Mexico's drug war begins

Felipe Calderon, who took office on December 1, 2006 after a very close election, sent about 6,500 soldiers and police to Michoacan on December 11. Over the next years the federal government used the army across the country in a campaign against drug trafficking organizations. Instead of ending the trade, it fragmented the cartels, and killings rose sharply. Homicides increased from roughly 10,000 a year in 2007 to about 27,000 in 2011.¹³

Mexico had become the main route for cocaine to the United States after US pressure shut Caribbean routes and the Colombian cartels fell in the 1990s, and Mexican groups such as the Sinaloa cartel took over the business. Some scholars argue that during the decades of PRI rule, the state tolerated and regulated trafficking, and that this system broke down after the PRI lost power in 2000. Police forces were weak and corrupt. The US supported the effort through the Merida Initiative, which began in 2007.²³

The killings spread as cartels such as the Zetas, who split from the Gulf cartel in 2010, fought over territory and extorted migrants and businesses. In 2014, 43 students from Ayotzinapa disappeared in Guerrero. Mexico has recorded more than 300,000 homicides since 2006 and over 100,000 missing people. Calderon's successors tried other approaches, including a National Guard created in 2019. Fentanyl, supplied through Mexican labs, has made the issue central to US and Mexican relations.³⁴