ABSTRACT
For an irate Francisco Barrio Terrazas, the governor of Chihuahua, the drug trade is a maldición (curse) on the Mexican border. Or to quote the lament of the despondent mayor of Ciudad Juárez, “I feel so helpless when I grasp its magnitude.” The culprits responsible for this calamity are a binational bunch: Americans, for their sickly habit and for the money they flaunt before traffickers to feed it; and Mexicans, their sense of right and wrong eroded away by centuries of corruption in public life, some of whom, as a result, succumb to the lure of dirty money even when it jeopardizes their morals as well as the fabric of family and society.
