While the incident on Falcon Lake has appalled American society, in Mexico it is sadly just one of more than 28,000 drug-related deaths reported since Mexican President Felipe Calderón took office in December 2006 and dispatched federal authorities and the military to clamp down on organized crime.
Even after the lead Mexican investigator on the case was beheaded last week, the incident was not headline news in Mexico. “People tune it out,” says Thomas Legler, an international relations professor at Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. “[Mexicans] have become desensitized to the ongoing violence.”
