The timeline of some of the most relevant events in the Mexican drug war is set out below. Although violence between drug cartels had been occurring for three decades, the Mexican government held a generally passive stance regarding cartel violence through the 1980s and early 2000s.
That changed on December 11, 2006, when the newly elected President Felipe Calderón sent 6,500 Mexican Army soldiers to the state of Michoacán to end drug violence there. This is regarded as the first major retaliation made against the cartel violence, and viewed as the starting point of the Mexican drug war between the government and the drug cartels. As time passed, Calderón continued to escalate his anti-drug campaign, in which as of 2008 there were about 45,000 troops involved along with state and federal police forces. In 2017, after the capture of Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán and his extradition to the U.S., turf wars between Sinaloa and CJNG escalated as did the number of homicides in Mexico.
In December 2018, newly incoming President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador pledged to bring down gang-fueled violence and on January 30, 2019, Obrador declared the end of the Mexican war on drugs. but homicides hit a record level in 2019 with 34,600 murders and continued to climb even during the coronavirus lockdown.
2006
November 25 – Popular singer Valentín Elizalde is ambushed and gunned down along with his manager (and best friend) Mario Mendoza Grajeda, and driver Reynaldo Ballesteros, in the border city of Reynosa, across the border from McAllen, Texas. December 1 – President Felipe Calderón assumes office. He also imposes a cap on salaries of high-ranking public servants and orders a raise on the salaries of the Federal Police and the Mexican Armed Forces. December 11 – Operation Michoacán is launched against the La Familia Michoacana cartel. A total of more than 60 Mexican soldiers and more than 100 police officers, and 500 cartel gunmen are killed in the operation.
2007
January 2 – Operation Baja California is launched. January 20 – Drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén is extradited to the USA. March 17 – Zhenli Ye Gon is relieved of US$213 million in Mexico City. May 14 – Jorge Altriste, head of operations for Mexico's elite police force in Tijuana, is murdered. December 2 – Popular singer Sergio Gómez is kidnapped and killed. December 8 – Gerardo García Pimentel, a crime reporter, is killed. December 29 – The entire police force in the town of Playas de Rosarito, Baja California, is disarmed under suspicions of collaborating with drug cartels. For 2007, the drug-related death toll reached 2,477.