Regional Systems of the Criminal Economy

Abstract

Drugs were to the birth of the new Mexican state what gold was to the rise of capitalism in early modern Europe. In this chapter, the four contrasting types of “criminal-economy subregions” that are the principal spaces of articulation of the illicit transnational economy that now has Mexico as a hub are identified. The four geographic sites exanubed—Southern California, Sinaloa, Matamoros, and Honduras—provide the prototypes.