Dickinson said: 'They're the ideal recruit.'
Many Colombians say they were tricked into working with the cartels.
Freddy, a 46-year-old who did not give his last name for fear of reprisals from a cartel, left the Colombian military at age 32 after more than a decade of intense combat fighting leftist guerrillas. He earned about $300 a month working for a private security firm in Colombia. When he heard about a supposed job with the French Foreign Legion offering $3,000 a month, he signed up, imaging a future guarding dignitaries or assisting in peacekeeping missions.
He thought he would be making a quick stopover in Mexico City when his contacts flew him there last year. But once he arrived, he and the nine other Colombians he had traveled with were driven to an isolated encampment in Jalisco state. Their phones and passports were confiscated, and they were told they were now part of a cartel.
Freddy said he was forced to participate in torture and killings. He said he would be killed if he did not oblige: 'It's either your life or the life of the person in front of you.'
Two other Colombian fighters recently active in Mexico described being lured there with the promise of good-paying jobs, according to video footage reviewed by The Times. Upon arrival, they claimed, they were ferried to cartel hot spots, handed guns and told to fight — and warned that their families would be harmed if they deserted.
'They deceived me,' said one man who said he was pledged $3,000 monthly as a security guard, but who instead was made to work for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel for roughly $300 a month.
He said he provided weapons training for about 100 cartel soldiers, many of whom were under 18 and there against their will. 'We were practically slaves,' he said. 'They tell you: 'Go fight, and whoever dies, dies.' They don't care about human life.'
The other man, a former Colombian police officer, said he worked as a medic alongside other international mercenaries from Venezuela and Guatemala. He said he had seen several Colombians die on the battlefield.
Mexican authorities have known for years that cartels are employing foreign fighters.
A Mexican military intelligence report from 2021 said the head of an armed cell working under a cartel leader known as El Abuelo — The Grandfather — employed 26 Colombian 'guerrilleros' to fight rivals from the Jalisco cartel.
The report, made public by the hacktivist group Guacamaya, said a drug lord from another group had hired 10 Colombians, paying them a weekly salary of around $600.
Derek Maltz, who stepped down last month as head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, said Colombian fighters have an obvious appeal. In addition to providing combat-seasoned muscle, the mercenaries operate in the role of player-coach, helping young cartel foot soldiers learn the art of war, Maltz said.
'They are wanted for their expertise with the use of IEDs — these guys are experts in these types of techniques. They are training all the gangster sicarios,' Maltz said, using the Spanish term for hitmen.
The group headed by El Abuelo — whose real name is Juan José Farías Álvarez — is based in the western state of Michoacán, which sprawls from heart of Mexico to the Pacific Coast. His gang was included on the Trump administration's list of cartels designated as foreign terrorist organizations earlier this year.
The rebranding enables U.S. law enforcement to pursue harsher penalties, and could open the door to drone strikes or other U.S. military action in Mexico, a possibility Trump has repeatedly floated.
Maltz said the U.S. has seen 'significant progress' from Mexico on security under Trump, but argued the presence of foreign fighters trained in bomb-making strengthens the case for U.S. intervention.
'If it comes down to it, the U.S. government should use all tools in the toolbox to neutralize them,' Maltz said. 'They need to feel pain like they've never felt before.'
The Jalisco cartel, one of the most powerful criminal groups in Mexico, was also included in Trump's terror designation and is known to have strong Colombian connections.
The Mexican military recently released photos that indicate that some Colombians working for the cartels have fought in wars the world over.
One showed camouflage fatigues worn by a Colombian fighter festooned with patches that include the flag of Ukraine. Another showed a military-style beret with a logo referring to a Jalisco commander nicknamed 'El Yogurt,' reputed to lead an armed cell that includes Colombians.
A narcocorrido ballad dedicated to El Yogurt boasts of his skills cooking methamphetamine ('In the kitchen, not a rival has been found…') and notes that he 'has a support team, his friends never leave him behind.'
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said last week that her country is in talks with Colombia about how to stop the flow of mercenaries.
'This is not the first time that people of this nationality have been arrested,' she said Thursday after the arrests of the 11 Colombians.
The issue is a sensitive one in Colombia, where the participation of Colombians in high-profile crimes has been the source of national shame. President Petro is pushing a bill that would require Colombia to sign on to a United Nations convention against the recruitment, financing and training of mercenaries.
Some veterans say it is discriminatory.
Ricardo Rodríguez, who worked as a security contractor in the United Arab Emirates after leaving the Colombian military, said in an interview that veterans should be able to take their skills elsewhere.
What former soldiers need, he said, is more support from the Colombian government.
'They're stuck. They don't have any hope of getting ahead,' he said, adding that the nation's veterans will continue to look elsewhere for work 'until the Colombian government gives them the opportunity to improve their lives.'
