In a new book called A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War”, Mexican novelist Carmen Boullosa and Pulitzer-Prize winning historian Mike Wallace document NAFTA’s passage as an essential godsend for the drug trade, the lucrativeness of which has greatly exacerbated official corruption.

The aftermath of the agreement, the authors note, saw the number of Mexican farmers living in poverty increase by one-third, with two million of them eventually forced to abandon their land.

To read the rest of the piece, visit Al Jazeera.