ABSTRACT
Introduction Owing to the economic, political, and social decline that Mexico has undergone in the past several years, which translates into unemployment, judicial sector corruption, and a continual crisis of values in Mexican society, a climate of insecurity, illegality, and impunity has alarmingly taken hold, and become routine. This process of accelerated sociopolitical decomposition has markedly contributed to the redoubling of organized crime, which clearly undermines the stability, efficacy, and security of the Mexican State. Drug trafficking, while prototypical of the growing, systemic violence linked to organized crime, is itself a threat to national security,
Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................97 Legal and Institutional Frameworks in Mexico: Formal Capacity ........................98 Analysis and Conclusions: What’s Real? ............................................................. 111 References ......................................................................................................... 115 Other Webpages Consulted ............................................................................... 117
considering the entirety of drug production, drug traffic, drug dealing, drug addiction, drug consumption, and related money laundering. These play out across local, national, and international boundaries, tied to transnational criminal networks. It is important to note that the Mexican criminal organizations involved enjoy greater resources and manifest greater initiative than may be apparent, making use of communications and weapons technologies that are supposed to be exclusively available to the nation’s armed forces. This affects national security because the enormous economic capacity of criminal organizations allows them to infiltrate public institutions and civil society, through corruption and intimidation.