After eight months, Freddy escaped the cartel. Because he lacked identity documents, he traveled back to Colombia overland.
He's back home now, but is out of work and in debt. He is plagued by nightmares about what he saw — and did — in Mexico. To toughen up young fighters, he said, cartel leaders forced them to eat barbecued human flesh.
Still, he is looking again for opportunities to go abroad as a mercenary. Europe — and the salary he could make there — still calls to him.
'I don't have a career. I don't have any other skills,' he said. 'When you spend so many years at war, you don't have a vision of doing anything else. I like guns. I like security. This is what I was trained for.'
Linthicum reported from Mexico City and Hamilton from San Francisco. Times staff writer Patrick J. McDonnell in Mexico City contributed to this report.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Black America Web
5 minutes ago
- Black America Web
Donald Trump Stumbles On Air Force One Steps, Social Media Trolls Him With Old Man Jokes
Source: SAUL LOEB / Getty President Donald Trump's having a pretty stressful week. First, he had a very public spat with his former best friend, Elon Musk, on social media, and now he has fanned the flames of Los Angeles' immigration policy protests by deploying the National Guard. But if there's one thing he despises above all, weakness is probably up there, and nearly falling in public falls under that umbrella. It came after he faced a bunch of questions from the media about the Los Angeles uprising. He said that while there's no need to invoke the Insurrection Act currently, there are 'violent people,' a nd 'We are not going to let them get away with it.' He added, 'We are not going to let our country be torn apart like it was under Biden.' Ironically, the comment was made moments before his near tumble, as former President Joe Biden's steadiness on his feet was also a constant issue. Trump was in Hagerstown, Maryland, boarding Air Force One heading to Camp David, and while climbing the steps, he tripped and caught himself before falling over. Seconds later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio tripped while going up the steps, too. Biden's mental acuity was questioned due to his balance issues, brain fog, and being the eldest president ever at 82, and Trump used it against him, even nicknaming him sleepy Joe. 'Could we take a vote, please? Who wants to call him crooked Joe? Who wants to call him sleepy Joe? That's my problem, they work like the same,' Trump said at a National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) fundraising event in April. ' Joe had one ability that I didn't have. He could sit down on a beach and he could fall asleep. Who the hell could do that? I could never fall asleep under these circumstances, I would be very conscious of my body.' But now, the tables have turned, and 78-year-old Trump's mentions have been flooded with old jokes. See the reactions below. Donald Trump Stumbles On Air Force One Steps, Social Media Trolls Him With Old Man Jokes was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
Yahoo
5 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Marines arrive in LA under Trump orders as protests spread to other cities
By Brad Brooks, Jorge Garcia, Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Hundreds of U.S. Marines arrived in Los Angeles overnight and more were expected on Tuesday under orders from President Donald Trump, who has also activated 4,000 National Guard troops to quell protests despite objections from California Governor Gavin Newsom and other local leaders. The city has seen days of public outrage since the Trump administration launched a series of immigration raids on Friday, though local officials said the demonstrations on Monday were largely peaceful. About half of the roughly 700 Marines that Trump ordered to Los Angeles arrived on Monday night, and the remaining troops will enter the city on Tuesday, a U.S. official told Reuters. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass told KABC that more than 100 people had been arrested on Monday but that the majority of protesters were nonviolent. Over the weekend, protesters threw rocks and other objects at officers and vehicles and set several cars ablaze. Police responded by firing projectiles like pepper balls as well as flash bang grenades and tear gas. Trump has justified his decision to deploy active military troops to Los Angeles by describing the protests as a violent occupation of the city, a characterization that Newsom and Bass have said is grossly exaggerated. Newsom said that Trump's deployment of National Guard troops has only inflamed the situation and made it more difficult for local law enforcement to respond to the demonstrations. In a statement on Monday, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said the department had not been notified that any Marines were traveling to the city and that their possible arrival "presents a significant logistical and operational challenge" for police. Trump's decision to mobilize 700 Marines based in Southern California escalated his confrontation with Newsom, who filed a lawsuit on Monday asserting that Trump's deployment of Guard troops without the governor's consent was illegal. The Guard deployment was the first time in decades that a president activated the Guard absent a request from a sitting governor. While the Marines are only tasked with guarding federal property temporarily until the full contingent of 4,000 Guard troops arrives, the use of active military to respond to civil disturbances is extremely rare. "This isn't about public safety," Newsom wrote on X on Monday. "It's about stroking a dangerous President's ego." The top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Jack Reed, said he was "gravely troubled" by Trump's deployment of active-duty Marines. "Since our nation's founding, the American people have been perfectly clear: we do not want the military conducting law enforcement on U.S. soil," he said. In a post on Tuesday morning on Truth Social, Trump claimed Los Angeles would be "burning to the ground right now" if he had not deployed troops to the city. DEMONSTRATIONS AND ARRESTS The raids are part of Trump's sweeping immigration crackdown, which Democrats and immigrant advocates have said are indiscriminately breaking up families. U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pledged on Monday to carry out more operations to round up suspected immigration violators. Trump officials have branded the protests as lawless and blamed state and local Democrats for protecting undocumented immigrants with sanctuary cities. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered on Monday outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles where immigrants have been held, chanting "free them all" and waving Mexican and Central American flags. National Guard forces formed a human barricade to keep people out of the building, and late on Monday, police began dispersing the crowd using gas canisters and arrested some protesters. At dusk, officers had running confrontations with protesters who had scattered into the Little Tokyo section of the city. As people watched from apartment patios above street level and as tourists huddled inside hotels, a large contingent of LAPD and officers and sheriff's deputies fired several flash bangs that boomed through side streets along with tear gas. Protests spread to neighboring Orange County on Monday night after immigration raids there, with demonstrators gathering at the Santa Ana Federal building, according to local officials and news reports. Protests also sprang up in at least nine other U.S. cities on Monday, including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, according to local news reports. In Austin, Texas, police fired non-lethal munitions and detained several people as they clashed with a crowd of several hundred protesters.
