The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade

Abstract

This book is based in a decade of extraordinary research in national, state, and local archives by its author and other scholars, principally Wil Pansters (I participated in two related conferences organized and funded by them). The mining of these archives, particularly the rarely visited state and local collections, along with the stimulating conferences, has already made a major contribution to the field of Mexican drug history, while published and forthcoming peer-reviewed essays and books will continue to make their mark for years to come.This book is the trade-book version of all that remarkable research. As Benjamin Smith informs the reader, “The Dope is a work of popular history. . . . As such, the text is unencumbered by the usual footnotes, endnotes, and the nods to academic allies. I hope that this makes what is a tough and complex topic more accessible and readable” (p. 378). The book certainly succeeds by this measure and will be extremely useful in introductory undergraduate courses on the subject. Scholars of course will find the lack of footnotes less appealing, and, like most popular histories, there's also a tendency to smooth over uncertainty with a more confident narrative than the existing evidentiary gaps probably warrant. But as far as pop drug history goes, this is as good as you will find to date on Mexico.As the title suggests, the book is on the illicit drug trade—there is very little here on the development of policy, ideology, or drug use. That narrow focus facilitates a relatively long-term overview, from the turn of the twentieth century down to the present. The book is strongest on the period from the Second World War to the 1990s. Developments since 2000 are well summarized but are a little too recent for a thorough historical treatment. The early twentieth-century material is the weakest. For example, calling marijuana “the drug of choice” of the Mexican Revolution's soldiers is both factually wrong (alcohol too is a drug) and a serious exaggeration of the extent of marijuana use at the time (p. 14). And between 2 and 4 percent of Americans were not addicted to morphine in the early twentieth century (the best estimates suggest that it was closer to 0.5 percent addicted to all opiates) (p. xx). I was curious as to the source for the latter claim, but the alphabetical and fragmentary format of the “notes on sources” made it difficult to identify.But there is also plenty of new and intriguing stuff here. Smith's most compelling argument is that the drug trade in Mexico has always been as much about “protection rackets” (with various actors imposing a tax on traffickers) as it has been about the trade in drugs. He argues that these rackets began in the early twentieth century as provincial affairs that served an almost philanthropic function—a kind of state-sponsored social banditry that funded the building of schools, parks, and so forth. In short, the drug trade wasn't always so bad. There was relatively little violence, few Mexicans were taking illegal drugs, and the proceeds went in part to worthy causes. But gradually competition over these protection rackets spawned violence. The first stage saw the Policía Judicial Federal move in on the rackets controlled by governors and state police. In the 1970s this shifted into high gear with the renewed involvement of the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) (this challenges the oft-repeated claim that the DFS had controlled the trade since the 1940s). Smith argues that it was the rise of the protection rackets through the political food chain, along with pressure from the United States, that accelerated the violence. Then the 2000s saw an especially troubling turn as the drug gangs, their armies, and low-level thugs began extending these rackets into areas far afield from drugs, terrorizing ordinary citizens around the country.Yet readers are never given a clear answer as to why the corruption, violence, and general nihilism have gotten so wildly out of control. Smith suggests that there is nothing really special about Mexico: “The protection rackets were as extensive north of the border as they were south of it” (p. 227). This is surely wrong. There certainly has been plenty of corruption in the United States connected to drugs, but what Smith describes here in Mexico, decade after decade, involving countless governors, state and federal law enforcement officials, generals, and other military brass, up to presidents of the republic, is truly staggering. Protection rackets don't exist to this extent everywhere, so how do we explain them in Mexico?The answer to that question and others will have to wait for more scholarly products from all this wonderful research. For now we have a highly entertaining and accessible volume that will surely be read widely for years to come.