Man introduced the drug wars; now women are stepping in to help finish them

Ask any person walking the streets of your traditional English high-street what they would associate Mexico with and they will fish around for the stereotypes that stick best: spicy tortilla-based cuisine, sombreros, Speedy Gonzales, drugs. Above all other metonyms for Mexican culture, drugs are the accomplice to its identity that resonate the furthest in distant countries. It's easy to gauge why we of the West subconsciously pin the proverbial tail of prejudice to the sad Mexican ass when you stare just a little closer at the big screen battlefields. Though it is the Nazi Wehrmacht and Islamist extremists, through their depiction in differing genres of film, that have left the most indelible prints on our Western psyche, the characterisation of Mexican criminals in films like Desperado has nonetheless built upon and conveyed to the masses this notion of the bullet-spraying, moustachioed Mexican maniacs at war over cocaine mountains.

While the implication of Mexico being a war-torn country stricken with poverty and marauded over by volatile drug cartels holds as much water as the Indian sub-continent in monsoon season, the more pressing association rising out of this chaotic inferno of drug-trafficking and gangland massacres is that which men have with this, the lowest form of income. Men have always been seen to wage the wars, taking on the responsibility as warriors and defeating their enemies as hardened killers, some more mentally sound than others. The onus was always on man to be the hunter-gatherer, so naturally when territories were factored into the equation it was the next logical step for man to assume the role as murderer-defender, before he ultimately crowned himself coveter-conqueror. This sequence of progressive power roles has been played out exuberantly by men for centuries, with mixed reviews coming from those stood at the side-lines and also those who survived the tasks set for them.

The end result of this compulsion to conflict has remained the same during the course of this perpetual struggle for survival: man is the murderer, woman is the mother. 19^th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that "man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the warrior: all else is folly" – this much has been proven accurate and consistently relevant by the behaviour of men since the turn of the 20^th Century. And on the sun-baked landscape of Mexico dries the spilt blood of victims of the drug war that has become as traditional for the nation's people as its annual pagan death festival, the Day of the Dead. With a black comedy twist, Mexico's calendar could be referred to as the Year of the Dead, with an estimated death toll attributed to the escalating violence in 2009 of over 9000. Starting from 2006, the copious bloodshed now totals near 30,000 people, most of whom are cartel members – that's a figure that would make George Romero shiver on the set of one of his macabre visions of the zombie apocalypse.

But amid the ecstatic violence of the warring cartels and the factions within them, a figure of forgiveness is emerging. Marisol Valles is 20 years-old and a student in criminology. She has an infant son and is a pacifist. She sounds like the kind of person Mexican police authorities would expect to see on the grisly end of an altercation with the local drug traffickers; but she's actually just become the latest high-ranking recruit in the weakly fought offensive against the terrifying drug gangs. Valles now stands as police chief of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero, a border town that runs in conjunction with others in Juarez valley, an area of Chihuahua state, where the casualty figures resulting from the drug war are highest. As you and plenty of observers on the global stage would conventionally think, why was a young woman chosen to help halt this devil's parade of corruption and extermination in a locale plagued more frequently by its deadliest performers than any other state in Mexico?

The answer may well be the product of some serious, new-wave calculation behind the mechanics of rendering the belligerent cartels impotent, but I'm more inclined to believe that the smaller settlement of Praxedis Guadalupe Guerrero has adopted a modest approach to pacifying a major problem. The fact stands that women are co-operators and man are largely competitors. Hand a man the position of chief of police in a drug-addled town in Mexico, as is the norm, and he is immediately given a choice, commonly phrased as "plomo o plata", meaning lead or silver. Essentially he either has to submit to bribery and commit to corruption, or get a bullet through the eye socket, or decapitated, or burnt with acid. Here the man can no longer compete if he is on the side of the law, his handcuffs no use against the sidewinding stranglehold of the cartels. He becomes the corrupted, complicit in the misanthropic business of the corruptors.

But a woman's mind, as most men are aware, works very differently to that of a battle-fond man. She aims to reconcile, find a compromise and, ultimately, defuse a contentious situation, all through compassion and patience. She aims to co-operate, but not in the way a man is forced to. Instead of being coerced into a co-conspirator, she implores her comrades and community to unite behind her cause and face the guns with principles, not more guns. But even though, in the end, the chances of success through passive measures in this area of conflict are slim, if not infinitely incalculable, this purist approach does more to contribute to stunting the continuous cycle of violence and mortality that ensures and, in many cases, justifies retribution.

Perhaps with a woman at the helm, one whose values are not close to her heart, therefore removable without termination, but the very components of it, we may begin to witness a new form of policing against the seemingly indomitable "druggernaut" that intends to swallow Mexico whole and dissolve it in the pit of its rancid stomach. At least if "Mexico's bravest woman" becomes the Latin-American equivalent of Benazir Bhutto, it will be a life destroyed with the gain of a noble cause guaranteed in the public eye, unlike the loving women and children busy living their lives and avoiding the slaughter who get caught in the crossfire of men's futile ambition for power.

Click here for a slideshow of "Mexico's bravest woman", courtesey of the Guardian.