Deceit and corruption… and marijuana

Anybody who tries to hang on to America’s coat-tails is going to find himself up to his eyeballs in, well, deceit and corruption. This is the crookedest place on earth – and I never thought I would go that far, having been to many other countries at least south of our borders.

Gore Vidal

I realize Vidal is speaking of other matters (such as the absurd role corporate financing plays in U.S. politics, and the country’s imperial ambitions), but  Felipe Calderón’s  response to very probable passage of a marijuana legalization proposition in California perhaps illustrates “deceit and corruption” in a clearer way than discussions of esoteric philosophical concepts like republican virtue would.

“I think [the United States has] very little moral authority to condemn Mexican farmers who out of hunger are planting marijuana to feed the insatiable [U.S.] appetite for drugs,” Calderón is quoted as saying.

With a Rand Corporation study shows that the effects of California initiative will have a minimal impact on the Mexican marijuana export business, Mexicans have every right to feel deceived.  Either our feared “cartels” (a term more properly applied to organizations like Microsoft or Google, which cooperate to dominate a given market than warring competitors) are not the economic powerhouses they are made out to be, and Mexican marijuana exports were never more than a minor problem for the United States, or it was never Mexican marijuana exports that were focus of U.S. intervention and subvention in this country.

There’s no dark conspiracy involving secret iluminati meeting in smoke filled rooms, or the Bohemian Grove, in all this, but there was a willingness on the part of the United States to deceive Mexico.  The Rand study merely shows that our supply — while economically important — is not a major factor in U.S. demand.  HOWEVER… the self-deception practiced by the United States has allowed them to “off-shore” their own problem (assuming it is a problem) with the wide-scale use of narcotics and blame us… or rather, corrupt us into wasting blood and money on something not particularly important.

Of course, marijuana control is big business and there are several industries (everything from the police bureaucracies and private prisons to rehabs) dependent on the simulation of marijuana control and perhaps the retail and consumer end of things has a “body count” that makes our present phony-war look minor (U.S. statistics don’t seem to show deaths related to consumption — caused by things like child neglect, auto and industrial accidents, and stupidity:  a person killed in a train accident blamed on a marijuana smoking engineer might be included as “drug-related” casualties, but its unlikely — and that would be unusual, and normal everyday “Bubba-cide” [fatalities related to idiocy], suicides, neglecting medical symptoms until too late, etc. certainly would not.

Maybe the U.S. — which is the major narcotics consumer — is right to foster those control industries.  That’s for them to decide, and if they decide to legalize one narcotic in one state, it’s not for Mexico to say.  Still, as Calderón suggested, it’s not then for the United States to insist that Mexico — deceived once by NAFTA into the destruction of its agricultural sector — can continue to attempt the willful destruction of a profitable agricultural enterprise for the convenience of those foreign industries.

Which is where corruption comes in.  Mexico in general, and Sinaloa in particular, has always been labeled as “corrupt” in large part because elected leaders tolerated the business the U.S. consumers avidly supported.  Luís Astorga, who — as far as I can tell — is the only Sinaloan historian to deal with this important part of our history (Drug Trafficking in Mexico: A First General Assessment [UNESCO, on line], and El siglo de las drogas[México:Espasa-Calpe Mexicana,1996] — has made a stong case in both of these works that official tolerance of the narcotics trade is not new, nor was it ever considered particularly corrupt. That the products were for export, and not the cause of any pressing social problems — and at times were even encouraged by the United States government — may have made narcotics dealers relatively wealthy and politically powerful, but there is nothing inherently corrupt in local business leaders having an outsized role in local politics… nor local politicians supporting (and benefiting from) a successful local industry.

The difference between Sinaloa and the marijuana-growing regions of northern California (where successful marijuana growers are also tacitly tolerated) is that marijuana CONSUMPTION isn’t — and never has been — a major issue. That is, our “corruption” is the result of changes in consumption that drove up demand, and made our growers more important than they should be. Astorga recently co-wrote (with David A. Shirk) an excellent “white paper” on “Drug Trafficking Organizations and Counter-Drug Strategies in the U.S.-Mexican Context” for the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies[1]. They write:

Major drug trafficking operations came to fruition in Mexico with auspicious timing. On the one hand, Mexico was experiencing intense processes of economic integration that opened new channels of commerce with the United States. The same factors that boosted legitimate economic activity in the NAFTA countries —the new global economy, in general— also benefited the “illicit economy” (Friman and Andreas 1999; Naim 2006). As is well documented, in this context, small, highly flexible, and loosely constructed global networks of criminals and terrorists can now share information, transfer and launder funds, and ensure “just in time” deliveries of contraband with astounding agility.In a “flatter,” “borderless” world, illicit non-state actors can outmaneuver and even challenge states, using the same financial and physical infrastructure, technologies, and organizational models of globalization…

Again, no conspiracy here, but we were the corrupted, not the corruptor — and when it comes to assessing the evil in corruption, Eve may have taken the first bribe, but the one who offered the bribe but the one making the offer was “The Evil One.”

But even more deceptive, and more corrupting than just the economics has been the effect on our democracy. Calderón’s legitimacy (and many say his dubious election) was rooted in support for the U.S. “War on Drugs.” Many say the erosion of civil liberties, the militarization of law enforcement (which has been called a creeping coup before) and the only half-hearted push for necessary changes in our legal system (shunted aside in favor of the anti-narco crusade), not to mention the damage to Mexico’s reputation as a stable, imperfect but functional society has been horribly damaged… “thanks” to what many believe was the the deceit and corruption that allowed for Calderón’s elevation to Los Pinos.

California’s legalization seriously undermines Calderón perhaps more than Mexico itself. That — by some accounts — might be a benefit in itself, but  perhaps there is another  silver lining in all this.  Inca Kola News recently noticed a slight trend towards LESS Mexican exports to the United States. While — as some of his astute commentators (the Inca and his commentators usually being econo-nerds) suggest — at least part of the decline is due to falling oil exports and possibly more Mexican products being considered as other than exports (under NAFTA and DR-CAFTA provisions).  Apparently, the export data does not include narcotics (but should) which might make our foreign trade look even more tilted towards the United States than is healthy.

Unable to justify persecution of the growers, and assuming the United States maintains its corrupting and deceitful insistence on Mexico’s erradication of this particularly desirable export, it would be a fruitful time to look at other exports, less dependent on a deceitful and corrupting market.

[1] A sombrero-tip to Maggie’s Madness for finding this important study.