A Narco History: How 100 Years of Failed Drug Policy Gave Rise to Mexico's Cartels David Gagne - InSight Crime
go to original April 6, 2015

A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the Mexican Drug War by Mike Wallace and Carmen Boullosa Check it out at OR Books

Many say Mexico's war on drugs began after former President Felipe Calderon took office in 2006, but a new book suggests that the genesis was prohibitive drug policies enacted by the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, a process that was later fueled by an economic trade agreement.

In their book “A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the Mexican Drug War,” authors Mike Wallace and Carmen Boullosa argue the creation of Mexican drug cartels and the violence they have spawned is inextricably linked to proscriptive drug policies developed by the US and later adopted by Mexico.

The prohibition of first opium and then other narcotics in the US and Mexico during the early part of the twentieth century created favorable conditions for criminals to meet the demand for narcotics that had become outlawed.

“When you establish a policy of prohibition, you also create a black market. And Mexico, being next door, did its best to respond to that market,” Wallace told InSight Crime.

It would take several decades, however, before Mexican drug trafficking groups became highly sophisticated. Here too, the United States would take an active role in fostering the growth of Mexico's first modern drug trafficking organization, the Guadalajara Cartel, the authors argue.

According to the book, the United States sent discreet shipments of high-calibre weapons to a founder of the Guadalajara cartel, Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, during the early 1980s. These guns were later passed on to the US-proxy, the Contras in Nicaragua, to assist in their attempt to topple the left-wing Sandinista regime (something InSight Crime has chronicled as well). In return for this “humanitarian aid” the cartel provided, the US turned a blind eye to the huge quantities of crack cocaine processed in Mexico that were arriving on street corners throughout the United States, the authors say.

The weakness of state institutions in Mexico at that time - such as the National Security Directorate (DFS) - also facilitated the cartel's expansion, the authors argue.

Read the rest at InSight Crime

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