Late one Friday night, a truck carrying sound equipment for legendary cumbia band Los Angeles Azules was pulled over along the Mexico-Puebla highway. Police at the checkpoint were in fact bandits, and upon seeing the pricey cargo they drew their guns and drove off with the loot.
The driver and another passenger were left stranded by the side of the road, unharmed except for some hearing damage from a warning shot the robbers fired. The band publicized the May 9 incident on social media and it was raised a few days later at President Claudia Sheinbaum’s morning press briefing, where she called in the National Guard to investigate.
The episode caught widespread attention because of the band’s fame, but hundreds of similar incidents are taking place on Mexico’s highways every week — about one theft attempt every 50 minutes — turning the nation’s major commercial arteries into gauntlets. And unlike Los Angeles Azules, whose $420,000 in gear was eventually returned, most victims suffer the cost of stolen goods without hope for recovery or justice.
Robbery attempts jumped by more than a third in the first two months of 2025 from the previous year, according to Hector Romero, president of Circulo Logistico, an industry group that represents 25 cargo, private security and logistics companies. Cargo thefts topped 24,000 in 2024, up about 16%, data from transportation risk consultancy Overhaul show. That trails the US and Europe in total incidents. But in loss-ratio terms, which compare the number of thefts to economic activity, Mexico is the worst in the world.
Transporting cargo in Latin America’s second-largest economy has become “a very significant problem that has fundamentally broken our supply chains,” Romero said. In Brazil, the region’s largest economy, incident numbers aren’t growing nearly as fast as in Mexico, the data show.
