This is a part of the article series Decolonial Praxis: Going Beyond Empty Words, edited by Fernando David Márquez Duarte, Dulce Alarcón Payán and Javier Daniel Alarcón Mares. Editorial and Translation Assistant: Lorenia Gutiérrez Moreto Cruz.

The war against drug trafficking and the so-called dirty war in México might seem to be one same thing but have been studied as two separate issues. Recently, a small group of scholars have been reviewing, from the political history point of view, the connection around these phenomena (Aviña 2018, 2016; Cedillo, 2018; Illades & Santiago 2014). There is, however, an overlooked area that helps to understand the complexity of the daily State formation in México: the socioenvironmental aspect. The main objective of this research is an exploration of these issues with the aid of environmental history, the socioenvironmental elements of the communist guerrillas, the counterinsurgency, and the war against drug trafficking.

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These historical events could be observed from across the country but spotted in two main strategical regions. First, in the Southern states particularly Guerrero, with organizations such as el Partido de los Pobres and the Asociación Nacional Cívica Revolucionaria, and in Michoacán and Oaxaca, where the Mexican armada struck against the guerrilla and its support bases with anti-narcotics operations. Second, in the Northwest, where a similar situation occurred, but the scope of the insurgency was bigger in a regional perspective, due to Los Enfermos and the Liga Comunista 23 de Septiembre (LC23S) extended to Culiacán, the capital of Sinaloa. This region includes many fields in the central valleys and the mountainous zone known as the Golden Triangle, one of the most important areas to farm poppy and marijuana, and a strategic point for drug trafficking to the United States. 

This article places Sinaloa as a case study to analyze the socioenvironmental aspects to recognize the construction process of the Mexican State´s territorial hegemony and the actions taken against groups that doubted its power. To reach this objective, we analyze the years from 1974 to 1982, a period that evidence the rise of armed communism, as well as its fall, and the militarization of Sinaloa that expected to overthrow the guerrilla and reorganize the narco economy. We centered the study on the Operación Cóndor and how the State project was executed by the Army, Policía Judicial Federal (PJF) and local police, with the support of the Drug Enforce Agency (DEA) that declared the war against drug traffickers and how they committed an ecocide in the Sinaloa mountains.

Most of the historiography of México acknowledge the dirty war period (1965–1990) and the war against drugs as two different historical events, while there are some ways to address the condition and issues, in this situation both are necessary to understand the violent reality of the country. First, is the problematization, that is, who exercises violence, against whom, in what way and for what reason. Most of the studies on the area show how the Mexican State repressed political movements that questioned its hegemonic position, said condition led these groups to radicalize and subsequently rose up in arms. We start from this idea but with a historical-environmental perspective that links the rise of communist guerrillas, counterinsurgency, and the war against drug trafficking.

The common sense on the drug war matter was fueled by journalists and politicians who indicate that these historical events started in 2006, when Felipe Calderón won the presidency by electoral fraud and soon after, began a war against drug traffickers, having Michoacan’s state as the 'laboratory' of this political project. Nevertheless, with a braudelian perspective of the 'longue duree' (Braudel 2010). According to the Braudel premises of time as a social construct, we assume that the armed conflict initiated in the 1960s, characterized by counterinsurgency and massive drug busts, has become a medium term conflict due to its duration, since it has been active longer than fifty years we connect this 'new war' with an older one that began in the sixties, when the Mexican State implemented counterinsurgency operations, particularly on the south and northwest (Bonada 2023). Nearly simultaneously, the Army, Policía Judicial Federal and other force institutions selectively pursued drug traffickers, not to eradicate them, but to control them in a centralized way. To achieve this, they conducted various operations along the 1960–1970s decades (for example, CANADOR and Interception), most of them with the logistic and technological support of the DEA and CIA. This reached its peak in those years with the 'Operación Cóndor ' (OC). It is important to emphasize that this war had its ups and downs but has stayed constant and a substantial part of the everyday Mexican State formation in its territorial/environmental matter.

