IN MEXICO'S WAR ON DRUGS, BATTLE LINES ARE DRAWN IN CHALK

More than 16,500 people - criminals, police, children and innocent bystanders - have died in Mexico since the start of 2007, when Mexican President Felipe Calderón declared war on drugs. That‚’s more than twice the number of coalition military fatalities in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. The wave of killings, kidnappings and savage intimidation has left the general public terrorized and desensitized to the nonstop violence. Assassinations, mutilations and other terror tactics are part of daily life. Drugs have permeated every aspect of Mexican society, further diminishing dim socioeconomic conditions.

The conflict rages most fiercely along the 2,000-mile-long border with the United States, where cartels battle each other and authorities for control of smuggling routes into America. Mexican cartels dominate the wholesale illicit drug market in the United States, and with the economic downturn, America‚’s appetite for drugs has increased. The cartel lives on U.S. money and often executes with U.S. guns. In 2008, the United States enacted the Mérida Initiative to help combat drug trafficking, and President Obama vowed to stand by this initiative, pumping millions of dollars into this worsening war close to home.

The bloody bodies Mexicans see daily in the media and on the streets have desensitized residents to brutality. Furthermore, they have no faith in corrupt or ineffective police, instead turning to vigilantism.