In 2010...9 months of daily bloody narco battles, murders and disappearances turned Cuidad Mier into a virtual ghost town.
Almost a third of its 8,000 residents have left the town that sits on a crucial drug route.
President Calderon has made normalizing Mier the cause celebre in his narco pacification effort.
In October...he sent in a battalion of 653 soldiers...behind a military band...to publicize new mobile barracks there and re-established control.