IN HARSH REFLECTION OF REALITY, MEXICO'S MUSEUM OF DRUGS OUTGROWING ITS SPACE

MEXICO CITY -- When the Mexican military opened its Museum of Drugs in
1985, there were only a couple of dusty display cases in a small
cramped room.

A year earlier, journalist Alan Riding had published a book still
cited today about contemporary Mexico called "Distant Neighbors." His
examination of all things Mexican was omnivorous: chapters on energy,
politics, culture, corruption, poverty, agriculture. Yet there is only
a single paragraph on narcotics trafficking. A short one. On Page 337.

How the situation has changed. The museum is now housed in spacious
suites at Mexico's version of the Pentagon, but its curators say they
are running out of room for all the contraband they would like to showcase.

The legacy of President Felipe Calderon will be, for better or worse,
his confrontation with the drug mafias, which continue to shock and
amaze with their brutality and brazenness. On Saturday, Mexicans
opened their morning newspapers to read that cartel assassins in the
state of Sinaloa had peeled the face off their victim and sewn the
skin onto a soccer ball.

The museum is open to Mexican officials, visiting diplomats and
graduating army cadets, who tour the exhibits to learn about their
only real enemy, the drug cartels. Occasionally the brass lets a
journalist have a look, but the greater public is not permitted.

Army Capt. Claudio Montane, the museum's curator, meets visitors at
the door and explains, "The idea is to show the history of drugs, the
various methods of the narcos, our operations and interceptions
against them, as well as their mode of life, the social phenomenon of
this narco-culture."

Though many U.S. and Mexican officials prefer not to call this a "drug
war," a large mural at the museum entrance depicts a D-Day-style
invasion, with Mexican troops rappelling out of helicopters and
running across fields of opium poppies and marijuana, their weapons
drawn, as they lay waste to the crops with torches ablaze. The smoke
morphs into a screaming eagle wrapped in the Mexican flag.

Inside, the exhibits begin with the history of drugs. An old
black-and-white photograph of a vendor in a Mexican market with a
straw basket filled with cigar-size joints reminds the viewer that
marijuana was once legal here, as it was in the United States.

On the wall is also a photograph of a wounded U.S. soldier in Vietnam
beside a plaque that dates the beginning of the war there: "With the
appearance of the hippie movement, a large number of young Americans
and Europeans defended their right to live under the banner of 'Peace
and Love' and consume vast quantities of drugs."

There is a display of medals awarded by Mexico's military for fighting
drugs. The greatest honor is to capture a high-level target. There is
also a medal for honesty and another for large seizures.

Probably the best-known exhibit is the life-size diorama of a grower
in the countryside guarding his crop. Montane flips a switch and a
cassette player begins a bouncy narco-corrida, the popular ballads
honoring the derring-dos of drug outlaws. In the corner, a mannequin
lounges in his dark shades, a shotgun across his lap, beside a pile of
empty Tecate beer cans. In front are beans on the stove and a bust of
Jesus Malverde, a highwayman who legend has it was killed by
authorities in 1909 and is revered as a patron saint of traffickers
and a Robin Hood for the poor.

Around the corner, the exhibits show how drugs are smuggled, and here
human ingenuity is on full display. There is dope hidden inside
picture frames, logs, gas tanks, clay pots, tamales, concrete blocks,
truck tires, soda cans, car bumpers, shoes, stuffed armadillos and a
statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

There is a kind of James Bond or Dr. Evil quality to some exhibits. An
attache case confiscated from an outlaw surveillance team holds
computer boards and other gadgetry to monitor cellphone calls. The
cartels now employ their own fleets of semi-submersible submarines. On
display is a large sea buoy with a coded beacon device the traffickers
attach to huge payloads of drugs they can dump into the sea and pick
up later.

Also, apparently, the narcos now have their own line of clothes. There
are dark blue polo shirts sporting a kind of family crest for the
Zetas, a notorious cartel founded by former special forces soldiers
that controls vast swaths along the Gulf of Mexico from Brownsville,
Tex., to Cancun. The shirts, which appear to be 100 percent cotton,
are emblazoned with a Z and the words: "Cartel del Golfo."

Montane reads from his clipboard: In the past three years, Mexican
forces have confiscated 443 airplanes, 14,622 vehicles and 43,118
weapons, including bazookas and grenade launchers. They have seized
$113,990,520 in cash.

As in many anthropology museums, there are cult and fetish items --
gold and silver semiautomatics and revolvers, precious metals engraved
with images of Pancho Villa or Santa Muerte, the death saint, or the
brand mark of Versace. There is a pair of Christian Dior sunglasses
worn by one of the notorious Arellano Felix brothers. A shirt worn by
one of the Beltran Leyva thugs.

At the end of the tour, Montane stops at a memorial plaque. From 1976
to 2009, 636 Mexican troops have died in battles with the cartels --
133 of them in the past three years. "The message we would like to
convey," Montane said, "is that taking drugs is not for fun and that
these drugs cost lives in Mexico. We want people to know how hard we
work in Mexico to combat this."