Sudetenland Tales by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Sudetenland Tales
Page 362
Several years of escalating threats, visits from goons and armed robberies followed until the shop owner decided to close the store his grandfather had opened in 1936.
Extortion is strangling businesses in Mexico. Much, but not all, of it is linked to Mexico's powerful organized crime groups. While some larger companies eat it as the cost of doing business, many smaller ones are forced to close.
The Mexican Employers’ Association, Coparmex, says extortion cost businesses some $1.3 billion in 2023. And this year, while other major crimes are descending, extortion continues to rise, up 10% nationally in the first quarter compared to the same period last year.
In Mexico City, the number of reported extortion cases nearly doubled in the first five months of 2025 to 498, up from 249 for the same period last year. It’s the highest total at this point in the year in the past six years, according to federal crime data.
A report to police goes nowhere
After the first call in 2019, the store owner had his employees stop answering the phone for eight months. Things quieted, but in early 2020, two men came to the shop and demanded payment. The owner pretended to be a shopper and slipped out.