I'd like to do a little thread. While working on my book, Searching For Modern Mexico, I traveled from the southern Mexican border in Chiapas all the way up to Tijuana. I met with entrepreneurs trying to build businesses in Chiapas, Oaxaca, Michoacan, Jalisco & Baja California.
I came away from the experience with the idea that the three key concepts that describe Modern Mexico are inequality, (labor market) informality, and illegality. Mexico is a country with immense social divisions, with limited job opportunities & serious security problems.
The key take away is that given the overall economic dynamic in Mexico the government is extremely limited in its ability to collect taxes & function properly. So what we have is VULNERABLE population and a WEAK and severely constricted government.
In Mexico the limits of state capacity play out in many areas such as infrastructure, public education, and social policy, but no area of public policy is more relevant than SECURITY. In many parts of the country the absence of functional law and order is tangible.
In many parts of the country fear about safety is simply a fact of life. In the Chiapas chapter of my book I watched how a family that runs a coffee collective lives in terror every day, worrying about local thugs who are trying to take their land. psmag.com/magazine/dodgi…
In Oaxaca I saw a master mezcal maker find success using traditional production techniques but still worry whether the local public schools would prepare his daughters for formal sector jobs in professional fields fortune.com/2015/12/28/mez…
In Michoacan I saw a clear example of how at its root Mexico is still an almost feudal society & I documented how avocado growers banded together to finance a private army to protect their billion dollar a year export industry. theguardian.com/cities/2017/ma…
But, in Michoacan almost everybody I talked to had a story about an uncle, cousin, or friend who was kidnapped and killed. As drug cartels diversified into extortion the old adage that its mostly criminals who get killed has become entirely obsolete.
When I first visited Guadalajara and Tijuana, both cities were relatively safe. Over the last five years, however, both have re-emerged as hotspots for organized crime related violence. On some level, I think the violence is a reaction to the grotesque inequality that persists.
In general violent crime in Mexico is seen as non-political but I think on some level it's a way for marginalized groups to express their view that the status quo is not acceptable.
In Jalisco and Baja California I met with entrepreneurs building businesses selling beer and tacos. I saw again and again all of the obstacles they face and heard their complaints about operating in a country where economic power is immensely concentrated forbes.com/sites/nathanie…
And, if anybody is interested in talking more about these ideas I'm doing a book discussion tomorrow with @carlosbravoreg and @ElisabethMalkin at @horizontalmx 
