Nicolás Pérez drives his pickup through dimly lit streets in central Mexico. Five men are in the back. They are on a "spiritual mission," he says, looking for people struggling with methamphetamine addiction to force into treatment at his rehabilitation center.
The truck stops at an abandoned house. The men get out, slip under a fence and enter. Seconds later, a shout is heard from the upper floor, and the tallest of the group escorts out a much smaller man, who is pleading in vain. They want to lock him up in rehab at La Sagrada Familia (The Holy Family), the center that Pérez has directed for 20 years in Silao, the heart of Guanajuato state.
"What we do is based on trial and error,” Pérez says. “Maybe when he gets out he'll [use drugs] again. Maybe so, but we've already helped extend his life a little. We have the advantage that there's a chance he'll be rehabilitated.”
Men from La Sagrada Familia inspect an abandoned building where a methamphetamine user slept in Silao, Guanajuato, Mexico, on 16 January 2026. (Credit: Diego Legrand )
La Sagrada Familia is an anexo, a type of informal rehabilitation center in Mexico that exists because there is almost no public residential drug treatment. They have proliferated in this part of the country in response to a cartel-driven methamphetamine addiction crisis. There are now at least 520 anexos in Guanajuato and roughly 3,000 across Mexico , but without a formal registration system, it is impossible to know the exact number.
Largely unregulated, anexos are often criticized for harsh or even abusive methods, poor hygiene, and a lack of trained staff. Some have even been infiltrated by the drug-selling cartels who are driving the state’s addiction rates, and Guanajuato authorities have tried shuttering them.
But they are also the only help available to many Mexicans struggling with serious drug addictions, and some officials hope they could be reformed into vital places for treating the epidemic.
Front view of the facade of the La Sagrada Familia rehabilitation center in Silao, Guanajuato, Mexico, on 15 January 2026.
Alejandro Arias, a state legislator, is pushing for a Guanajuato law that would regulate anexos “to truly rehabilitate those who enter them.”
Putting anexos under the supervision of the state’s Secretariat for Health could improve issues ranging from infrastructure deficiencies to inadequate food, shortage of professional staff, overcrowding, mistreatment of those interned, and excessive fees, he says.
He also hopes that more support could bolster the centers’ ability to fend off the gangs who see the sites as recruiting grounds for new drug users or cartel foot soldiers.
The goal, he says, would be to "put a stop to organized crime, which has targeted our addicted youth as easy prey, offering them as cannon fodder in their criminal activities."
Murder Capital of Mexico
Guanajuato has the tragic distinction as the state with the highest number of homicides in Mexico. It was considered one of the most prosperous, peaceful states in the country until 2015, when the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) — one of the most violent criminal organizations in the world — moved in and started vying with local gangs for control of illicit economies.
The conflict was in part driven by the cartel’s effort to seize lucrative fuel theft networks that siphoned oil from a local refinery’s pipelines and were controlled by the local Santa Rosa de Lima Cartel. Guanajuato's geographical location, industrial corridors and highway networks also offer an ideal logistical hub for transporting drugs between Mexico and the United States.
Annual murders grew from 957 in 2015 to 2,539 in 2025. The actual murder rate in Guanajuato is likely even higher; almost 5,700 people are currently reported missing in the state, with around 870 disappearing last year.
Mothers show pictures of their disappeared sons and daughters in Irapuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, on October 23, 2012.
To fund their war, the two cartels flooded Guanajuato’s working-class neighborhoods and factories with methamphetamine.
“You start to see this reconfiguration in this place, which was previously considered a transit point” for the drug trade, but then emerged as a “strategic territorial hub” for the cartels, says Hugo Córdoba, drug project coordinator at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
No longer just a passing point for drugs, Guanajuato also became a hot market.
“El Bolas,” a man interned at La Sagrada Familia, says he first started using crystal meth during his work in a car factory. “There’s a lot of crystal meth there because the work is hard, especially at night.”
“El Bolas,” who was a resident at La Sagrada Familia, posing in his van in Silao, Guanajuato, Mexico.
He bought the drugs from his co-workers, who were also users, and had started dealing to pay f…
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