Rays of hope...

...in the Failed State. Private action has a much greater probability of making gains in peace and stability than a government that is basically in a state of industrial capture ("industry" of course being the illicit trade in drugs, an activity that gains its massive margins from the arbitrary decision by its major customer to make most narcotics "illegal".)

Every morning at 7 a.m., Mr. Treviño, high-ranking officers from the army and marines, plus officials from the federal police and attorney general's office, meet with a different municipality to discuss security and improve coordination.

"We realized when we arrived that there was no coordination between different levels of government," he says.

Among the problems: the state's different police forces all use different radio frequencies. They also have different emergency telephone numbers for citizens.

"This is like a merger and acquisition. We are doing the due diligence, and then we're going to proceed with the post-merger integration of all levels of government," says Mr. Treviño.

Another former Cemex employee involved in the drug war is Jorge Tello. A former head of Mexico's national intelligence agency as well as one of the chief architects of Mr. Calderon's anti-drug strategy, Mr. Tello is in charge of bolstering coordination between federal and state forces, particularly in the state of Nuevo Leon along the Texas border.

Mr. Tello didn't respond to requests for an interview.

Current Cemex employees are also getting involved. Mauricio Doehner, a young executive, now spends much of his time trying to revive a civic organization called Ccinlac, which brings together groups ranging from big business to local parent-teacher associations. In the mid-1970s, the organization was a powerful voice of civil society, but it has since faded into obscurity.