Chapter Text
Peace in Mexico has always been a myth.
From its troubled independence, it was immediately the target of many foreign interventions: by the Spanish, in a futile attempt of reconquest, until 1829, by the Fr*nch, in 1836 and 1861, and by the Americans, in 1846. Even then, internal conflicts were always brewing beneath the motherland’s surface.
In the 19th century, they were between liberals and conservatives. By the start of the 20th century, between revolutionaries and the government. After President Lázaro Cárdenas, the nation underwent a period of growing stability under the Institutional Revolutionary Party, but it was plagued with authoritarianism and resistance under its iron fist, often boiling up into rebellions and insurrections.
By the dawn of a new millennium, the opposition had grown larger than the government had anticipated. The National Action Party and the Party of the Democratic Revolution, the most prominent opposition parties, mobilized against the Insitutionalists, throwing them out of power in the 2000 elections. But the new hopes of change died under President Vicente Fox Quesada, an incapable populist who was found out to be unfit for ruling, the hard way.
Corruption continued, violence increased and crime sprawled under another conflict: the Drug War. Though not at all new in Mexico, with roots all the way back to the 70s, it picked up steam amidst the change of course towards neoliberalism, and Fox’s government was unprepared… and unwilling.
Through a scandalous election, the National Action Party stayed in power after 2006, and Felipe Calderón Hinojosa became president. He took an extremely hawkish approach towards drug trafficking, declaring a formal war against the cartels and fully mobilizing the army. When the army was not enough, he mobilized militias and the federal police. And when that wasn’t enough for him, he unconstitutionally allowed the recruitment of teenagers into the armed forces. As the army grew more and more, so did the cartels, increasing from rings of criminals into what resembled organized terrorist groups.
Not even a year has passed since Calderón was inaugurated, and now the sound of rifles echoes from Tijuana to Cozumel, with no signs of stopping.
In a move to gain more manpower, the President overruled the restriction forbidding foreigners from joining the armed forces, and called upon all Mexicans living abroad to join.
Among those called there were two young boys: Kel and Sunny.