Mexican Drug War
On 11 December 2006, days after taking office, President Felipe Calderon deployed thousands of Mexican soldiers to his home state of Michoacan to confront drug-trafficking organizations, launching a militarized offensive that expanded nationwide and became known as the Mexican Drug War. Rather than suppressing the cartels, the offensive fragmented existing organizations and triggered ferocious turf wars, with the Sinaloa Cartel under Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman emerging as the dominant trafficking power through the 2000s and 2010s, contested from 2010 by the increasingly powerful Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) under Nemesio 'El Mencho' Oseguera. Guzman's capture in 2014, escape in 2015, recapture in 2016 and 2019 US conviction did not end the violence; a 2024 rupture within the Sinaloa Cartel, following the US arrest of Ismael 'El Mayo' Zambada, split the organization into warring factions and drove homicides in Sinaloa state to record levels into 2025-2026. Mexican government statistics recorded more than 460,000 homicides nationwide between December 2006 and the mid-2020s, with independent researchers and US Congressional Research Service estimates attributing a large share, on the order of 150,000-200,000 deaths, directly to organized-crime violence, alongside tens of thousands of forced disappearances. The conflict has drawn increasing US involvement, including the 2026 designation of several cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and direct US military strikes on trafficking targets, while remaining, as of mid-2026, an unresolved and ongoing internal conflict with no negotiated end in sight.
- Year: 2006 CE
- Category: Military
