“Los carteles son la ley”: Organized crime, criminal governance, and illicit opportunities in Mexico

Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs ( guerra contra el narcotráfico ) destabilized a long-standing informal arrangement between the Mexican state and criminal organizations resulting in competition for regional control of illicit drug markets. As a result, lethal encounters between rival drug trafficking organizations increased as did the demand for new recruits due to attrition and incarceration. Using 62 in-depth qualitative interviews with inmates convicted of participating in organized crime, we discuss how the war on drugs had a second unintended consequence of inadvertently strengthening the influence of organized crime in underclass communities and establishing conditions where criminal governance flourished, and illicit work was plentiful. Our interviews suggest an economy of permissive criminality where: (1) drug trafficking organizations garner needed personnel for essential activities such as kidnapping, robbery, and homicide; (2) a thriving peripheral market of illicit opportunities that offered needed income to the economically marginalized; and (3) participation in criminality was normalized and the moral or legal inhibitions toward unlawful activities was subverted.