The drug-cartels in Mexico mean business. Whether this is stringing up dead-bodies to quell opposition, or building a sophisticated radio network, they just do what they want.

Wired is reporting how the “Mexican military is trying to dismantle an extensive network of radio antennas built and operated by the notorious Zeta drug cartel.” They haven’t got very far though, as the equipment is easy to replace and the cartel found some “unwilling — and alarming — assistance by kidnapping and enslaving technicians to help build it.”

Wired explains:

At least 36 engineers and technicians have been kidnapped in the past four years, according to a report from Mexican news site Animal Politico . . . Worse, none of the engineers have been held for ransom — they’ve just disappeared. Among them include at least one IBM employee and several communications technicians from a firm owned by Mexico’s largest construction company. “The fact that skilled workers have been disappearing in these areas is no accident,” Felipe Gonzalez, head of Mexico’s Senate Security Committee, told the website.

For at least six years, Mexico’s cartels have been using a sophisticated radio network to handle some of their communications. The Zetas place radio antennas and signal relay stations in remote hard to reach areas, “connect them to solar panels, and then link the facilities to radio-receiving cellphones and Nextel devices.” The radio network acts as a shadow communication system for the cartels’ lower-level players and lookouts, and a tool to hijack military radios.

They are not talking about a little amateur radio network either. “One network spread across northeastern Mexico and dismantled last year included 167 radio antennas alone. As recently as September, Mexican marines found a 295-foot-high transmission tower in Veracruz state.” That is some serious equipment.

For engineers with this technical knowledge, working in Mexico is very risky. Take the story of Jose Antonio:

One engineer, named Jose Antonio, was kidnapped in January 2009 while talking on the phone with his girlfriend outside a mechanics shop. He worked for ICA Fluor Daniel, a construction company jointly owned by U.S.-based Fluor Corporation and ICA, Mexico’s largest construction firm. Antonio’s family contacted the authorities, but were instead visited by a man claiming to be an ICA employee along with two Zetas. “They said they were going to help us, and that our contact would be ICA’s security chief,” said the kidnapped engineer’s mother. But the group’s message was implicit: Don’t pursue this, or else. The cartel members were later arrested, but Antonio never returned.

Some have even argued that with the extensive weaponry – including rockets and tanks – whether the Zeta cartel should be continued to be called drug traffickers, or instead something more martial, such as a paramilitary criminal organization.  A paramilitary criminal organization that now has a military-grade communication system built with slave labor.

[Source: Wired]