Neoliberalism began to take shape in the mid-1980’s accompanying Mexican globalization and deepened with the onset of NAFTA. It facilitated the spread of organized crime into the tissues of the Mexican State, which had already been infected many years previously. However, from 1988-2014, that is, from the government of Carlos Salinas de Gortari to that of Enrique Peña Nieto, Mexican organized crime as a whole, and the Sinaloa cartel in particular, became leading actors in international drug trafficking. No doubt there is a before and after in the history of Mexican drug trafficking from the eighties. It may have been coincidence or accidents of history, but with the enthronement of neoliberal governments in Mexico began an accelerated globalization of organized crime. The Sinaloa cartel was the organization most capable of achieving it.
Organized crime, although it also negotiates indirectly, does confront the State, regardless of who presides, any state government, regardless of who heads it, and any city council, regardless of which party leads it. As has been conclusively proven in Michoacan and Tamaulipas, it even reaches into lower level state governments.
Until now the undisputed winner of all the cartels is the Sinaloa cartel because it has a presence in almost all the national territory, which could be achieved only by subordinating important niches of public and private spheres to its interests. This is the great victory of organized crime: it has embedded itself within the state and broad layers of civil society, so that it has become indestructible. It has enjoyed the protective mantle of legitimacy granted by various layers of citizenry. It has appropriated the bribed service of almost all policemen, many judges and members of the military, and above all– of individuals and groups strategically placed in the political class.
The war of the federal government against organized crime seems endless. In the era of classic PRI-ism, between 1929 and 2000, somehow the state became kleptomaniac through the corruption of its politicians and police forces. But after twelve years of being ruled by a different party than the PRI and the failed drug war that Calderon launched, the actions of the State overlap with the criminal element because in many parts of Mexico, it is at the service of organized crime. That is, it obeys leadership and interests outside the rule of law.
It is not necessary that organized crime be widespread in all towns in Mexico to conclude that the State has failed to ensure the safety of millions of its citizens. Suffice it to say that hundreds of municipalities and thousands of square miles are currently under the control of “narco” bosses (“capos”) The State, whatever it may be, cannot give up its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence to organized crime. When this happens, the State is overrun, and ever vaster regions fall under cartel domination. But the worst scenario is when the state, especially its security forces, is confused with those of the criminal element.
It seems that the very high number of more than 100,000 dead and missing which the country suffered from 2006 to 2014, would indicate that the State has resolutely faced organized crime, but it has not. Actually, the police and military forces and the courts and politicians have had very irregular, and often unpredictable, behavior with offenders. Depending on the circumstances, arrangements, tactics and international, national, state and municipal strategies, there will be confrontation with organized crime or obedience to it. Depending on the situation and the balance of power, a political, military or police leader may serve crime, usually for hefty dividends, but just around the corner, he may find himself confronted.
In few places on earth does organized crime exhibit such power. In Mexico the problem is not just violence, which itself is excessive, but the penetration of organized crime into State structures.
Part 2, next issue.
