Mexico

On 1 December 2006 Felipe Calderón took office as Mexico’s new president. Ten days later he metaphorically declared war on the drugs cartels and put the army at the centre of a major security clampdown. Calderón’s decision to militarise the fight on drugs was one of the most consequential, and some would say, the most catastrophic taken by any recent Mexican government. Put bluntly, he claimed that in the six years of his term in office he would improve citizen security and reduce the murder rate, and he failed. Each of the two subsequent presidents, Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012 and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in 2018, made the same promise and achieved the same terrible result: failure.

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