1975

1975 is the opening temporal marker for the story’s Badiraguato setting, where burning poppies introduce a history that later reaches from cartel influence over an election to the manipulation of Mexico’s financial crisis. The year’s significance lies in this contrast: a scene grounded in the drug-growing countryside precedes a much wider struggle over political authority and national wealth.

Opening in Badiraguato

The opening date is paired with a precise location: Badiraguato District, in Sinaloa, Mexico. The first image is of poppies burning, their red blossoms matched to red flames. This places the beginning in the countryside and makes the crop itself part of the story’s first impression; the narrative opens not with the later machinery of political influence, but with the landscape of cultivation.

From the early setting to the Federación

In a later political scene, Adán recognizes that Barrera has given a name to the power he is assembling: the Federación. Barrera describes Guadalajara as a safe place from which to serve it, and offers Abrego a share in his resources, friendships, and protection in exchange for a fee. The arrangement presents protection as both a commercial service and a means of binding allies to a center of power. Read against the 1975 opening, this episode marks a shift in scale from the poppy fields of Badiraguato to an organized network able to offer security and demand payment.

The 1988 election

The story gives a more specific political measure of that power in 1988. The Federación had helped the president steal the election: vote-counting computers malfunctioned when the opposition appeared poised to win and displace the Institutional Revolutionary Party. The episode connects the organization’s resources to the survival of the governing party, carrying its influence beyond protection deals and into the conditions under which political power changed hands—or did not.

The 1994 Peso Crisis

A later turning point begins on December 1, 1994, when a new Mexican president takes office. The next day, two brokerage houses controlled by the Federación begin buying government tesobonos; the following week, cartels withdraw capital from the national bank, forcing a 50 percent devaluation of the peso. The Federación then cashes in its bonds as the economy collapses. After the president invites the narco lords to return their money to Mexico to help revive the economy, Adán accepts only in exchange for a favorable trade environment. The sequence shows how far the power first introduced against the Badiraguato landscape has extended: from a drug-growing region to election interference and financial leverage over the state.