Narconomics: How To Run a Drug Cartel

by Tom Wainwright

The single-most-effective way to undermine gangsters’ “charitable” efforts is for the state to up its own game in the provision of basic public services. If the police and courts in Mexico City’s violent suburbs had been doing their job properly, Rosa the septuagenarian killer-cleaner would not have dreamed of looking for a hit man to do the job for her. If the government of Medellín had spent a bit more on parks, swimming pools, or youth clubs, Colombians would have been less impressed by Pablo Escobar’s roller-skating rinks. If the government of Mexico provided proper pensions to the elderly, no one would line up to receive handouts from Shorty Guzmán’s henchmen. And if Mexican banks were less stingy with their credit (they lend half as much as their counterparts in Brazil, and one-third as much as those in Chile),13 households and businesses would be less likely to borrow money from the mob.