Since Felipe Calderon took office in late 2006 and launched an assault on drug cartels, somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 people have died violently in that nation's drug war. It is not going well, in any sense.

Much of this is America's fault. The vast majority of illegal drugs coming into America go through Mexico, including as much as 90 percent of the cocaine. We spend billions on an illegal product, and cartels will therefore jockey violently for control of the lucrative market. The hard line that Calderon's government has taken has only made them one more combatant in the endless war. Whoever succeeds Calderon will probably focus more on reducing the violence than the impossible task of stopping the flow of product.

In the meantime, many areas of Mexican life have become incredibly fucked. Foreign tourists are warned to stay away from many parts of the country. Incidents of stomach-turning mass slaughter that would grab headlines for weeks if they happened in America have become numbingly routine in Mexico.

With all of this cinematic violence and corruption happening, it is ironic that journalists in Mexico have been silenced by the very real threat of violence as a direct result of reporting on the activities of the cartels. Writers, editors, and photographers all face the possibility of being assassinated for covering these—objectively speaking—very juicy, tempting, and important stories. And so, in many cases, these shocking stories (which would doubtless receive saturation coverage in any major American city) fall by the wayside, a victim of the dangers of life in the Mexican war zone.

So we bring you a new series called "Mexican Drug Blood," written by Miguel Angel Rodriguez Vazquez, editor of El Nuevo Alarma!, who will file frequent updates on one of the deadliest unseen wars. His first entry will drop today and the photos are graphic, so you've been warned.