David McWilliams

They're buying off the electorate because what they're trying to do is undermine profoundly the credibility and the effectiveness of the state itself.

So this is happening all the time, right?

And again, where they are most prevalent, ironically, you know, you kind of think...

that it's sort of big stuff and it's big drug deals or whatever.

No, actually, what's most prevalent is in this informal economy.

You know, street vendors, fellas selling tacos, you know, all this sort of thing, you know, tortilla sellers, these sort of things.

It's estimated that the informal sector, which is about over half the population in general Mexico...

is being preyed on by cartels, right?

There's a thing called the piso, which is a cartel tax, which is essentially a money, it's a heist.

So they're extorting people.

Like what the provost did on the UVF in Belfast.

You know, you have to pay your protection money

Or you won't get protected by us.

So this is going on on a monumental scale.

It's thought that extortion is now the third most common crime in Mexico.

After fraud and robbery, right?

Incredibly, 20 million out of the 126 million people who live in Mexico are victims of cartel extortion annually.

And it could be a few pesos here, a few dollars here.

It's not much.

But it all adds up in a course.