The timeline of some of the most relevant events in the Mexican drug war is set out below.
[1] That changed on December 11, 2006, when the newly elected President Felipe Calderón sent 6,500 Mexican Army soldiers to the state of Michoacán to end drug violence there.
[1] As time passed, Calderón continued to escalate his anti-drug campaign, in which as of 2008 there were about 45,000 troops involved along with state and federal police forces.
[3] In December 2018, incoming President Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged to bring down gang-fueled violence and on January 30, 2019, he declared the end of the Mexican war on drugs.
[4] but homicides hit a record level in 2019 with 34,600 murders and continued to climb even during the coronavirus lockdown.