Mexico: bleeding to death in the war on drugs

The shootout left four people dead; but that was just the beginning. As dust began to settle on a ranch in north-eastern Mexico, thought to have been owned by one of the world's most powerful drug cartels, the battle-hardened Marines stumbled upon their first decomposing corpse. Minutes later, they found a second; then a third. By the time troops had finished searching the remote property, roughly 90 miles from the US border, a total of 72 contorted bodies had been laid out in rows, beneath the summer sunshine. The discovery on Tuesday afternoon marks a new low in a brutal conflict that has taken the lives of an estimated 28,000 Mexicans in the three-and-a-half years since the country's President, Felipe Calderon, declared "war" on the nation's wealthy and extraordinarily well-armed drug cartels. Mass graves are becoming an increasingly common by-product of the wave of drug-related violence sweeping the country. In May, 55 bodies were pulled from abandoned mine near Taxco, just south of Mexico City; last month, 51 more were unearthed from a field next to a rubbish tip near the northern city of Monterey. They provide stark reminders of the growing cheapness of life in a conflict that is constantly plumbing new depths of barbarity. Over the weekend, four decapitated bodies, their genitals and index fingers cut off, were hung upside down from a bridge just outside the nation's capital. Two more were dumped nearby on Tuesday. Although most Mexicans support Mr Calderon for now, a growing minority believe that the drug war will be impossible to win. Earlier this month, former president Vicente Fox, a staunch supporter of the US crackdown on drugs, declared that recent events had won him over to the cause of legalisation...more