In what is another record haul for law enforcement officials from a Latin American country, Mexico’s Navy men have seized a boat with an estimated two tonnes of cocaine, near Punta Maldonado.

The navy said in a statement that one of its planes spotted a suspicious boat about 87 nautical miles off the coast of Acapulco a day prior.

The small boat had two powerful outboard motors and was behaving suspiciously. The aircraft followed the vessel and was joined in the operation by four sea vessels and three aircrafts.

After running the boat aground, the navy personnel arrested one man who has been identified as an Ecuadorean national. The search of the motor boat resulted in the discovery of 75 packages of white powder, weighing approximately 1,860 kilograms.

Mexico has become the main transit destination for trafficking drugs to the United States. A bulk of the cocaine produced in the South American countries of Colombia, Bolivia and Peru are sent to Mexico which are then smuggled into the U.S.

According to U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration report issued in the summer of 2017, 93% to 94% of the cocaine produced in Colombia and shipped to the US in 2016 transited the Mexico/Central America corridor, which includes the eastern Pacific. Much of that traffic eventually makes landfall, and then it's "going pretty easily through Mexico and ... almost entirely crossing the land border" in the U.S., said Adam Isacson, senior associate for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America.

Movement of drugs from South America to the U.S. (Photo: U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration)

"Some of it may take a jump out into the eastern Pacific and go up the coast of California in a panga boat (what was used above) or something," Isacson, "but ... this is almost all overland."

Mexico is riddled with drug gangs who control huge territories. Costa Rican officials have not only said Mexican cartels are recruiting and training local criminal groups, but also that there is no beach in the country smugglers haven't been able to use as a stopover point.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Aug 14, 2018 05:55 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).