Why have these drug gangs been able to capture Mexico, when drug gangs in the United States can’t? As I tried to understand this, I started to picture prohibited drugs as a river being redirected to wash across a town. If a river washes into a skyscraper, it might erode the walls and break some windows. But if it washes into a wooden house, it will wash it away entirely. In Mexico, the foundations of law and democracy are made of wood—it was governed by one semidictatorial party for seven decades until 2000,
