Mexico’s Raging Drug Wars: Year In Review 2009

drug war

Though drug trafficking flourished in Mexico throughout much of the 20th century, the ever-increasing brutal violence associated with the production and trafficking of illicit drugs had by 2009 sparked the dispersal of 45,000 Mexican soldiers and 5,000 policemen across the country and attracted worldwide attention as images of beheaded corpses were featured in the international media. From December 2006 (when Felipe Calderón succeeded Vicente Fox as president of Mexico) to October 2009, some 14,000 people in the country were executed by drug traffickers, and more than 3,000 of those deaths occurred during the first half of 2009 alone. These statistics underscored the enormity of the situation and the fact that the Mexican government was at war with a very powerful enemy.

  • Major Mexican drug cartels, 2009.
    Major Mexican drug cartels, 2009.
    Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
  • The bullet-riddled bodies of 13 men, who had been executed with their hands tied behind their backs, lie at the edge of a field in the drug-plagued Mexican state of Sinaloa in December 2008.
  • Forensic investigators inspect the body of a man who had been handcuffed to a fence and shot to death by drug hitmen outside a nightclub in Juárez in August 2009.
    Alejandro Bringas—Reuters/Landov
  • A Mexican marine sets afire bales of seized marijuana at a naval base in the port city of Guaymas in July 2009.
    Alfredo Estrella—AFP/Getty Images
  • With Mexican army soldiers standing guard, Eduardo Morquecho (centre), a U.S. citizen with suspected links to the Arellano Félix cartel, is displayed to the press along with drugs, guns, and equipment seized during his arrest in Tijuana in July 2009.
    Guillermo Arias/AP

The Wave of Violence

During the 20th century Mexico was a primary source of marijuana and heroin for the U.S. market, and since the 1980s the country had served as an important transit point for South American cocaine destined for the U.S. The marked escalation in drug-related violence in the 21st century could be partly attributed to the rise to power of younger cartel leaders, more prone to violence, who took the place of their bosses when vast numbers of them were arrested in a crackdown during the Fox administration (2000–06). Another factor was the dramatic increase since the late 1990s in the consumption of illegal drugs in Mexico; as domestic consumption grew, fights between drug cartels erupted over new territories. As part of their preparations for war against other cartels, many drug-trafficking organizations hired trained mercenaries. The Gulf cartel based in the border city of Matamoros, for example, recruited a group of former Mexican army commandos called the Zetas, who became known for their efficient use of violence. Other cartels recruited members of Central American street gangs, or maras, as well as former Guatemalan elite troops known as the Kaibiles.

Most of the recent killings resulted from confrontations between the cartels. Approximately 90% of those murdered were linked to the drug trade. The remainder were policemen and soldiers—some of them probably involved in drug trafficking—and a small number of civilians. One of the most egregious incidents took place in December 2009. Arturo Beltran Leyva, the “boss of bosses” whose family-led cartel had close links to the Zetas, was shot dead with four alleged associates by state security forces during a massive assault on a location in Cuernavaca. One elite soldier was also killed, and within hours of the soldier’s funeral, four members of his family were brutally murdered in their home in an apparent retaliation by the cartel.

The spike in violence between the cartels was one sign of the accelerating fragmentation of these organizations. The big cartels that appeared in the mid-1990s in Mexico—such as the Tijuana, Juárez, Sinaloa, and Gulf cartels—by 2009 did not exist in the same configuration. Splits occurred in all of them, with new groups emerging to challenge for control over the drug trade. This fragmentation along with the growth in the domestic market for illegal drugs led not only to more executions but also to the increasing brutality with which killings were carried out. The purpose of this cruelty was twofold: it was used to intimidate other cartels, and it created an image of extreme violence in the country that might lead to public pressure on the Mexican government to modify its antidrug strategy. Many bodies of those executed had been found with messages intended for other drug-trafficking organizations as well as for the Mexican authorities. The cartels also posted messages in public places accusing the government of having engaged in corruption or of having favoured one cartel over the others; they also were said to sponsor popular protests against the presence of the army in some parts of the country. In response, the Calderón administration argued that organized crime was waging a propaganda war in an effort to intimidate the government into backing down from its fight against drug trafficking.

The Government’s Dilemma

Over the past three years, criticism of the extreme violence and the government’s use of the military in combating drug trafficking increased. Some of Calderón’s critics suggested openly or implicitly that the government should return to the policy of tolerance of—or even complicity with—drug trafficking that was for the most part adhered to by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000. This argument was based on the fact that during those years there were lower levels of drug-related violence. It was tolerance, however, that allowed the cartels to grow to the point that they became a serious national security threat. This policy was possible in an authoritarian system in which the rule of law did not exist. A negotiation or even a simple indifference to the activities of drug traffickers would be impossible in a truly democratic system. Clearly, tolerance was not an option for the Calderón administration. Consequently, the Mexican government in the short term decided to combat drug trafficking with the few resources it had. Unfortunately, the Mexican state historically had very poor law-enforcement tools; institutions were weak, corruption was rampant, legal culture was virtually nonexistent, and human and material resources were insufficient. The Mexican government was forced to fight this war handicapped. It was precisely the weakness of the Mexican state that precipitated the high levels of violence seen during recent years. If the cost of tolerance is corruption and the aggravation of the problem, the cost of confrontation is violence.

Calderón’s Bet: Strengthening Institutions

Calderón made the fight against drug trafficking a priority of his government. Some argued that this was an easy way to secure domestic legitimacy, given his close and contested victory in the presidential elections of 2006. When he became president, however, drug traffickers controlled significant parts of the country, and there was a clear demand from the public for a harder stance against this phenomenon. Several polls confirmed popular support for Calderón’s efforts. In a poll conducted at the end of 2008, 72% of Mexicans considered the government’s attempts to combat drug trafficking to be adequate. Another poll taken in July 2009, after the country’s midterm elections, revealed that 51% of Mexicans believed that the government was going to win the war in the long run; only 31% thought that the drug traffickers would win. This high level of domestic support allowed Calderón to promote significant reforms of the police force and judicial system—reforms that were supported by all political parties. The proposed changes, which included the establishment of oral trials (rather than those conducted secretively through written briefs) and the strengthening of the federal police force in the hope that it could replace the army in the war on drug trafficking, promised to give the government more resources to fight organized crime.


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If the security reforms approved over the past three years are successful, the Mexican government may be able to control the pervasive effects of drug trafficking. The goal is to transform the problem of drug trafficking into a public security issue rather than a national security threat. The final result, however, is uncertain. The main obstacle that the Mexican government faces is corruption. If the government is unable to control corruption, the Mexican war on drugs will be lost, and the temptation to go back to the policy of tolerance—despite the fact that it will likely worsen the problem—will be tremendous. If that happens, at some point Mexico and the international community will have to think of alternatives “outside the box,” such as legalizing or decriminalizing some drugs. Although in August Mexico decriminalized small-scale drug possession, this move only suggested that the government considers it pointless to prosecute small-time users; it does not mean that the legalization of drugs is imminent—a still very distant scenario. Meanwhile, the only choice that the Mexican government has is to continue to fight drug trafficking and have faith that when the judicial and police-related reforms are put into place, they will be successful.

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