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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Hugs and bullets: the battle to pacify Mexico

Andrés Manuel López Obrador pledged to end the long-running “war on drugs” with “hugs not bullets” – but scant progress has been made. The Guardian’s reporters travelled across Mexico to witness the scale and nature of the crisis facing its leader

6 November 2019

  • Relatives of the disappeared form a human chain to comb a suspected clandestine burial ground in the Mexican town of Ensenada last month Photograph: Emilio Espejel/The Guardian

    ‘The disappeared’: searching for 40,000 missing victims of Mexico’s drug wars

  • Municipal police detain suspects of selling or carrying drugs in the northern part of Tijuana, Mexico. Photograph: Emilio Espejel/The Guardian

    Mexico's war with the drug cartels

5 November 2019

  • A statue of Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman is displayed at his chapel in Culiacán, Sinaloa. An arrest of El Chapo’s son erupted in cartel violence across the city.

    Mexico's president under pressure over 'hugs not bullets' cartel policy

  • Relatives touch the coffin and photo of police officer Pablo Sergio Reynel, one of a group of officers killed in the line of duty, during a memorial service at the public security department headquarters for Michoacan, in Morelia, Mexico, Tuesday, Oct. 15, 2019. More than 30 suspected cartel gunmen ambushed the police officers in the town of El Aguaje on Monday as they were traveling in a convoy to serve a warrant, killing 13 officers and wounding nine others. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte)

    Cowed and outgunned: why Mexico’s police 'don't stand a chance' against drug cartels

4 November 2019

  • Relatives of the 43 missing students march the day after of the fifth anniversary of their disappearance, in Iguala, 27 September 2019.

    Mexico in the drug war: 'A cemetery of bodies with no story, and stories with no body'

  • Police and emergency workers descend on a petrol station in Tijuana last month after a drive-by shooting left four men injured, one critically.

    Bloody Tijuana: a week in the life of Mexico's murderous border city

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