Congratulations on "Tough diplomatic times, yet promises between Obama and Calderon," your March 6 editorial concerning the recent meeting between presidents Barack Obama and Felipe Calderón of Mexico. I believe, however, that both are underestimating the seriousness of Mexico's situation.

While they were in Washington, I was in Ciudad Juárez, my seventh trip since last July. Here are some observations.

• Calderón's increased police and military presence in Juárez is widely believed to be doing more harm than good. Most commentators liken these forces to another cartel, deeply involved in the drug business and quick to kill.
• For someone who wants to survive in Juárez, there are few options other than the drug business. Maquilas pay about $5 a day. Living costs like gas and electricity are more than in neighboring El Paso. Businesses are being forced to make monthly extortion payments. It is believed that as many as 200,000 residents have simply fled.
• There are no functioning social services. What help is being provided to the needy comes from extraordinary private citizens like Carlos and Hector García from here in Santa Fe.
• This lack of services includes those for violent mentally ill persons who are clearly a governmental responsibility. Twice in the last two weeks, I have visited Vision in Action, an insane asylum founded by Pastor José Antonio Galván and located in the desert some 15 miles south of Juárez. It houses roughly 100 severely mentally ill patients, none of whom would receive any care or treatment without the efforts of Galván and private donors.
• Going into Juárez, there is now an American checkpoint, presumably to check for weapons. The only checking of vehicles, however, was done by two Mexican women who looked like they were just teenagers. The many weapons that are still coming in now have a special name — "matapolicia."
• Some people suggest a pact between the cartels and the government. "We'll keep the peace if you keep your hands off our drug shipments to the United States." This makes sense. After all, why should innocent Mexicans pay with their lives for our rampant drug consumption?
• The problem is that it is too late for this solution. The cartels don't control Juárez; power has dispersed to dozens, maybe hundreds of gangs. (Roughly 500 in the opinion of author Charles Bowden who spoke at the Lensic last December.) These gangs now recruit street kids, boys and girls as young as 13, and turn them into little "sicarios" or gunmen.
• Even if we legalize drugs, a step that must eventually be taken, this "drug war" has created a generation of "children of sorrow and hatred" as Pastor Galván describes them. Calderón must find ways to rehabilitate them.

Yes, protocol is important in this always sensitive U.S.-Mexico relationship, but I don't believe that this meeting was one with "the cards on the table" as you suggest. It's not clear that either president knows what the "cards" are, that Calderón recognizes how ineffective or perhaps even counterproductive his efforts have been, or that Obama can acknowledge how complicit the United States is in this terrible tragedy.

Morgan Smith is a freelance writer and photographer living in Santa Fe.