REPORTER:  David O'Shea

Over 150,000 people have descended on Mexico City to protest a seemingly endless wave of violence sweeping the country.

WOMAN (Translation): Unfortunately, day after day, there are assaults and robberies. There isn't one citizen who hasn't been attacked or had a family member attacked. We're assaulted every day. Mexico as a country cannot guarantee our security.

Since the government declared war on Mexico's powerful drug cartels, violence has been spiralling out of control. Well over 3,000 people have been killed this year alone. To make matters worse, you are more likely to be kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico than in any other country on earth. There are three to four a day, more than in Iraq or Afghanistan. And everyone I speak to tells me the police are involved.

MAN (Translation): We're overwhelmed by this cancer in society. And the authorities and the police are involved. The police organise kidnappings like that of my daughter Monica.

REPORTER (Translation): Are you sure that the police were involved?

MAN (Translation): I'm sure the authorities and the police kidnapped my daughter.

SECOND MAN (Translation): It's really shameful. It's one of the few countries where if you see a policeman, instead of feeling safe you feel threatened. Anywhere else you feel protected, but not in Mexico. We're ashamed and sad and that's why we're here today.

But one kidnap in particular has stirred the nation's fury and brought this huge crowd onto the streets.

YOUNG GIRL (Translation): The boy was kidnapped, and after the parents paid a lot of money, the criminals killed him. It was all very sad.

One month after he was kidnapped and only days after an enormous ransom was paid, Fernando's decomposed body was found in the boot of this car. News that more than one serving policeman was involved, and that the kidnap took place at a false police roadblock surprised no-one, Fernando's grieving father was invited to speak before the President and Security Council.

ALEJANDRO MARTI (Translation): Gentlemen, if you think we have set the bar too high, if you think it's impossible to achieve, if you can't do it, resign. But don't continue to hold public office. Stop receiving a salary for doing absolutely nothing. That is also corruption.

MAN (Translation): We have senators, federal and local legislators, who got where they are because of drug money and organised crime. That's why they hold public office. They're supposedly our representatives, but they are the biggest threat to the safety of Mexican citizens.

Mexico's President, Felipe Calderon, has staked his political future on tackling corruption and busting the drug cartels. He's deployed the federal police and 40,000 soldiers to fight them.

FELIPE CALDERON, MEXICO PRESIDENT (Translation): Why have there been more deaths of policemen, soldiers and marines than ever before? Perhaps the reason is that for the first time in a long time we are now really tackling crime seriously and we're not going to stop.

MICHAEL BRAUN, US DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION: What impresses me most about the guy that he is following through in ways that I have never seen before, he is taking them on like no other government in Mexico's history has ever done.

Special Agent Michael Braun is the US Drug Enforcement Administration's chief of operations. He played a pivotal role in the US effort to assist Columbia destroy their cartels and says President Calderon can do the same in Mexico.

MICHAEL BRAUN: If the President stays the course, if he has leadership that backs him up in law enforcement and military institutions, he will succeed. The government will succeed, and he and his administration will satisfy what the Mexicans want most - they want the cartels to be gone from their sovereign territory in Mexico.

This is the state of Sinaloa in Mexico's wild west, where the violence is at its worst and roadside executions are the order of the day. Two men have just been shot dead in broad daylight by gunmen riding a motorbike. Although it happened in a busy public space, witnesses will not say a thing - it's just too dangerous to talk.

JORGE CHABAT: If you don't fight the cartels you don't have a lot of violence, but you have a lot of corruption. If you do fight them frontally like the Calderon administration is doing right now, you have a lot of violence. The choice is not easy.

The death toll is also fuelled by a bloody turf war between the cartels. There have been mass killings, torture and decapitations. The violence has crippled the local economy. The only ones making money are the funeral parlours.

FUNERAL PARLOUR DIRECTOR (Translation): It affects us all, people with high, medium and low standards of living. We're all affected by this serious problem, which appears to have no end in sight.

So far, over 800 people have been killed in Sinaloa state this year. Most of them are gangsters, but police, soldiers and innocent people have also become victims.

REPORTER (Translation): Is this a normal day for journalists in Culiacan?

FIDEL (Translation): It's very calm for a Sunday.

REPORTER (Translation): Calm?

FIDEL (Translation): Our governor calls this calm.

REPORTER (Translation): But two deaths in two days doesn't seem very calm to me.

FIDEL (Translation): For us it is.

In the four days I spend here, in and around the state capital Culiacan, there are five executions.

FIDEL (Translation): Since 30 April it's been like a movie, from 30 April until now. There have been too many deaths.

