The timeline of some of the most relevant events in the Mexican drug war is set out below. Although violence between drug cartels had been occurring for three decades, the Mexican government held a generally passive stance regarding cartel violence through the 1980s and early 2000s.[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. This is regarded as the first major retaliation made against the cartel violence, and viewed as the starting point of the Mexican drug war between the government and the drug cartels.[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.[2] In 2017, after the capture of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and his extradition to the U.S., turf wars between Sinaloa and CJNG escalated as did the number of homicides in Mexico.[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.[3]