Mexico is currently confronting a human rights crisis. Headlines document the overt violence that has claimed more than 50,000 lives since December 11, 2006 when President Felipe Calderón launched the war on drugs. Yet beneath the bloodshed, the erosion of the rule of law and the systematic violation of human rights in the context of the armed conflict caused by the drug war has created a more profound crisis in Mexican society, one whose causes and effects are not only ill-defined but often purposely obscured.