Yahoo
9 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How viral images are shaping views of L.A.'s immigration showdown
As protesters and police officers clashed in the streets of Los Angeles, a parallel conflict raged on social media, as immigration advocates and President Donald Trump's allies raced to shape public opinion on the impacts of mass deportations on American life. The sprawling protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids were captured from all angles by cellphones and body cameras and streamed in real time, giving a visceral immediacy to a conflict that led to more than 50 arrests and orders from the Trump administration to deploy the National Guard. Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post. Amateur videographers and online creators shared some of the mayhem's most-talked-about videos and images, often devoid of context and aimed at different audiences. Clips showing officers firing less-lethal rounds at an Australian journalist or mounted police directing their horses to stride over a sitting man fueled outrage on one side, while those of self-driving Waymo cars on fire and protesters holding Mexican flags stoked the other. The protests have become the biggest spectacle yet of the months-long online war over deportations, as Trump allies work to convince Americans that the issue of undocumented immigration demands aggressive action. But immigrant families and advocates have also been winning attention, and seeking public support, through emotional clips of crying families grappling with removal orders, anti-ICE gatherings and young children in federal custody. The messaging war comes at a time of polarized public sentiment over Trump's immigration policies. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll in April found that roughly half the country believed Trump's deportations had gone too far, while the other half thought his actions were about right or hadn't gone far enough. 'To advance your side of the story, you need a piece of content that the algorithm likes. You need something that really grabs people's attention by the throat and doesn't let it go,' said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor at Northeastern University's Khoury College of Computer Sciences. 'If you're on the pro-ICE side of this, you need to find visual images of these protests that look really scary, look really dangerous because that's what's going to draw human attention,' she added. But if 'you don't think that ICE should be taking moms away from their families and kids, you're going to have a video that starts with a crying child's face.' A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal plans, said Trump's digital strategists were following the president's lead by spotlighting images of destruction while insisting that he would always intervene in moments of unrest. The White House, which has said the ICE deportations are necessary to solve a national crisis, on Sunday posted an Instagram photo of Trump and a warning that looters and rioters would be given 'no mercy.' 'We're obviously following the president's direction. He is driving the message through his posts and his comments to the press,' the official said. 'We are definitely playing offense here. We are once again boxing the Democrats into the corner of defending criminal illegal aliens.' The unrest and its online propagation also heightened activity around projects like People Over Papers, a crowdsourced map for tracking the locations of ICE officers. Reports flooded in as the clashes continued, said Celeste, a project organizer in L.A. who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used for fear of government retribution. 'I haven't slept all weekend,' she said. She added, however, that she worried violent imagery from the ground could hurt the protesters' cause. She said she planned to start making Spanish-language videos for her 51,000 TikTok followers, explaining to skeptics that the violence isn't reflective of the protests, which she sees as necessary to counter ICE's agenda. The L.A. unrest followed weeks of online skirmishes over deportations, some of which have been touched off by the White House's strategy to lean into policy fights with bold and aggressive messaging. The White House last month posted a video that it said showed an 'EPIC takedown of 5 illegal aliens' outside a home improvement store and included an ICE hotline to solicit more tips. The clip, recorded by ICE agents' cameras, was liked 68,000 times but also drew criticism from commenters, who called it 'disturbing' and said this 'isn't a reality show.' After a similar ICE raid on Saturday outside a Home Depot in Paramount, a predominantly Latino suburb of L.A., witnesses sent out alerts on social media, and protesters raced to the scene. Within hours, the Trump administration called for the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops to neutralize the unrest. On his Truth Social account a week earlier, Trump celebrated the Supreme Court clearing the way for the removal of some immigrants' legal protections by posting a photo of a jet-filled sky with the phrase, 'Let the Deportations Begin!' The White House has also posted stylized mug shots of unnamed immigrants it said were charged with heinous crimes. 'I love this version of the white house,' one commenter said, with a cry-laugh emoji. 