The guerrilla and the drug trafficking war have been studied along from political and social history (Sánchez Parra 2013, Fernández Velázquez 2021, 2018, Cañedo 2017, Enciso 2015). However, our perspective addresses these problems as one, with a socio-environmental view. This is conceivable by the insurgent point of view, with the territorialization of the guerrillas in the Sinaloa Valleys and the Sierra Madre Occidental, the roots of the agrarian clash. By the counterinsurgency side, the Mexican State have displayed a complex technoscience operation (Cuvi 2018, Picado 2018) that covered highways and barracks construction, helicopter operations and airplanes that threw herbicides (paraquat and gramoxone) to destroy poppy and marihuana fields in the Sinaloa mountains. These actions were shown by the army’s occupation -comparable to the Vietnamese War- of many towns and 'rancherías ', human rights violations, extrajudicial detentions, rapes, massacres, disappearances, and water and crops contamination of the zone.

This violent state from the 1970s restructured drug trafficking in México and weakened the possibilities of a left-wing armed conflict through repression and militarization on the Sinaloa’s valleys and mountains that operated as a counterinsurgency tool and through the conversion of the 'gomeros' into a new and bigger enterprise that would be known in the 1980s as the 'Cartel de Guadalajara '. So, in this work, we demonstrate the braudelian principle of medium term of the drug war in Mexico with Sinaloa´s case. At this point it is important to emphasize that the complexity of the region is marked by the Sierra Madre and its adjoint valleys most territorialization, so, the main issue we present is an investigation advance centered only on Sinaloa. Our goal is to understand how the Mexican State applied socio-environmental strategies in Sinaloa to reinforce its hegemony against communist guerrilla and drug traffickers. To understand this process, we take The OC as a case study.

Communist Insurgency and its Link to the War against Drug Traffic

Before analyzing the guerrilla issue and the anti-narcotic operations, it is necessary to provide some background of drug’s environment previous the 1970s. Authors like Astorga and Fernández Velazquez (Astorga 2016; Fernández Velázquez 2018, 9) highlighted that during the first half of the century, poppy and marijuana crops were not hidden in the mountains, and could be found near Culiacán. However, the main business was in the 'other ' Sinaloa, known as 'Los Altos ' on a mountain range that reached more than 3000 meters above sea level. The business was led by the municipalities neighbors from Badiraguato and its rancherias. These men were known as 'gomeros ', who traveled from there to Culiacán for contacting and sell the product they had and then shipped to the border of the United States (Fernández Velázquez 2018, 13).

The marijuana and poppy crops were not the only source of income in Los Altos but were the most important considering the low monetary value that represented a little region to the Mexican State. The real interest of the State and Sinaloa’s bourgeois was placed into the rich valleys, characterized by a great availability of water from the rivers that have their origins – paradoxically- in the forgotten mountain towns. Most of the agricultural infrastructure was in Guasave, Los Mochis, Culiacán and other near valleys. The unfairness of the situation forced many residents of Los Altos to work in the tomato (Culiacán Valley), cotton (Guasave) and other fields (Fernández Velázquez 2018, 11).

Drug cropping expanded to the mountains – as did repression and massacres. An example of this occurred in April 1971, before the Operación Cóndor, the biggest anti narcotic operation in the twentieth century, when, under the pretext of fightigh drug trafficking, the Army struck against the El Realito village in Santiago de los Caballeros, Badiraguato (one of the main centers fro drug cropping in México). According to El Informador, some troopers were ambushed when they accessed to El Realito. On the gunfire, one of them deceased and another got injured, meanwhile, twelve villagers were murdered (El Informador 1971). Days later, was popular knowledge that among the events casualties were found four women and two children (El Informador, 1971). These events were far from being isolated. Since those years to the present, the Mexican State would commit multiple massacres, rapes, among other acts to subdue communities (Bonada, 2022a). In addition, it is important to highlight the number of victims on both sides due to most of the times, civilian casualties were greater than those from the law forces.

On 1972, the army launched Operation Canador, a predecessor project for the OC. Under a signed document........

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