Armies from 19 countries carry out Natural Disaster drill in Santa Lucía

César Arellano García

Sent

La Jornada newspaper
Tuesday, July 22, 2025, p. 11

Santa Lucía, Méx., The number one military base of Santa Lucía, located next to the Felipe Ángeles International Airport (AIFA), represents for Mexico an avant -garde infrastructure and in the same time a geographical link of great logistics and operational relevance, since its strategic location facilitates the rapid and effective deployment of troops, equipment and humanitarian aid both at national and internationally reaction and optimizes logistics capacities, which translates into security, trust and certainty for the benefit of society, said Francisco Jesús Leana Ojeda, commander of the Mexican Army and president of the American Armies Conference (CEA).

The military command inaugurated the exercise of multinational humanitarian aid Operation Péekáamba, which brings together armies from 19 countries of the continent. The activity consists in coordinating a drill to natural disasters.

Operation Péekáamba, whose name in the Mayan language means earthquake, has been planned and designed with the purpose of strengthening collective abilities against natural disasters and humanitarian emergencies.

The exercise, which will take place from July 20 to 26, simulates a scenario based on the effects of a tremor of magnitude 8.1.

176 soldiers from the different countries and organizations of the CEA collaborate, including Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, El Salvador, the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Venezuela, Bolivia, Argentina, to name a few.

Simultaneous activities in 13 scenarios

The Mexican army commander said they participate in the activation of 13 simultaneous and progressive scenarios applying help to the civilian population to a disaster.

In the case of the Mexican Army, the Mexican Air Force and the National Guard, the DN-IIIE Plan is already implemented and the efforts of the members of the American Army Conference in humanitarian tasks are added.

The materialization of this exercise confirms that the help to the population not only represents an internal mission in each country, but a great laudable and shared.

He added that this exercise is a key example of how the integrated effort goes beyond the language, the uniform and the flag that represents us. It is mutual understanding and reciprocity, it is standardization of protocols, it is a joint response capacity but above all, good will, the above puts tangible and durable benefits for our armies among which the exchange of joint work procedures, application of methods for the solution of common tactical or logistics problems, exchange of experiences and lessons learned in real and complex scenarios, as well as the use of technological methods that increase the precision efficiency and safety of our actions.