Perspective | Once popular Mexican towns deteriorate as warring drug cartels provoke killings, drug addiction and violence

Washington Post staff photographer Michael Robinson Chavez, in several trips to Mexico this year, photographed the toll of the United States’ thirst for drugs on Mexico.

via Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2017/12/29/once-popular-mexican-towns-deteriorate-as-warring-drug-cartels-provoke-killings-drug-addiction-and-violence/

I grew up traveling to Mexico. It was an easy trip into Baja from Ventura County, Calif., my home. We would camp on desert points and surf for days. I always found the dusty peninsula and the country as a whole surprising, welcoming and exciting. It was not until the series of trips I took there in 2017 with Josh Partlow, our Mexico bureau chief, that I truly felt afraid. Afraid for my safety. Afraid for what Mexico had become.