Public Drug Policy and Grey Zone Pacts in Mexico, 1920–1980

Abstract

Traditionally, researchers have viewed Mexican drug policy through the prism of political dependency and in clear, unilinear terms. According to this model, antidrug strategies involved two processes. First, US prohibitionists used persuasion, threats and direct sanctions to inflict increasingly harsh drug legislation on the Mexican government. Then, these strategies passed down the hierarchy to local enforcers. Where these policies failed, investigators deemed corruption. Such a unidirectional framework rests on unconvincing models of both Mexican culture and the Mexican state. Instead, this article proposes a new analytical framework. Since Mexico established drug prohibition laws in the 1920s, two parallel drug policies have existed side by side. First, there was public drug policy—the international agreements, national laws, and public declarations, which formed the official line on narcotics. The US played a substantial role in shaping these public policies, but so did homegrown Mexican appreciations of narcotics. During the twentieth century, drugs became a persistent biopolitical signifier for perceived aberrant or antisocial behaviour, used to condemn poor urbanites, indigenous groups, foreigners, homosexuals, and rebellious youths. Second, there was “grey zone” drug policy, the covert agreements between state institutions and private institutions which ensured stability and economic payoff for certain key groups. Employing this framework, this article looks at Mexican drug policies from the Porfiriato to 1980. There are sections on the beginnings of drug prohibition, the 1930s attempt at a state drug monopoly, and the first war on drugs during the 1970s.