Marco A. Torres: Tabasco, Eden lost by the 4T, where Macuspana was not an Agualeguas, NL

Former President Carlos Salinas de Gortari (CSG) has a significant connection with Agualeguas, a small municipality in the state of Nuevo León.

And although he was born in Mexico City, one of his parents, Raúl Salinas Lozano, was from this northern town, while his mother, Margarita de Gortari, was born in Mexico City.

In fact, during his presidency, CSG used to frequently visit this place, especially during Holy Week, turning his family ranch in Agualeguas into a meeting point for politicians and businessmen.

Recently, being the homeland of the permanent leader of the current regime in power (MORENA), in this case former President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), it was expected that Tabasco, as an entity, and Macuspana as a town, would have a notable takeoff economically and socially, given the preferential treatment that this entity has received as a point of convergence of the four multimillion-dollar (in costs at least) flagship projects of this administration, namely:

1.- The Dos Bocas oil refinery

2.- The Mayan Train

3.- The Trans-Isthmian Corridor

4.- The expansion of the hydroelectric system

In fact, no other state in the country has that benefit. Today, a little more than six years after that long-awaited blessing of prosperity, which led us to assume that we would see Tabasco mentioned in news and editorials as a state of opportunity, development and security, we find it as material for newspaper and television reports where there is talk of multiple homicides, arson of buildings and vehicles, closure of companies due to lack of payments by PEMEX to its suppliers, accusations of corruption and links to drug trafficking from the previous government, pointed out by the current government, from the same party, which claims that the previous state secretary of security heads a criminal group, while the current secretary resigned this weekend after being publicly threatened with death for supposedly not fulfilling commitments of support and submission to local cartels.

Tabasco has never occupied the top spots in the daily reports of serious crimes by the National Public Security System, which has been a daily occurrence since the first day of this year.

Clearly, Tabasco is moving from being the Eden referred to in a famous song to a Lost Paradise.

The question that must be asked is: How did this happen? The answer, although scattered in fragments of notes and essays, essentially verifiable, is clear and regrettable. It should serve as a lesson to us as a country so that it does not multiply in other entities.

The arrival of multimillion-dollar investments in public capital and with it, as suppliers and contractors, private capital, inevitably attracted the attention of criminal organizations who saw in it opportunities for extortion, drug dealing and prostitution unprecedented in the region.

Two cartels arrived in this area within a short time, beginning to recruit local criminals and, very notoriously, courting and offering complicity and profits to state and municipal police agents and commanders, as well as mayors, notaries and businessmen, the latter initially with the idea that they would launder money from illegal activities.

The collusion with businessmen and officials at the first, second and third levels gave rise to the emergence of “business opportunities” that were previously unusual: converting companies controlled and capitalized by the cartels into suppliers of products and services, turning businessmen who previously laundered money into front men for the bosses, who would now be the real owners of the businesses.

It is estimated that between 25 and 30 percent of payments to suppliers in the case of Dos Bocas, and up to 40 percent in the case of the Mayan Train and the Trans-Isthmus Corridor, correspond to companies controlled to varying degrees by criminal organizations.

This clandestine business began to get complicated a little over a year ago, for different reasons, the parastatals in charge of the projects began to default on their payments, leaving the expected flows of narco-contractors up in the air, who reacted to this unexpected difficulty for them, who had never had to collect formal invoices from the government, with these actions:

1.- Put pressure on the officials who assigned them and were in charge of contract payments, with the collection mechanisms that are common in the criminal world: threats, kidnappings, confiscation and burning of assets, and in increasingly frequent cases, executions of officials or those close to them.

2.- Intensification of openly criminal activities to compensate for the lack of income from government contracts.

This has led to skyrocketing figures for extortion and kidnapping of citizens not involved in crime, drug dealing on the streets, and homicides against competitors in these crimes and of citizens who were unable to pay extortion or ransom.

3.- Worsening of huachicol, as criminals collect Pemex debts extrajudicially (in the form of informal default interest), seizing the state-owned company's "pipes" with fuel, or going to fill up their own at supply centers without paying for it.

All of the above adds to the misfortune that the economy of that entity is going through, which sees many businesses suffering that made investments in expansion or opening up, anticipating the economic "boom" that the refinery would bring with it.

Now, dozens of business premises in Paraíso, Tabasco, are seen vacant or closed due to lack of customers, as Dos Bocas is operating at a tenth of what was planned for these dates.

Let us hope that all this changes and that security will restore order to public life in Tabasco.

The author is an economist from UANL and a consultant specializing in financial issues, communication and security.