The drug war

Mexican smugglers had moved marijuana and heroin north for decades, often under arrangements with local authorities. In the 1990s, as US enforcement closed Caribbean routes, Mexican organisations took over much of the cocaine trade from Colombia, and the end of one-party rule in 2000 broke many of the old understandings between politicians and traffickers. Rival cartels such as Sinaloa, the Gulf cartel and its armed wing the Zetas fought for routes.^•

The war begins

Ten days after taking office, in December 2006, President Felipe Calderón sent thousands of troops into his home state of Michoacán, then across the country. The strategy of capturing or killing “kingpins” fragmented cartels into smaller, more predatory groups that expanded into kidnapping, extortion, fuel theft and human smuggling.^•

The toll

Homicides recorded by Mexico’s statistics agency INEGI rose from under 10,000 in 2007 to over 27,000 in 2011, and to a peak of nearly 37,000 in 2020; they remained above 33,000 in 2024. Over the whole period, the total runs into the hundreds of thousands, though not every killing is linked to organised crime and the share that is cannot be measured precisely.^•

Disappearances are perhaps the deepest wound. In March 2026 the federal government said its national registry held about 130,000 people still listed as disappeared or not located since 2006, after a review of the records disputed by families’ groups. In September 2014, 43 students from the Ayotzinapa teachers’ college in Guerrero were abducted in Iguala with the involvement of local police; despite years of investigations, only a few have been identified from remains, and the case remains a symbol of impunity.^•

Across the border

The drug war is binational. The demand is largely American; most guns seized at Mexican crime scenes and traced are bought in the United States; and since the late 2010s, fentanyl made with chemicals imported from Asia and trafficked by Mexican cartels has driven an overdose crisis in the US. Under the Mérida Initiative from 2008 Washington funded Mexican security forces, and in 2025 the US government designated several cartels as terrorist organisations, raising fears in Mexico of unilateral US military action.^•

Living with it

Violence is very uneven: some states, such as Guanajuato, Guerrero, Michoacán, Sinaloa and Chihuahua, and certain cities, suffer far more than others, and much of Mexico, including most tourist areas, goes about daily life normally. Journalists, local politicians and activists are among the most targeted; Mexico has for years been one of the most dangerous countries in the world for reporters. Groups of searching mothers, the madres buscadoras, comb the countryside for clandestine graves, sometimes threatened or killed themselves.^•

Why it matters today