Lawless Mexico in the grip of ‘folk hero’ drug runners

Drug traffickers kidnap nine hostages and kill six of them at a lonely ranch. Soldiers chase after the gang through a desert of shrubs and heavy snow, killing all 14 and losing one of their own. This was Tuesday, in the ranching and railway town of Villa Ahumada: another 21 dead in Mexico's long-running drugs war.

Since he came to power in December 2006, President Felipe Calderon has sent some 25,000 troops to deal with the half million Mexicans estimated to be directly involved in the illegal drugs industry. It isn't working, and the rare successes simply show the scale of the challenge and the sophistication of the traffickers.

Last year was the bloodiest yet: the annual body count doubled to 5,600. When, late in the year, the authorities raided an ammunition store, they found half a million rounds and even anti-aircraft missiles.

Owning a gun is actually illegal in Mexico, but it isn't difficult to get hold of one. Some nine out of every ten weapons found in Mexico come across the US border from Texas, where you can find a gun dealer every 500 metres or so on the highways near the border fence.

Moving in the opposite direction, alongside the jalapeno peppers, is a lot of cocaine and, increasingly, methamphetamine, the fashionable and highly destructive disinhibitory drug commonly known as crystal meth.

Though Mexico has a growing but barely mentioned domestic drugs problem of its own - recent figures estimated that the number of addicts had almost doubled to 300,000 over the last