Mexican Drug War

Mexico's drug prohibition war continues to claim victims at an astounding rate, and there are no signs that the violence will ease any time soon. In 2010 alone, the death toll from the violence was more than double the number of U.S. soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past seven years. This NPR broadcast explores whether the situation might improve in 2011.

Found tottering alone in the desert with their ribs visible and their heads hung low, horses play a backbreaking, unappreciated role in the multibillion-dollar drug smuggling industry created by drug prohibition. Mexican traffickers strap heavy bales of marijuana or other illegal drugs to the horses’ backs and march them north through mountain passes and across rough desert terrain. With little food and water, some collapse under their heavy loads. Others are turned loose when the contraband gets far enough into Arizona to be loaded into vehicles with more horsepower.

Four years and 50,000 troops into President Felipe Calderon's drug prohibition war, the fighting has exposed severe limitations in the Mexican army's ability to wage unconventional warfare, tarnished its proud reputation and left the U.S. pointedly criticizing the force as "virtually blind" on the ground. A series of secret diplomatic cables leaked recently revealed the United States' profound unease over Mexico's efforts, despite public assurances to the contrary, with stinging language criticizing the army as stymied by well-protected fugitive drug lords. U.S. diplomats and Mexican intelligence officials say the Mexican military and police distrust each other, refuse to share intelligence and resist operating together, squandering important potential gains.

Since the start of Mexico's drug prohibition war, 200 people wounded in Mexico have been treated at El Paso's county-run hospital at a cost of $4.7 million, according to the latest figures from the University Medical Center of El Paso. "Local taxpayers are footing the bill for the consequences of a conflict that is occurring on foreign soil," said Jim Valenti, UMC's chief executive officer, and Dr. Jose Manuel de la Rosa, founding dean of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center at El Paso Paul L. Foster School of Medicine.

A dozen unidentified gunmen set Erika Gandara’s home ablaze on and torched two cars parked outside before abducting her. She joined the police force in 2009, when there were 12 agents on the force with her. As rampant drug prohibition violence spiraled, Ms. Gandara began to lose her colleagues, one after the next.

Joseph Proctor told his girlfriend he was popping out to the convenience store in the quiet Mexican beach town where the couple had just moved, intending to start a new life. The next morning, the 32-year-old New York native was dead inside his crashed van on a road outside Acapulco. It is at least the third case this year in which soldiers, locked in a prohibitionist drug war with trafficking organizations, have been accused of killing innocent civilians and faking evidence in cover-ups. Such scandals are driving calls for civilian investigators to take over cases that are almost exclusively handled by military prosecutors and judges who rarely convict one of their own.

Amidst a deadly drug prohibition war in Juarez, Mexico, a group of college students have emerged from the violence to tell their city that they've had enough. The Juarez "students are quite heroic," said Bruce Bagley, who heads the Latin American affairs department at the University of Miami. "The fact that they are standing up to the military has highlighted the fact that the military in its conduct of the war on drugs in Mexico has actually fallen into numerous human rights violations.

A breeched oil pipeline caused a massive blast in the Mexican town of San Martin Texmelucan. Rivers of fire coursed through the streets, killing at least 27 people and damaging 115 houses.