El mercado ilegal de la heroína en la violencia y la actividad económica en México

Abstract

This research examines the correlation between the illegal heroin market, violence and economic activity in the most climatically suitable municipalities to cultivate poppy in Mexico, during the period from 2007 to 2017. We use the variation in the price of heroin in the United States and an indicator that measures the suitability of growing poppies in the municipalities of Mexico. This allows us to find that when the price of heroin increases 1 \% and the suitability of growing poppies increases by one standard deviation, there is a negative relationship of -6.4 homicides per 100 000 inhabitants. But if the price of heroin rises 10 \%, there is a positive relationship in the consumption of electricity of 1 \%. We show that our results are robust when we use Central European heroin prices, which have a similar trend to those in the United States. We argue that poppy crops are an important source of labor-intensive jobs. Most of the crops are carried out in marginalized regions of the country that have limited opportunities and are dominated by organized crime. Thus, as the price of heroin rises --- produced from poppy juice ---, the ideal municipalities to grow crops have a benefit economically from this illegal drug, which possibly discourages growers from getting directly involved in the various criminal activities of the organizations that carry out acts of violence, inherent to this market and other illegal. However, we observe that the fight for these municipalities between two or more criminal groups is a mechanism that potentiates violence.