By far, the people most hurt by a blow to the drug cartels would be the rural poor in certain areas of Mexico. According to Ms. Rios: “drug traffic cash flows are in fact helping some Mexican communities to somehow alleviate a grinding stage of poverty and underdevelopment. In fact, for almost all drug-producing communities, the drug traffic industry seems to be the only source of income.” This is partly due to the nature of drug cultivation, which, in many ways, is similar to farming. As of the late 1990′s, roughly 300,000 peasants were employed in drug production. The National Farm Workers’ Union (UNTA) estimates a number around 600,000. The importance of drugs in the area is nothing new. The earliest documented poppy production in the state of Sinaloa, called “the heart of Mexican drug country” by Newsweek, was in 1886. The extent of this dependence was illustrated in 1976, when a joint operation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Mexican government was organized. Called “Operacion Condor”, it involved helicopters that would spray (and ruin) poppy and marijuana fields. The operation caused such immediate economic destabilization in the region that the Mexican government indefinitely halted the project. This dependence on drug cultivation, especially on the labor-intensive process of processing poppy gum, still exists today.
Given the close ties between drug revenues and the economy, it is not entirely surprising to see some support for cartels in certain areas. Drug organizations have begun to provide psuedo-governments in certain towns, and sometimes win the support of locals by positive means. Of course, terror tactics, including a rising trend of beheadings, death threats, and atrocities, balance these. Still, a dependence on drug money establishes what some call an “artificial economy” that may simply disappear as the drug war goes on.
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