This boy has just witnessed unimaginable horror. As he and his 21-year-old sister were driving out of a supermarket, two men stopped their car and shot her in the head.

BOY (Translation): But they opened the door. No, no! I want to go... I want to be with her. Let me go! Let me!

WOMAN (Translation): No my son, please.

WOMAN 2 (Translation): Listen, love. There's been an accident. Where are you, love? I'm on my way there.

As usual, no-one is saying a thing, but all the signs point to a cartel hit.

BOY (Translation): We have to go with her, because we can't leave her alone!

Miraculously, his sister survived. But a few months ago, just 200m from where the forensic team are now working, a 23-year-old man didn't survive. It would have been an execution just like any other, but this victim was no ordinary citizen. He was the son of this man - 'El Chapo', or 'Shorty' Guzman - long-term godfather of the Sinaloa cartel. A splinter group had forged an alliance with Guzman's enemies and the conflict deepened.

JORGE CHABAT: We will see it for some time until there is a new balance among the cartels, and there are new territories and a pact between the cartels.

While drug raids net some traffickers, the drug trade is still clearly thriving in Mexico. For as long as anyone can remember, the Sinaloa cartel has supplied the United States with marijuana and heroin. But when the Columbian cocaine cartels collapsed, Mexicans quickly filled the vacuum and with the money involved, they have become like private armies.

MICHAEL BRAUN: They have a highly sophisticated organisational structure. In fact, they have structured themselves identical to global terrorist organizations. They have cells broken into cells so that if we in law enforcement successfully take down two or three cells, we have absolutely no effect on the greater organisations. They also rejuvenate or regenerate so if you knock them off their heels, six months later you find it doesn't smell like or look like what it did six months earlier.

The pockmarks on Culiacan's buildings tell the story of a few recent battles. This one between rival narco groups, and this one, the narcos versus army and federal police, five of whom were killed.

WOMAN (Translation): I've never been in a war, but for me it was like World War III.

A woman told me about it but was too afraid to appear on camera. She said the gunfight lasted six hours.

WOMAN (Translation): Many children were attracted by the bullet cases. What are we giving to these kids? We didn’t realise the importance.....we have become so used to it. A bullet has become something normal.

Drug trafficking has always been an important part of life in Sinaloa. Its widely believed that at least 30% of the local economy is based on the narco trade. Not far from the government offices, there is an altar to a saint called Jesus Malverde, adopted by Sinaloa's narcos to protect their criminal enterprise. The souvenir sellers try to play it down.

SOUVENIR SELLER (Translation): A narco? No, he's not a narco. People simply come in to worship him. We don't ask why they come and make an offering. People just come and then go. We get rich and poor alike. All kinds. Straight and crooked. The sick and the healthy.

In the cemetery, these marble mausoleums are memorials to some of the biggest names in the Sinaloa drug business, and the phenomenal money earned from trafficking.

REPORTER (Translation): So this man died recently?

BUILDER (Translation): Yes, not long ago, just a few months.

With the death toll rising so quickly, the builders are kept very busy.

REPORTER (Translation): How much is one like that worth?

BUILDER (Translation): A lot.

REPORTER (Translation): A lot of dough?

BUILDER (Translation): About 3 million. All that's very expensive.

Being the governor of a state like Sinaloa at the moment is a complicated and dangerous business, but today Governor Jesus Padilla wants to give the impression that he has things under control.

JESUS PADILLA, GOVERNOR OF SINALOA (Translation): We are working every day to improve security. It is a long process but I believe we have made progress in many areas, and in others we're coping.

Governor Padilla is under intense pressure from the central government to break up the Sinaloa cartel. And he knows the gangsters could turn on him at any moment.

REPORTER (Translation): Do you feel safe personally?

JESUS PADILLA (Translation): I feel as safe as any citizen. The fact that I am the governor doesn't make me a special citizen. I have said this on many occasions.

Not far from the governor's office, this demonstration marks the 1-year anniversary of the assassination of his spokesman. Oscar Rivera was an early casualty of this war. He was killed by gangsters who to this day have not been arrested. His family and friends want to know why there's been no progress in the case.

OSCAR'S FRIEND (Translation): They say they investigate but you just don't know. They're.. its always the same story. The government lies low. They won't comment. Even if they know, they wont say. They blame the narcos.

Rivera's widow doesn't know what she can do.

REPORTER (Translation): Some people don't trust the police and do their own investigations. - Have you thought of doing that?

RIVERA WIDOW: No.

REPORTER (Translation): Why?

RIVERA WIDOW (Translation): I have three children.

REPORTER (Translation): Is it too dangerous?

RIVERA WIDOW (Translation): It's too dangerous.

