MEXICO CITY – Army troops found an arms cache in Sinaloa state that contained more than 50 automatic rifles of different calibers, a grenade, a .50-caliber machine gun and a 66 mm grenade launcher, and arrested one person, the Mexican Defense Secretariat said.

The arms were found in El Dorado, a town within the city limits of Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa, along with 311 kilos of marijuana and 920 kilos of marijuana seed.

Two vehicles and other property were seized during the raid on the site, the secretariat said.

Among the weapons seized were 11 PTR91 rifles, seven AK-47 assault rifles and 11 AR-15 rifles, as well as a large quantity of ammunition of different calibers.

Soldiers found military uniforms and uniforms from different Sinaloa police agencies at the site.

The arms and other equipment “were used by organized crime to impersonate authorities in supposed operations or security missions, using cloned vehicles to surprise citizens and act with total impunity,” the secretariat said.

Sinaloa, located in northwestern Mexico, is the birthplace of many of Mexico’s drug lords.

The state is currently the scene of a bloody turf war between Joaquin “El Chapo” (Shorty) Guzman and the Beltran Leyva cartel, whose leaders broke off from his Sinaloa cartel.

The Sinaloa organization, sometimes referred to by officials as the Pacific cartel, is the oldest drug cartel in Mexico and Guzman, considered extremely violent, is one of the most-wanted criminals in Mexico and the United States, where the Drug Enforcement Administration has offered a reward of $5 million for him.

Mexico has been plagued in recent years by drug-related violence blamed on powerful cartels.

So far this year, according to a report in Thursday’s edition of the Mexico City daily El Universal, more than 1,000 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico.

The 1,000 figure was reached in just 34 days, much faster than last year, when it took 51 days, and 2008, when it took 113 days. EFE