'It feels like a movie every day with President Trump.' During the protests, the administration has worked with new-media figures and online influencers to promote its political points. Phil McGraw, the TV personality known as Dr. Phil who now runs the conservative media network Merit Street, posted an exclusive interview with border czar Tom Homan and embedded with ICE officers last week during L.A. raids, as the company's spokesperson first told CNN. Some top administration officials have worked to frame the protests in militaristic terms, with White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller on Saturday sharing a video of the protest and calling it 'an insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.' Others, like Vice President JD Vance, have treated it as a chance for dark jokes. When posters on X said Vance could do the 'funniest thing ever' by deporting Derek Guy, a prominent menswear commentator who discussed how his family had been undocumented after fleeing Vietnam, the vice president on Monday posted a brief clip of Jack Nicholson nodding with a sinister grin. Some far-right influencers urged their followers to identify people caught on camera during the civil unrest. In one X post with more than 29,000 likes, the account End Wokeness shared a video of masked figures throwing rocks at police from an overpass and said, 'These are insurrectionists trying to kill cops. Make them famous.' In more left-leaning online spaces, some posters watching from the sidelines offered advice on how protesters could best position their cause to the rest of the world. On the r/ICE_raids subreddit, some posters urged L.A. protesters to stop carrying non-American flags. It's 'adding ammo to ICE's justification,' one poster said, attaching a screenshot of a Homeland Security post showing masked protesters with Mexican flags. Many accounts, knowingly or unknowingly, shared images that warped the reality of what was happening on the ground. An X account with 388,000 followers called US Homeland Security News, which is not affiliated with DHS but paid for one of X's 'verified' blue check marks, posted a photo of bricks that it said had been ordered to be 'used by Democrat militants against ICE agents and staff!! It's Civil War!!' The photo actually originated on the website of a Malaysian construction-supply company. The post has nevertheless been viewed more than 800,000 times. On Sunday night, California Gov. Gavin Newsom's X account tried to combat some of the misinformation directly, saying a viral video post being passed around as evidence of the day's chaos was actually five years old. Even before the L.A. protests, the increased attention on ICE activity had driven a rush of online organizing and real-world information gathering, with some people opposed to mass deportations tracking the movements of ICE officers with plans to foil or disrupt raids. In one viral TikTok post last week, a Minneapolis protester marching in a crowd outside the site of a rumored ICE raid said he had learned of it from Reddit, where a photo had been posted of Homeland Security Investigations officers outside a Mexican restaurant. The local sheriff's office later told news crews that the operation was not an immigration-enforcement case and that no arrests had been made. Some online creators treated the L.A. clashes as a prized opportunity for viral content. On Reddit, accounts with names like LiveNews_24H posted 'crazy footage' compilations of the unrest and said it looked like a 'war zone.' On YouTube, Damon Heller, who comments on police helicopter footage and scanner calls under the name Smoke N' Scan, streamed the clashes on Sunday for nearly 12 hours. Jeremy Lee Quinn, a photographer who shares protest footage to his social media followers, posted to Instagram on Saturday a video of protesters cheering from a bridge as officers tried to extinguish a burning police vehicle. Quinn, who also documented Black Lives Matter marches and the U.S. Capitol riots, said viewers on the left and right treat viral videos like weapons in their arsenal. Far-left viewers might take away from the videos ideas for militant tactics to use in future protests, he said, while far-right viewers will promote the videos to suggest the other side craves more violent crime. Either way, his material gets seen - including through reposts by groups such as the LibsOfReddit subreddit, which shares screenshots mocking liberal views on undocumented immigrants and transgender people. 'You end up with a far-right ecosystem that thrives on these viral moments,' Quinn said. As short-form video and social media platforms increasingly become many Americans' news sources of choice, experts worry they could also amp up the fear and outrage engendered by polarizing events. The fragmentation of social media and the attention-chasing machinery of its recommendation algorithms helps ensure that 'there are a lot of people talking past each other,' said Northeastern's Edelson, not seeing one another's content or 'even aware of the facts that are relevant to the other side.' Darrell West, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said videos can play a uniquely forceful role in shaping people's reactions to current events because they 'encapsulate the emotion of the moment.' 'There's a heavy dose of misinformation,' he added. 'And, you know, people just end up getting angrier and angrier.' Related Content 'He's waging a war on us': As Trump escalates, Angelenos defend their city To save rhinos, conservationists are removing their horns Donald Trump and the art of the Oval Office confrontation