The central question for Mexico at the moment is whether the violence, insecurity for people and property, boom of drug cartels, and growing presence of the military are becoming too big of an obstacle to democracy. Despite a general lack of literature on organized crime in Mexico, it is usually common knowledge that organized crime has flourished within the state apparatus. Through ethnographic methods that primarily consist of participant observation, interviews, and analyses of secondary sources, this article examines the historical development of the security forces in Mexico, and discusses how widespread corruption and its tolerance have generated extralegality as the rule, and not the exception. The article highlights how, by this predatory ethic of corruption, Mexican security, intelligence, and law enforcement elites became the principal actors at the core of organized crime, which, in turn, helps to explain the failure to reduce it.
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