Building States and Illicit Markets in Postrevolutionary Mexico

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Joel Herrera
Kellogg Institute Visiting Fellow

Drug trafficking is a source of public insecurity in many countries. State weakness and underdevelopment are widely cited as its root causes, yet historical evidence points toward the role of state developmentalism in creating agricultural drug industries throughout the Global South. Under what conditions then do these illicit markets emerge? Drawing on a historical analysis of illicit drugs in two Mexican states (Sinaloa and Michoacán), Herrera argues that drug market formation is contingent on state building. Between the 1930s and 1960s, agrarian crises and transitions created the conditions for opium poppy and marijuana cultivation in remote areas, while development projects integrated drug-producing communities, urban distribution centers, and external consumer markets. Early attempts at supply-side control only consolidated and expanded the drug trade as local powerholders negotiated state repression, and as displaced producers pushed the market to new frontiers. Rather than byproducts of state absence, this article demonstrates that illicit markets were enabled and shaped by a chaotic constellation of state building projects and capacities.