It's indeed the scale of it that is unseen. PCC in Brazil, the Philadelphia Black Mafia, Cape Town crime groups,...all regularly burned their rivals in barrels, East End London gangsters chopped off someone's legs with an axe,...viscious stuff done by viscious groups. But nothing has ever come close to the amount of it what's happening in Mexico now. Most say it all started when the government declared war on cartels.
False, the cartels had wars before in the 90s and even before that it's just that the crackdown on the cartels accelerated the violence. Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Mexican cartels were much smaller tight knit drug trafficking groups that controlled the drug chains, drug hubs etc. throughout whole Mexico but just entrenching themselves in a few cities areas of the countries. The reason it got so bad is because in around early 2000s the cartels decided to rapidly expand in presence and membership creating small armies to say. Every cartel was creating so or of mini armies, recruiting at first police and military but now they mainly recruit common criminals or street gangs. They started to go on war with each other for control of the drug trafficking chains in around 2003 , Sianlao being the aggressor trying to push out the Gulf Cartel in Nuevo Laredo and later in Tijuana and Juarez. But to keep this short, the reason there is much violence related to organized in Mexico more than before is that the cartel's rapid expansion meant they weren't well established. The drug war between the cartels ended in 2010 and it was the worst year in Mexico related to violence between organized crime groups. The reason the violence still lingers is that neither of the main gangs have established hegemony within their territory or borders. Also the splintering of the cartels mainly (Sinaloa and BLO) has created splinter groups and street gangs that aren't well established and are fighting for hegemony.
