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There is an increasing amount of research about the causes behind the extraordinary increase of violence in Mexico since 2007. In the current literature about this topic, various interpretations have emerged about why did homicides increased so quickly, which kind of events could unleash major violence and which structural conditions were necessary so that could happen. In this essay, I review this literature and I classify it in seven types of interpretations according to the kind of events that the authors emphasize as a main factor that explains the increasing of violence. The seven types are 1) governmental prosecution, 2) turf war, 3) state-federal lack of coordination, 4) state-weakness, 5) external influence, 6) economic dynamics and 7) State-Criminal war. Finally, I make a methodological suggestion to study the violence related to drug crime accordingly to the civil wars literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]