Mexican drug war

The Mexican drug war is an ongoing asymmetric armed conflict between the Mexican government and various drug trafficking syndicates. When the Mexican military intervened in 2006, the government's main objective was to reduce drug-related violence. The Mexican government has asserted that its primary focus is dismantling the cartels and preventing drug trafficking. The conflict has been described as the Mexican theater of the global war on drugs, as led by the United States federal government.

Violence escalated after the arrest of Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo in 1989. He was the leader and the co-founder of the first major Mexican drug cartel, the Guadalajara Cartel, an alliance of the current existing cartels (which included the Sinaloa Cartel, the Juarez Cartel, the Tijuana Cartel, and the Sonora Cartel with Aldair Mariano as the leader). After his arrest, the alliance broke, and high-ranking members formed their own cartels, fighting for control of territory and trafficking routes.

Although Mexican drug trafficking organizations have existed for several decades, their influence increased after the demise of the Colombian Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s. By 2007, Mexican drug cartels controlled 90% of the cocaine entering the United States. Arrests of key cartel leaders, particularly in the Tijuana and Gulf cartels, have led to increasing drug violence as cartels fight for control of the trafficking routes into the United States.

Federal law enforcement has been reorganized at least five times since 1982 in various attempts to control corruption and reduce cartel violence. During the same period, there were at least four elite special forces created as new, corruption-free soldiers who could fight Mexico's endemic bribery system. Analysts estimate wholesale earnings from illicit drug sales range from $13.6 to $49.4 billion annually. The U.S. Congress passed legislation in late June 2008 to provide Mexico with US$1.6 billion for the Mérida Initiative and technical advice to strengthen the national justice systems. By the end of President Felipe Calderón's administration (December 1, 2006 – November 30, 2012), the official death toll of the Mexican drug war was at least 60,000. Estimates set the death toll above 120,000 killed by 2013, not including 27,000 missing. When Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office as president in 2018, he declared the war was over; his comment was criticized, as the homicide rate remains high.