As Luis de la Calle, another Mexican economist, put it, formal companies are subject to ‘multiple windows’ of extortion – by unions, municipal officials, labour inspectors, IMSS inspectors, the tax office, the police and the Zetas, none of which are in practice subjected to legal restraint. Stay informal, and ‘you benefit from a “single window” of extortion: you pay the Zetas and they protect you’, he noted.
