Drug War Mexico: Politics, Neoliberalism and Violence in the New Narcoeconomy

Mexico is in crisis. During the neoliberal era, narcotrafficking has flourished to become one of the country’s biggest sources of revenue, as well as its most violent, with over 12,000 drug-related executions in 2011 alone. In response, President Calderón, armed with millions of dollars in US military aid, has launched a crackdown, ostensibly to combat organised crime. Yet the murder rate, along with the supply of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine, has continued to increase. In this insightful and controversial book, Peter Watt and Roberto Zepeda throw new light on the situation, contending that the ‘war on drugs’ in Mexico is in fact a pretext for a US-backed strategy to bolster unpopular neoliberal policies, a weak yet authoritarian government and a radically unfair status quo.