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Articles on Mexican drug wars

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In this July 2020 photo, a woman is comforted in her home during a wake for her son who was killed along with at least 26 others in an attack by drug cartels on a drug rehabilitation centre where he was being treated in Irapuato, Mexico. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Trump and Biden ignore how the war on drugs fuels violence in Latin America

The American public should understand that the United States has played a critical role in creating and fuelling violence in Latin America via its unsuccessful war on drugs.
More than 35,000 people were killed in Mexico in 2019, the deadliest year on record. Violence has spiked as a result of the government’s ongoing assault on drug cartels. Leonardo Emiliozzi Ph / Shutterstock

Inside Mexico’s war on drugs: Conversations with ‘el narco’

A researcher who fled crime-beset Mexico returns to interview the drug cartels behind so much of the violence, asking 33 ‘narcos’ everything about their lives, from birth to their latest murder.
Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador with the families of the 43 students who went missing in 2014 in Guerrero state. He has ordered a truth commission to investigate the unsolved disappearance. Reuters/Edgard Garrido

Mexico is bleeding. Can its new president stop the violence?

President López Obrador campaigned on some outside-the-box ideas to ‘pacify’ Mexico after 12 years of extreme violence. But so far his government has emphasized traditional law-and-order policies.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador acknowledges his supporters as he arrives to Mexico City’s main square, the Zócalo, on July 1, 2018. The leftist López Obrador won the election and is calling for reconciliation. (AP Photo/Anthony Vazquez)

Why Mexico’s historic elections may bring about big change

The election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico could bring about stable change in a country marked by violence and social polarization.
Photos of some of the 43 Mexican college students who disappeared in 2014 and are feared to have been massacred by gang members and police. Screen depictions of Mexico’s drug trade mostly ignore their human cost. Jorge Lopez/Reuters

Why glamorising narco culture, on screen and in Sydney’s pop-up shop, is wrong

Los Pollos Hermanos is a chicken shop run by a drug lord in the TV series Better Call Saul. A pop-up version opens in Sydney today - and both ignore the savage reality of Mexico’s drug wars.

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