Golden Triangle (Mexico)

Regions: Sinaloa, Durango, Chihuahua, Mexico
narcotraffickingopiummarijuanaSierra Madre

The mountainous region where Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua converge in the Sierra Madre Occidental. From the 1930s onward, this area became Mexico’s foremost opium and marijuana growing zone. By the mid-1970s, approximately 20,000 farmers here produced an estimated 74% of illegal drugs consumed in the United States, and Mexico supplied 90% of US heroin through the “heroin highway” connecting poppy fields to Chicago.