The President has sent Mexico's Attorney-General, Eduardo Medina Mora, to Sinaloa to sing the success of the government's war so far and to keep up the pressure on the state authorities.

EDUARDO MEDINA MORA, ATTORNEY-GENERAL, MEXICO (Translation): We need to get rid of organised crime organisations and their enormous economic power, their firepower, and thus their power to intimidate and destroy institutions, a power they've accumulated over many years. Undoubtedly, there's been significant progress made during this administration.

Journalists are not happy that the Attorney-General will only answer five questions pre-vetted by his staff.

LOCAL JOURNALIST (Translation): Excuse me... Nobody asked me if I wanted to ask you a question.

STAFF MEMBER (Translation): The questions were processed...

LOCAL JOURNALIST (Translation): Where? No, sir! Mr Attorney General, with all due respect, you haven't answered our questions.

JORGE CHABAT: You know, a drug trafficker does not need to buy a minister to carry on his activities. They only have to buy the chief of police, and that is what they are doing.

This federal police promo shows the type of force the government wants.


PROMOTIONAL SONG (Translation): Federal Police, professional officers in the service of peace. Federal Police, honourable institution with valour and willpower. Federal Police, the nation is our strength. Together we shall not be defeated, because I am privileged so serve our people and to be a member of the Federal Police.

A slick video is one thing but producing a corruption-free police force is massive task.

JORGE CHABAT: The most important weapon of the drug traffickers is money. It is not violence or their ability to produce violence, but money, the ability to corrupt, and corruption is everywhere.

MICHAEL BRAUN: They were woefully inadequate to deal with the reality with respect to corruption in Mexico. So the bottom line is I have every faith in our Mexican counterparts, that they have the objectives to weed our corruption in their ranks, and it's gonna take some time. These things don't happen overnight, but they are going to achieve their goals, I am convinced of that.

VICTOR CLARKE ALFARO, CENTRE FOR HUMAN RIGHTS, TIJUANA: It's a great challenge because it's a structural problem. It goes from the bottom to the top. It's not only the police on the street but the commanders to the politicians to businessmen to money laundering. It is the system.

Victor Clarke Alfaro is the director of the Binational Centre for Human Rights in Tijuana on the border with California. He is also a lecturer in Latin American Studies across the border at San Diego State University. And today he's bringing a group of his students on a field trip to the wall that divides the two countries. Tijuana has always been the main crossing point for people - and narcotics - into the world's largest drug market.

VICTOR CLARKE ALFARO: Underground, the drugs are crossing to the US in the same amounts as in the past. There has been a slight increase in the cost of cocaine in California but the drugs are crossing.

Throughout my time in Mexico, I chased one key interview with the man in charge of the war on organised crime - Genaro Garcia Luna, Secretary for Public Security and chief of the federal police.
If there was ever a chance of that interview happening, it's now disappeared as dramatic information emerges linking his office to the kidnap of 14-year-old Fernando Marti. At first they tried to deny it, but then the chief was forced to admit that a woman who's just been arrested for allegedly organising the kidnap is not only an active federal agent, but at one point she was even a member of the anti-kidnap team.
Accused of coordinating the false police roadblock where the boy was abducted, the arrest of Lorena Gonzalez Hernandez confirmed people's suspicions of top-level police involvement in kidnappings. She was a senior investigator, and was about to be promoted. Michael Braun from the DEA says he's seen it all before, even at home.

MICHAEL BRAUN: We have had to investigate, indict and arrest DEA agents, ICE agents, border patrol agents, state law enforcement... I mean, the Mexican cartels work as hard to corrupt us as they do to corrupt their own country, to corrupt their own. They have hundreds of millions of dollars to corrupt with around the globe. Then if that doesn't work, they use intimidation. If that fails, then they use extreme forms of violence.

The American Congress last year passed a $1.6 billion package to help fight the drug cartels. The money will be split between several Central American and Caribbean governments with US$400 million going to Mexico.

VICTOR CLARKE ALFARO: The amount they are giving to our country is nothing compared to the money laundering from drug activity, nothing compared with the amount of money that is moved by the organised crime in this country.

Back in Mexico's main square, the anti-violence protesters lit up the night with candles and stood in silence. No-one is under any illusion as to how difficult it will be to get rid of the violence and corruption that plagues their country.


Reporter/Camera
DAVID O’SHEA

Editor
MICAH MCGOWN

Researcher
MELANIE MORRISON

Producer
ASHLEY SMITH

Fixer
CARLOS ESCOBAR

Subtitling
JORGE TURINI
PILAR BALLESTEROS

Original Music composed by
VICKI HANSEN