Since 2006, over 400,000 people have been killed and more than 125,000 have disappeared in Mexico's drug war, and this DW report goes into the cities where that violence plays out. In Tijuana, Culiacán, and Doctor Coss, armed gangs fight with homemade "narco-tanks," improvised armored trucks welded together for street combat, while mass graves turn up in ordinary residential neighborhoods, many victims never identified. The film traces Mexico's role as a transit hub for South American cocaine, domestically produced methamphetamine, and fentanyl bound for the US, Europe, Asia, and Africa, with cash and weapons flowing back south in return. It shows how cartels recruit young men from poor regions with promises of income and protection, and how that money buys influence inside police forces, courts, and the military. The report closes on the international dimension, with the US, as the main market for these drugs, weighing greater pressure on Mexico and not ruling out military intervention.