The Mystery of Mexico's Drug Wars

In a recent address to the Council on Foreign Relations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton framed the biggest problem currently facing Mexico in terms of another notorious narco-guerrilla meltdown: “It’s looking more and more like Colombia looked twenty years ago,” she said, “where the narco-traffickers control certain parts of the country.”

Hearing this, the Mexican government archly pointed out that the top US foreign policy official seemed not to know what she was talking about—and they gave proof: Today’s Mexico has no large slice of its territory controlled by a political insurgent force, the way Colombia crucially did in its era of travail. Mexico doesn’t even have a viable proclaimed guerrilla force aiming to topple the government. Instead, Mexico has labyrinthine drug gangs murderously fighting it out against each other—while they extort, intimidate, massacre, and conduct firefights with the government.  Indeed, Clinton’s statement was groping to characterize a modern mystery land, one for