Nearly two years on, and almost three years into Mexico's war on drugs, Morelos Borja's comments resonate loudly. In December 2006, days after President Felipe Calderon took office, Michoacan became the first front in a military-led assault on the nation's drug cartels.

By the end of 2007, the operation had been lauded as a success: Violent homicides were down, and the Army was making a record number of arrests. But by mid-2008, the victory cries had subsided. Homicides were up again, and a new group known as La Familia had risen to prominence -- in spite of the Army's constant presence. La Familia had infilitrated a good portion of Michoacan's local governments, the authorities said, proving that for the most part, Morelos Borja and his counterparts from all political parties just couldn't keep those doors shut.

It's the summer of 2009, and Michoacan is in the spotlight once again. Since late May, federal authorities have conducted raids aimed at quelling La Familia's growing political clout, even rounding up 10 mayors and other civil servants in one cross-state sweep. The state governor's half-brother is believed not only to be linked to La Familia, but to be running part of the show. Dozens of high-ranking members of La Familia have been arrested, too -- but that has only spurred serious repercussions. In mid-July, for instance, 12 federal police officers were kidnapped and killed, prompting the deployment of 2,500 more soldiers to the central western state. In the ensuing weeks, dozens more members of La Familia have been nabbed, including Miguel Angel Berraza Villa, a.k.a., La Troca. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration heralded the arrest of Berraza Villa and one of his associates as glowing proof of "the leadership and resolve of President Calderon and the Government of Mexico."

Perhaps, but the rapid, stealthy rise of La Familia is also proof that even if there is the will, there may not be a way. The war on drugs is failing. Michoacan, for the Calderon administration, was supposed to be the decisive first victory. Unlike Juarez and Culiacan, cities where the drug trade was so entrenched in society that few didn't a expect a years-long standoff between the feds and the narcos, Michoacan was a place where the authorities thought they could quickly wipe the slate clean. But instead, they somehow allowed La Familia to establish roots and grow -- right under their noses. "They were honestly surprised," says one U.S. counter-drug official, of the government's reaction to the recent show of force by La Familia.

That surprise is worrying, and indicative of just how underprepared Mexico is to take on the cartels and the drug industry as a whole. Soldiers based in Ciudad Juarez -- where the homicide count looks to outpace last year's 1,600, in spite of massive Army presence in the border city -- have now been redeployed to Michoacan to fight La Familia, ample fodder for those skeptics who claimed the army was already stretched too thin to be fighting this war on so many fronts.

Meanwhile, the violence continues, as does the government line. Calderon called the attacks on federal police in Michoacan -- his home state -- "a desperate and violent reaction [to the government's] firm and unbending core strategy." So it has been since Day One of the drug war: Cartel members are arrested, policemen are killed in retaliation, officials claim they have their enemies close to cornered and in a panic even though feds are being killed and drugs continue to flow into the United States, and the cycle begins again. This has led to increased skepticism from security and drug war experts, and in an interview with the Washington Post in late July, Mexico's Interior Secretary Fernando Gomez Mont allowed himself a welcome moment of honest resignation. "No one has told us what alternative we have,'' he said. "We are committed to enduring this wave of violence. We are strengthening our ability to protect the innocent victims of this process, which is the most important thing. We will not look the other way.'

For nearly three years, the authorities have looked the other way, at least when it comes to Michoacan. Officials failed to see La Familia coming, in spite of ominous warnings. In September 2006, the group made international headlines by throwing six heads on a nightclub dance floor in the Michoacan city of Uruapan. Months later, the Army was in Michoacan, burning marijuana fields and seizing meth labs, rounding up suspects and ostensibly enforcing the law. For sure, the group was not always to be taken seriously. (Its supposed religious bent, for instance, gained La Familia media attention, but few experts or officials actually believed the group was driven by any real ideology.) But by mid-2008, when La Familia announced plans to take over the country, the authorities should not have been surprised. On Sept. 15, a twin grenade attack in Morelia, the state capital, left eight innocent people dead and more than 100 injured, and prompted another statewide sweep of suspects, both from La Familia and Los Zetas, who authorities said were battling it out over the local smuggling turf. By that time, La Familia was said to have 4,000 or more members, with connections in nearly all of the state's municipal governments, yet it took until May of this year to round up the alleged renegade local mayors. When La Familia retaliated over the arrest of some of its top lieutenants this summer, the government was, once again, caught off guard.

The government should not have been surprised. If those same federal authorities had talked to the PAN's Francisco Morelos Borja or other local politicians in Michoacan back in 2007, they might have been better prepared and realized just how bogged down in drug trafficking the state really was. As federal Congressman José Luis Espinosa Piña, who represents Morelia and has received threats and offers of bribes from drug-traffickers since 2007, says: "It's like deep mud."

Deep mud that for the Calderon administration is quickly beginning to resemble quicksand.

**Malcolm Beith is a Mexico City-based journalist who writes for Newsweek, Foreign Policy and other publications both online and in print.