A photo report on the drug war in Mexico and its humanitarian consequences awarded by the ICRC Humanitarian Visa d’Or 2020.

This reportage documents the current social and political situation in the Mexican state of Guerrero, a unique player in the country’s drug war.
Guerrero hosts the largest poppy cultivation in the country but unlike any other state under the control of a single organisation, Guerrero is hostage to more criminal groups than any other region. Forty cartels and self-proclaimed defence groups (autodefensas) fight each other for control over drug production and trafficking – heroin for the U.S. market above everything else – and other rackets including extortion. In larger urban centres such as Chilpancingo, Chilapa de Alvarez and the once famous Acapulco, brutal internal fights spread terror among the locals for territorial control. Anyone can become a victim and the violence is terrible.
The chronic lack of basic security often forces inhabitants of smaller towns to abandon their homes in search for safety. A consequence is the increasing number of pueblos fantasmas.
It’s easy to die in Guerrero but even easier to disappear, as the 2014 disappearance of 43 students in Ayotzinapa showed to the international media.

Pictures were taken in 2018, 2019 and 2020 in different parts of the state of Guerrero.

Alfredo Bosco