Mexico’s drug gangs

Why is Mexico in the front line?

Because of its long border with the world's main drugs consumer: the USA. Unlike Colombia's drug barons, Mexico's are traders rather than manufacturers - their power lies in access to the US drug market. And as the US-funded disruption of Colombia's drug trade has begun to bite - closing off air and sea trafficking routes from Central and Latin America - Mexico has become an extraordinary bottleneck for drugs traffic, boosting the power of the Mexican cartels. About 90 per cent of the 500-700 tonnes of cocaine consumed every year in America comes through Mexico. The trade, worth an estimated $30bn (or 4 per cent of Mexico's GDP), has enabled the cartels to dictate terms to their suppliers and expand into other realms of organised crime, such as money laundering, kidnapping and human trafficking.

Just how powerful are the cartels?

In much of Mexico, more powerful than the government itself. There are seven major ones, divided into two rival alliances: the Gulf-Tijuana cartel, based in the east, and 'The Federation', led by the Sinaloa cartel, in the west. Most gangs have their roots in mountainous northern Mexico and the drugs industry which first grew there to supply US consumers in the 1920s. With their staggering income from drug smuggling and money laundering, they don't hesitate to kill the politicians, judges, and journalists they can't bribe or intimidate. The cartels are also firmly fixed in the popular imagination; songs celebrating the gangs' exploits, known as narcocorridos, are wildly popular, even though many of the singers themselves have been gruesomely murdered.

What's being done to fight them?

Since 2006, Mexico's right-wing president, Felipe Calderon, has made the battle with the drug cartels his signature policy. He has despatched more than 30,000 soldiers and federal police officers into the nine states where the cartels are strongest, and repeatedly purged corrupt officials. Human rights activists complain of army brutality and local officials object to central interference, but the campaign is having an effect: cocaine prices in America rose 44 per cent between January and September last year, with shortages of the drug reported in 37 cities, while seizures on the US side of the border fell 20 per cent in the first half of 2007. But though Calderon has an approval rating of 60 per cent, many ordinary Mexicans fear that he has unleashed a multi-billion dollar drugs war that cannot be contained.

How bad is the violence?

"The level of brutality rivals that of death squads in Iraq," is the verdict of a report prepared for Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, whose border with Mexico abuts Nuevo Laredo, the scene of some of the worst fighting. As in Iraq, decapitation has become a terror