In The Beginning … Mexico’s Drug Cartels
The southern states of Mexico include Chiapas, Campeche, Quintana Roo, Yucatan, Morelos, Tabasco, Guerrero, Michoacán, Veracruz and Oaxaca. Yucatan, Campeche and Quintana Roo profit from tourism, while the rest of the southern states, because of vast tracts of arable land, depend upon agriculture for their economic health. For the most part, the people of this region are hardworking and poor, despite the fact that they live on some of the most fertile soil in the world.
Corn is the primary crop grown in the drier regions. The regions with more water grow avocados, citrus fruits, coffee and melons. In the years leading up to World War I, enterprising individuals in the southern states of Mexico recognized a simple economic truth: they could make more money growing a more desirable crop: Marijuana.
Marijuana originated in southern and central Asia. It arrived in North America with the influx of Chinese migrant workers, who were hired by the railroad companies as common laborers. The workers not only brought marijuana with them, but opium, too. Like most immigrants, the Chinese established…
