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 on 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. Analysts estimate wholesale earnings from illicit drug sales range from $13.6 to $49.4 billion annually.

Although Mexican drug trafficking organizations have existed for decades, their power increased after the demise of the Colombian Cali and Medellín cartels in the 1990s, and the fragmentation of the Guadalajara Cartel in the late 1980s. The conflict formally began with President Felipe Calderón (2006–2012) launching Operation Michoacán in 2006, which deployed tens of thousands of federal troops and police in a militarized campaign against the cartels initially targeted in Michoacán, Ciudad Juárez, Tijuana, and Tamaulipas. However, arrests and killings of cartel leaders caused cartels to splinter into smaller, more violent factions, escalating turf wars and contributing to rising homicide rates nationwide. By the end of Calderón's administration in 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 counting 27,000 missing.

Successive administrations have promised changes in strategy but have upheld the use of militarized tactics. Under President Enrique Peña Nieto (2012–2018), the government pledged to shift focus from high-profile arrests to de-escalation and reducing violence, but setbacks such as the prison escape of cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping drew international condemnation. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (2018–2024) pledged to address the social roots of crime through poverty reduction and youth programs, and declared that the war was over; however the statement was criticized, as security policy continued to rely on the newly created National Guard, that has gradually replaced the Mexican Army in policing roles. This strategy has continued under President Claudia Sheinbaum (2024-present).

Since the beginning of the conflict, law enforcement in Mexico has been criticized for corruption, collusion with cartels, and impunity. Federal law enforcement has been reorganized at least five times since 1982. During this period, there have been at least four elite special forces created as new, corruption-free soldiers who could fight Mexico's endemic bribery system. The militarization of Mexican society has drawn criticism for human rights abuses, such as extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, targeting of journalists, and torture.

Due to its location, Mexico has long been used as a staging and transshipment point for narcotics and contraband between Latin America and U.S. markets. Mexican bootleggers supplied alcohol to American gangsters throughout Prohibition in the United States, and the onset of the illegal drug trade with the U.S. began when Prohibition came to an end in 1933. Near the end of the 1960s, Mexicans started to smuggle drugs on a major scale.

In 1940, under president Lázaro Cárdenas and the impulsion of Mexican psychiatrist Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra, Mexico legalized all drugs, in an early attempt to prevent the development of illegal drug trafficking organizations. The law was in effect for about 5 months when the Mexican government repealed it, allegedly under the increasing economic and political pressure from the U.S.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Mexico participated in a series of United States–backed anti-narcotics initiatives, including Operation Intercept and Operation Condor. These operations were formally justified on the grounds of combating the cultivation of opium poppies and marijuana in Mexico's so-called "Golden Triangle" region, an area encompassing parts of the states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua.

As part of the campaign, the Mexican government deployed about 10,000 soldiers and police. The operation resulted in mass arrests, torture, and imprisonment of peasants who were often accused of aiding leftist insurgency groups, but no major traffickers were captured. Contemporary assessments deemed the initiatives a failure, citing their inability to curb narcotics production, enabling military corruption, and their record of human rights abuses in rural areas.