The Colombian drug gangs were in firefights with the military, including US special forces. Going up against the government is a good way to be wiped out. The smart thing to do is not to openly and brazenly kill government officials. The Triads and Yakuza have lasted centuries because of that. The Sicilian Mafia started killing judges and the backlash was harsh. They haven't killed any judges since. The Mexican cartels will be wiped out just like the Colombians if they keep this up.
^ This.
Trying to take the state head on is a sign a given OC group is getting desperate. The Mexican cartels started fighting the government and each other when the crackdown began in 2006 and they found themselves and their smuggling routes being squeezed.
Escobar and the Medellin cartel tried the same thing back in the 1980's and early 1990s. But the Cali cartel was smarter and more sophisticated and saw the futility of it.
You're trying to simplify things and apply what happened in a Latin American country(Colombia) into an another Latin American country(Mexico). Little you know Mexico and Colombia are very different countries, one(Mexico) much more powerful and independent than the other (Colombia). What happened in Colombia cannot be applied to what happened in Mexico. In Colombia the Medellin Cartel was trying to get into legit politics and take over the country. In Mexico, a much more powerful and stable country, the cartels have always been the underdogs operating as long as they don't create much violence and jeopardize the legitimacy of the PRI party. There has always been violence related to the drug trade in Mexico since the cartels have existed especially in the 1990's between the Sinaloa Cartel and the Arellanos Cartel family(Tijuana Cartel). In the early 2000's the Sinaloa Cartel which had support of some corrupt federal government/officials/elements decided to invade Nuevo Laredo. The most priced drug trafficking corridor of the Gulf Cartel. There were open battles in the streets for the drug corridor, eventually the Gulf Cartel won the battle. Since then the cartels started to expand in membership especially gunmen, creating small armies. In 2006, Felipe Calderon decided to dismantle the power structures between the state and cartels operating in the regions. That's when the cartels greatly starting recruiting and operating(evolving) as criminal organizations. They changed from small selected drug families to large criminal organizations with small armies(gunmen) at their disposal. Sinaloa is kinda responsible for the violence between the cartels and Felipe Calderon(2006) simply sended the army and federal police to dismantle and give security to the states impacted by cartel violence. Felipe Calderon had nothing to do with the violence between the cartels, it had already started since the evolvement of the drug cartels from small drug families to large drug trafficking criminal organization with gunmen. So since then the drug violence has been fueled by cartels trying to protect their territories from the Sinaloa Cartel that is supposedly backed somewhat by the PAN government. The PRI government(which ruled much of Mexico's history) has always been neutral as long as the violence didn't get out of hand. That all changed as soon as the Sinaloa Cartel decided to invade territories(with support of the federal government). In Colombia a weaker country than Mexico was about to been taken over by drug traffickers something that will never happen in Mexico. That's why the U.S started to combat the drug trafficker in Colombia to prevent another Nicaragua situation(this is going another direction).
