This entry is a review of two recent books on Mexican Politics, Los Zetas, Inc . by Guadalupe Correa (University of Texas Press, 2017) and A Massacre in Mexico , by Anabel Hernandez (Verso, 2018). State Transformation and the Drug War In 2006, Mexican president Felipe Calderon deployed the Mexican military to attack organized crime in Mexico, which had become heavily militarized and capable of challenging the Mexican state’s monopoly on the use of force. The subsequent War on Drugs has raged in Mexico from 2006 to 2018. 250,000 people were killed in the course of this conflict and another 37,000 disappeared. The elections of 2018 were a major political transformation in Mexico. All of the major political parties – the PRI, the PAN and the PRD – suffered heavy losses while the party of Andres Manual Lopez Obrador (or AMLO) won 53% of the popular vote, supermajorities in both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate and legislative majorities in 26 ...
