Mexican Army troops during a firefight in Michoacan // Credit: AP Mexico Those old enough to remember Prohibition in the United States remember it as a controversial and violent era.  The passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and Volstead Act by Congress in 1919 prohibited the manufacture and sale of “intoxicating liquor” for recreational use and Prohibition began in January 1920. The alcohol ban, long championed by the temperance movement, was enacted with the intention of simultaneously loweri...