My first job out of college, in 1983, was working for Coca-Cola. The training, which lasted a month, was the same for everyone: all day in a truck, making deliveries, mostly to rural areas. We would leave before dawn and return as the sun was setting. We delivered soft drinks to churches and whorehouses. We went to places that didn’t appear on any map, where there were no roads beyond the tracks left by trucks like ours. We went where the government didn’t go, where there were no hospitals, no schools and sometimes even no running water.

The other vehicles we passed on the road were trucks belonging to Pepsi or manufacturers of potato chips, salted peanuts, cookies or some other form of junk food.

Nowadays, one of the most dangerous jobs in Mexico is driving a delivery truck down what Graham Greene called “lawless roads,” where delivery men are robbed, extorted and even killed.

Starting with the presidency of Felipe Calderón, from 2006 to 2012, the government lost control over the war on drug cartels and failed to fulfill its part of the social contract. It has been unable to guarantee the safety of its citizens and to implement educational reforms, but it has given politicians carte blanche to earn money through illegal means and to benefit swimmingly from their tolerance of private monopolies. The government has been truly valiant, however, when it comes to assaulting its citizens with more taxes.