Violent Narco-Cartels or US Hegemony? The political economy of the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico

"The war on crime": The securitization of narco-trafficking in Mexico during the Calderon administration.

“…Despite the efforts of scholars to understand producing countries better (Sharpe, 1988;Mercille, 2011), narco-trafficking has predominantly been studied through a "threatened" perspective. A large part the literature fails to grasp the complexity of narco-trafficking in the Global South, despite the academic contributions of scholars in these countries (Toro, 1993;Chabat, 1994;Astorga, 1999;Tokatlian, 2000).…”

“…Examples include, the threat posed by criminal drug organizations to national sovereignty (Toro, 1993), the collaboration of traffickers with other criminal organizations (Gakhokidze 2001;Cornell and Swanstrdm, 2006;Engvall, 2006), arms trafficking, money laundering, but most importantly, the prevalence of conflict and violence (Sharpe, 1988;Bagley, 1989Bagley, -1990Carpenter, 2010;Mercille, 2011;Gautreau, 2012;Lagos & Dammert, 2012). Also, even though the Americas remain a dominant focus in the literature, studies on other regions in the world surfaced as well (Gakhokidze, 2001;Cornell & Swanstrom, 2006;Engvall, 2006;Jackson, 2006).…”

“…Generally speaking, the drug business in Mexico has steadily increased since it originated more than a century ago. Last year, experts estimated that its profits accounted for 1% to 3% of Mexico's 1.4 trillion GDP (Mercille, 2011(Mercille, , p. 1637. The cartels that we know today, however, were not always powerful organizations headed by criminal tycoons.…”

“…This theme is taken up in the next chapter where I describe the drug war in Mexico. industries in the world, accounting for between $11 and $39 billion annual profits (Mercille, 2011(Mercille, , p. 1637. A combination of internal and external factors has allowed this industry to grow dramatically.…”

“…Few studies have looked at this issue from a more critical perspective (Mercille, 2011;Gautreau, 2012). Narco-trafficking is a deep-rooted problem in Mexican history and the approaches taken by academics so far sometimes fail to show us the whole picture.…”