The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade by Benjamin Smith

The Dope is a fascinating book that mostly succeeds in spite of the author’s continued attempt to pin the blame on the United States for virtually all the negative impacts on every facet of life in Mexico. Fortunately, despite his occasional strident editorializing he remains a journalist at heart and thus the book is deeply reported and provides a very interesting narrative of the last 100 years or so of the illegal drug industry in Mexico. I’m going to leave aside a proper review because you can find that in many places and offer a bit of observation on the historical parallels…

While the author never makes the comparison, there seems like a parallel between the drug trade and the history of the nation states of Europe and arguably the world’s nation states with a few notable exceptions.

Even though the average person probably has a vague feeling that France – as embodied by the Louis’, French Revolution, Napoleon, etc. – has always existed as that political entity since Rome. But obviously that’s not true and France itself was composed of numerous kingdoms, minor nobility, and so on that had to be united through conquest, marriage, death, etc. This is true of Spain, certainly of Germany, to some degree England, etc. And while the kings of the domains that would eventually become the nations of Europe deliberately tried to add to their holdings, over time it became a necessity for these kingdoms to unify under a national banner because of the realities of the cost of war. As war became more and morer expensive due to technological advancement and professional standing armies became the norm, these small principalities were absorbed by one nation or another. Today, most people look at small states like Liechtenstein and just scratch their heads wondering how on Earth they managed to avoid being gobbled up by one of the hungry neighbors. One can even argue that the post-WW2 experiment of the Eurozone is a logical extension of the political consolidation that has been going on ever since Rome fell in Western Europe leaving a power vacuum.

Similarly, the story in The Dope sketches out a similar tale. It begins just before the turn of the century and paints the picture of loosely affiliated groups composed mainly of one or two families that have local control over some drug trade. Over time, the need for political protection (i.e. bribes) grows and the economies of scale start to kick in. The families begin to combine efforts and the cartels (whether or not you accept the author’s belief that “cartel” is a mischaracterization). Eventually, they realize they need to be able to enforce their wills and standing armies begin to grow as in the Zetas and the Sinaloa Cartel. At this point, their capacity for violence (the application of which should ultimately be completely controlled by the State) has in many areas surpassed the Mexican states’ and many of the political office holders – if they are not hand-picked by the narcos themselves – dare not cross them under risk of death (or worse.)

One other throwaway observation is that the narcos of Mexico have evolved from being the raw product producers and then moving into refinement, then in the 80s being savvy enough to recognize the shift in market tastes and begin to import coca paste for manufacture and refinement and finally realizing they could essentially outsource production to Colombia, China, etc and just become a service industry where the "service" is smuggling. Does that evolution sound at all like the US economy in many respects? Or Europe?