MEXICO CITY — When the Mexican military opened its Museum of Drugs in 1985, there were only a couple of dusty display cases in a small cramped room.
How the situation has changed. The museum is now housed in spacious suites at Mexico’s version of the Pentagon, but its curators say they are running out of room for all the contraband they would like to showcase.
The legacy of President Felipe Calderon will be his confrontation with the drug mafias, which continue to shock and amaze with their brutality and brazenness.
On Saturday, Mexicans opened their morning newspapers to read that cartel assassins in Sinaloa had peeled the face off their victim and sewn the skin onto a soccer ball.
The museum is open to Mexican officials, visiting diplomats and graduating army cadets, who tour the exhibits to learn about their only real enemy, the drug cartels. Occasionally the brass lets a journalist have a look, but the greater public is not permitted.
Army Capt. Claudio Montane, the museum’s curator, explains, “The idea is to show the history of drugs, the various methods of the narcos, our operations and interceptions against them, as well as their mode of life, the social phenomenon of this narco-culture.”
