Who said “Crime doesn’t pay?”

So, let’s see. Soon to be ex-billionaire Bernie Madoff is off to the Federal Penitentiary, probably for the rest of his life, and Chapo Guzman has been listed by Forbes as one of the world’s richest people.

Madoff’s financial shenanigans probably cost more people their jobs in the last year than anyone (with the exception of George W. Bush, of course).  I’m probably not alone is wondering if Madoff’s reluctance to fight the charges against him might have something to do with Chapo.

Madoff created no product, delivered no goods.  He simply took in money, and… on paper… created more money.   Chapo at least transfers goods from one place to another.  His industry being “cash and carry” takes in a lot of money… which went somewhere.  And, in Chapo’s industry, if you don’t honor your contracts, there is a rather severe penalty.  If Madoff was investing (i.e. stealing) from Chapo, the U.S. financier might feel he was safer in a Federal Prison than anywhere else.

Be that as it may, Chapo has been a success in a business that employs, according to the United States, upwards of 400,000 people in Mexico alone. Mexican officials have been falling all over themselves to distance themselves from the Forbes listing… which, I have to admit is based on dubious sourcing. A Forbes spokesperson on Televisa this evening said, in English, “Well, we have a reporter who speaks Spanish…” – but I wouldn’t doubt that Guzman’s fortune is the estimated billion and a half dollars reported in the magazine.

Jornada’s “Dinero” columnist, Enrique Galvan Ochoa, notes that Chapo is unique among the Forbes billionaires in another way. While all the Mexican on the list of the world’s richest people, all either inherited wealth, or made their vast fortunes under the old semi-one-party state, Guzman is not only a “self-made man”, but he is the first PAN billionaire. Specifically, he earned his shipping fortune since escaping from prison right at the start of the Fox Administration.

Elsewhere in yesterday’s Jornada is a discussion of the recent “narco-manifestiones” along the border. The Government’s contention that the narcos paid protesters with cash and school supplies does seem plausible.

Taken together – Chapo’s business success, the narco job creation numbers and the “incentive program” for protests – and there’s a problem. The rich countries are starting to come around to the idea that they should legalize the drug trade. Fine and dandy, but that only resolves their problems. Not ours. The narcotics trade isn’t a threat because it invests in politics (name a business that doesn’t), nor that as an unregulated industry there are no labor protections for its workers (though, admittedly, narcotics industry bosses are probably marginally worse than Colombian union-busters), nor even the obvious problem that it’s a criminal enterprise.

The real problem is that under the PAN administrations, the narcotics trade has become a viable rural enterprise, and that the narcos are the only effective financial resource within marginal areas.  The Mexican State is not a “failed state”, but the Fox and Calderon Administrations have failed to break out of a dependency on the United States finananical sphere, and they have failed in creating any real economic hope for the countryside.

What do they offer to compete with meth labs or marijuana farming in the way of creating rural employment? What opportunities are there for rural Mexicans (and poor ones in border communities) to compete with the  corporately-controlled agricultural giants of the North.  The question isn’t who paid the protesters, but why the state has failed to provide  school children in poor neighborhoods with backpacks and t-squares and pencil boxes.  And their older brothers and sisters, and parents, with decent jobs.