Simon Waltzer
Intro to Speech Communication
11/28/2010
Mexican Drug Wars In the early part of 2003 I went to the state of Michoacán in Mexico to visit my grandparents, because it had been since 1994 since I was last there. It was an incredible experience for me to once again see my family who many of them I’ve never met before. Never did I know that this might have been the last time that I would go visit them, no not because I didn’t want to but because of the circumstances surrounding the area of where my parents lived in. The reality was that Mexican Drug Cartel who has existed since the 1980s had become stronger and dangerous since newly elected Mexican President Felipe Calderon was in assumed office in December of 2006. Calderon hailing from that very state of Michoacán ordered 6,500 federal troops to the state of Michoacán to end the drug violence there. Ever since then, the drug violence between drug cartels and the Mexican Government has escalated to the highest extent. Although drug violence has existed long before the war with cartels and the government began, it was generally not as bad during the 1990s and early 2000s. This action is regarded as the first major operation against organized crime, and is generally viewed as the starting point of the war between the government and the drug cartels. As time progressed, Calderón continued to escalate his anti-drug campaign, in which there are now about 45,000 troops involved in addition of state and federal police forces. In 2010 Calderón said that the cartels seek "to replace the government" and "are trying to impose a monopoly by force of arms, and are even trying to impose their own laws which are why they are trying to get rid of the Mexican government and why there is so much violence. On April 26, 2008, a major battle took place between members of the Tijuana and Sinaloa cartels in the city of