Battlefield scenes from the Mexican drug war with no end in sight.
A Mexican soldier stands guard during the incineration of 5,835 lbs. (2,647 kg.) of marijuana, 77 lbs. (35 kg.) of cocaine, 2.2 lbs. (1 kg.) of methamphetamine, and 1,797 units of psychotropic pills, on June 22, 2012 at the army base in Monterrey, Mexico.Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP/GettyImages An arsenal belonging to drug lords is displayed after being confiscated by the General Attorney Office in Ciudad Juarez on April 23, 2007.OMAR TORRES/AFP/Getty Images A skull is seen at the entrance of the town of Arteaga on May 11, 2014. Arteaga is the village where drug trafficker Servando Gomez, aka "La Tuta," the leader of the Knights Templar cartel, is from.RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images Thousands of guns belonging to drug cartels and seized by authorities are destroyed by tank in Ciudad Juarez on February 16, 2012. At least 6,000 rifles and pistols were destroyed.Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images A narcotic policeman organizes 3.1 tons of cocaine hydrochloride destined for Mexico and seized in the port of Buenaventura, Valle del Cauca department, Colombia on November 9, 2005.MAURICIO DUENAS/AFP/Getty Images Bloodstained footsteps are seen at the entrance of a drug treatment center in Ciudad Juarez on September 3, 2009. A surge in drug-related violence around that time saw at least 40 people killed in the troubled northern border region.Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images A burned truck is pictured at the Comedero Colorado ranch, in the municipality of Tamazula on October 18, 2015. Dozens of bullets hit civilian cars and houses in the Mexican mountains during a Marine operation chasing fugitive drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman.RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images On May 23, 2015, a member of the state police stands by a bloodstain during a search for evidence inside the ranch along the Jalisco-Michoacan highway in Tanhuato, where cartel gunmen took cover during an intense firefight with police. Mexican federal forces killed at least 42 suspected cartel members — with only one police officer dead — during a three-hour gunfight in the ranch, marking one of the Mexican drug war's bloodiest battles.HECTOR GUERRERO/AFP/Getty Images A man walk past the bullet-riddled house used by alleged drug dealers during the May 27 shootout with members of the Mexican Federal Police in Culiacan on June 3, 2008.LUIS ACOSTA/AFP/Getty Images "Aparato," a member of a civilian self-defense group, poses for a photo with a LAW rocket launcher in Apatzingan on February 12, 2014, 12 days before the first anniversary of the uprising of these self-defense groups out to fight the drug cartels.ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images A member of the Mexican Navy stands before the bodies of two alleged drug traffickers who died in a shoot-out at the Costa Azul Hotel in the resort city of Acapulco on March 15, 2010. Thirty alleged hit men and a civilian died in the shootout.Pedro PARDO/AFP/Getty Images A seized weapon and cash horde belonging to cartel member Manuel Alquisires Garcia are presented to the press following his arrest on September 10, 2011 in Tamaulipas.YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images A US Border Patrol vehicle drives along the US-Mexico border fence as agents carry out special operations following the first fatal shooting of a US Border Patrol agent in more than a decade on July 29, 2009 near the rural town of Campo, California. The agent was killed on July 23 when he tracked a suspicious group of probably smugglers and traffickers in the remote hills north of the border in this region.David McNew/Getty Images Mexican soldiers walk next to the site of the incineration of 23.5 tons of cocaine in Manzanillo on November 28, 2007. In the biggest cocaine seizure in Mexico's history, authorities found the cocaine hidden inside containers that had been shipped from Colombia.ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images Mexican police stand near a skull discovered with other remains in what is thought to be a large grave in the desert of victims of recent drug violence on March 19, 2010 in the county of Juarez.Spencer Platt/Getty Images A member of a self-defense groups patrols the road between Tepalcatepec and Apatzingan, in the state of Michoacan on February 12, 2014.ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images A Mexican soldier stands guard as 6,613 lbs. (3,000 kg.) of seized marijuana and 4,400 lbs. (2,000 kg.) of cocaine are incinerated on November 5, 2009 in Ciudad Juarez.Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images One of the five corpses found near the border at Zaragoza international bridge, lies on the ground in Ciudad Juarez on May 28, 2010. Ciudad Juarez, with 1.3 million inhabitants, is the most violent city in Mexico with over 2,660 murders in 2009 from a war between drug traffickers, the government said.Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images View of cartel gun butts made of gold, diamonds, emeralds, and rubies to form the Mexican flag, in Culiacan on July 12, 2011.YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images A Mexican marine stands guard as 15,432 lbs. (7,000 kg.) of seized marijuana are incinerated on July 9, 2009, at the naval base in Guaymas.ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images Thousands of guns lie on the ground before their destruction in Ciudad Juarez on February 16, 2012.Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images Civilians observe a crime scene in which the corpse of a man with a notice attributing the crime to a drug cartel, lies in the Buena Vista neighborhood of Acapulco on November 10, 2011.Pedro PARDO/AFP/Getty Images Members of the Mexican Federal Police guard over 105 tons of seized marijuana on October 18, 2010 in the border town of Tijuana.FRANCISCO VEGA/AFP/Getty Images Mexican Army soldiers passing by are seen through the bullet-riddled windshield of a truck in Apatzingan on December 12, 2010. Gunmen from La Familia drug cartel blocked several roads in the surrounding area during a confrontation between drug cartels and Federal Police.ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP/Getty Images A gold-plated AK-47 rifle belonging to Ramiro Pozos Gonzalez, aka "El Molca, "the alleged leader of "The Resistance" drug cartel, is presented to the press in Mexico City on September 12, 2012.Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/GettyImages A group of women of Los Zetas drug cartel are presented to the press at the Mexican Navy headquarters in Mexico City on April 17, 2011. The women were arrested with Omar Estrada Luna. Estrada is accused of having planned and ordered the killing of 72 migrants in August 2010 and having ordered the slaughter of more than 145 people, found in mass graves in San Fernando.STR/AFP/Getty Images Confiscated weapons numbering more than 200, drugs, and uniforms belonging to Los Zetas are viewed by the press on June 9, 2011 in Mexico City.YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images The body of a woman hangs from a bridge in Monterrey on December 31, 2010. It's not at all uncommon for cartels to display the dead bodies of their victims in this way.Dario Leon/AFP/Getty Images An iguana hangs from the uniform of a Mexican soldier during the burning of a combined 17.5 tons of marijuana, heroin, cocaine, and methamphetamine at a military base in Monterrey on April 8, 2014.Julio Cesar Aguilar/AFP/Getty Images A quilt lies on the ground, in an alleged drug camp used to bury victims in "Cerro Gordo," where at least six more mass graves were found in Iguala on October 13, 2014.YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images In Mexico City on June 15, 2012, Mexican marines present to the press the alleged member of Los Zetas drug cartel Eric Jovan Lozano Diaz, aka "Cucho," and some money seized during his arrest.Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/GettyImages A member of the Mexican police investigating a double murder walks among the markers used to identify spent shell casings in Ciudad Juarez on March 25, 2010.Jesus Alcazar/AFP/Getty Images Forty tons of marijuana seized in Tijuana being burned by the Mexican Army at their training camp in El Aguaje de La Tuna on May 16, 2014. According to the Interior Ministry, this was the largest seizure of marijuana thus far for the current administration.ALONSO ROCHIN/AFP/Getty Images
33 Brutal Photos That Capture The Futility Of The Mexican Drug War View GalleryIt's all too indicative of the average knowledge of the Mexican drug war that few realize it's "only" been going on, as we now know it, since 2006. So many of us implicitly understand Mexico to be locked in a state of drug-fueled violence that we simply take for granted that the country is but a kind of permanent battlefield.
Things haven't always been this way, though. While just this past year Mexico had more than 17,000 homicides (making for a rate of 14 homicides per 100,000 people, among the highest in the world), in 2005, the homicide rate was 9.5 per 100,000.
But in 2006, everything changed.
On December 1, 2006, new President Felipe Calderón took office following one of the closest and most highly contested elections in Mexican history. Ten days later, perhaps feeling that he needed to announce his presence with authority and own his claim to the country's highest office, Calderón sanctioned Operation Michoacán.
This strike -- the first large-scale, joint police and military move by the federal government against the country's drug cartels -- sent approximately 7,000 officers to the southern state of Michoacán to arrest suspects and seize both weapons and drugs en masse. The Mexican drug war had begun.
Over the coming years, the federal government launched similar operations in a number of other beleaguered states, and the drug-related death toll rose from 2,477 in 2007 to 15,273 in 2010, according to government figures.
The country's overall homicide rate climbed even higher the following year before finally stopping its ascent in 2012, the last year of Calderón's presidency. Over the course of his term, the drug war left about 27,000 missing and 60,000 dead, with the country's overall homicide count reaching about 100,000.
While Mexico's homicide rate dropped from the end of Calderón's term until 2014, it rose again last year, and new government estimates place the total death toll of the Mexican drug war at a minimum of 80,000.
By the time 2016 is out -- marking the war's tenth anniversary -- government estimates show (in Spanish) that Mexico's homicide rate will rise again, above the number set by its 2015 resurgence.
After a decade of soldiers, guns, seizures, corpses, arrests, and little resolution, it's not hard to see why so many assume that Mexico will always be -- and has always been -- a battlefield.
See some of the most striking scenes from that battlefield above.
After learning about the Mexican drug war between the feared cartels and the government, check out the craziest narco Instagram photos of Mexico's most feared cartels. Then, have a look at 20 absolutely ridiculous facts about infamous drug kingpin Pablo Escobar.
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