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Although Mexico has been a producer and transit route for illegal drugs for generations, the country now finds itself in a pitched battle with powerful and well-financed drug cartels. Altogether, more than 28,000 people have been killed in the nearly four years since President Felipe Calderón began his offensive against the nation's drug organizations, with the gangs escalating fights over turf and dominance as the federal police and military try to stamp them out. Of those, over 2,000 were local, state or federal police officers, according to the Public Security Ministry. Top police commanders have been assassinated and grenades thrown, in one case into the crowd at an Independence Day celebration. The upsurge in drug-related violence is traced to the end of 2006 when the government launched a frontal assault on the cartels by deploying tens of thousands of soldiers and federal police to take them on. Mr. Calderon has successfully pushed the United States to acknowledge its own responsibility for the violence in Mexico since it is American drug consumers who fuel demand and American guns smuggled into Mexico that are used by the drug gangs. The violence has in some cases spilled over the border and become a source of mounting concern in states in the Southwest. And in June 2010 a Justice Department report described a "high and increasing" availability of methamphetamine mainly because of large-scale drug production in Mexico. In August 2010, with the pace of killings rising, Mr. Calderón set up series of high-level forums drawing Mexico's entire political establishment together, in an effort to show that the government was willing to engage its critics and listen to suggestions. In October, the government announced that it was preparing a plan to radically alter the nation's police forces, hoping not only to instill a trust the public has never had in them but also to choke off a critical source of manpower for organized crime. It would all but do away with the nation's 2,200 local police departments and place their duties under a "unified command." Desperate to highlight a success in the bloody, lingering struggle, the government staged an elaborate ceremony before incinerating 134 tons of marijuana, which officials described as the largest drug haul ever.
