I’m not the first person to suggest that fighting the narcotics cartels is a waste of Mexican resources, and legalizing the production end of the business might be the way to go, letting the governments in the user countries figure out their own way of dealing with the problem.
With a right-wing federal government right now, the “libertarian” — or perhaps “Reagan-Thatcher” theory that the job of government officials is to find reasons NOT to do their job… like, for the undersecretary of Agriculture for Agribusiness, rationalizing the failure to find new markets for Mexican crops. And, of course, these kinds of folks are allergic to government subsidies, and want to tout “free market success stories”.
Or, so it seems, that’s what the Undersecretary of Agriculture for Agribusiness (as I chose to translate “subsecretario de Fomento a los Agronegocios”) with the unusual Anglo name is doing.
From El Universal (28-Oct-09), my translation:
The Undersecretary for Agribusiness Development of the Mexican Deprtment of Agriculture (SAGARPA, from its Spanish acronym) Jeffrey Max Jones Jones, recommends rural Mexican learn from the drug trade about marketing.
