Women's involvement in drug trafficking in recent years has expanded dramatically. Yet there are few studies of female drug smugglers, the causes of female involvement in smuggling, and the impact of smuggling on women's lives specifically. In this article, I provide in-depth ethnographic interviews and observations of a broad spectrum of female drug smugglers on the U.S.-Mexico border. Moving beyond stereotypes, I examine how drug trafficking affects women's relationships with men and their position in society.Economic and cultural factors strongly shape women's involvement in drug smuggling and the effects of smuggling on their lives, but these factors and effects vary significantly, depending on women's social class position and place within drug organizations. High-level female drug smugglers may be attracted to the power and mystique of drug trafficking and may achieve a relative independence from male dominance. Middle-level women in smuggling organizations obtain less freedom vis-à-vis men but may manipulate gender stereotypes to their advantage in the smuggling world. Lowlevel mules also perform (or subvert) traditional gender roles as a smuggling Female Drug Smugglers on the U.S.-Mexico Border: Gender, Crime, and Empowerment 234 strategy, but receive less economic benefit and less power, though in some cases some independence from male domestic control. A fourth category of women do not smuggle drugs but are negatively impacted by the male smugglers with whom they are associated.I argue that drug smuggling frequently leads to female victimization, especially at the lowest and middle levels of drug trafficking organizations. However, it is also, in the case of high-level and some low-level and middle-level smugglers, a vehicle for female empowerment.
Many have debated whether or not human smugglers, known as coyotes, are involved with drug trafficking organizations. Scholars have largely rejected so-called "narcocoyotaje", however; we hope to problematize this narrative by adding a new theoretical layer to the discussion. Namely, we explore the ways in which different criminal activities produce hierarchies and control illicit activities within the clandestine geography of the US-Mexico border. These "illicit regimes" operate against the State, creating a hierarchy that dominates other illicit activities in order to maximize profit, avoid detection and consolidate power. While other studies have explored the relationships between the State and illicit practices this article takes the relationship between two illicit industries as its object of study. Doing so will help us move past the simply binary question about whether or not coyotes are involved with drug cartels, and allows us to understand what is being produced by this relationship, and its consequences for everyone involved. Resumen: El presente artículo analiza el debate sobre el fenómeno del coyotaje y si los coyotes (traficantes de indocumentados) establecen una relación con las organizaciones del narcotráfico. Hasta ahora los estudios han descartado la idea del "narco-coyotaje" (una asociación entre narcotraficantes y traficantes de migrantes). Sin embargo, la investigación presentada retoma este tema y le da un giro empírico y teórico. Examinamos como las diferentes actividades criminales crean jerarquías que controlan los negocios ilícitos en la frontera de México con los Estados Unidos. Estos "regímenes ilícitos" operan en contra del Estado y construyen estructuras compuestas de diversas ramas de negocios "chuecos" para producir mayores ganancias, evitar la ley y consolidar su poder. Aunque otros estudios abarcan la relación entre el estado y los grupos criminales, este articulo toma como tema de investigación la relación entre dos importantes industrias ilícitas (el contrabando de migrantes y el de narcóticos). Este nuevo enfoque nos ayuda a comprender las limitaciones de las investigaciones que se reducen solo a la cuestión sobre una posible relación entre coyotes y los carteles de drogas; a la vez esto nos da una nueva visión sobre las consecuencias sociales de esta relación criminal.
Mexico's drug ‘war’ produced 100,000 deaths between 2006 and 2012. The extreme violence has raised the notion that Mexico has become a failed state wracked by terrorism. We categorise the forms of narco‐violence in Mexico in light of the literature on terrorism and contemporary Mexican politics. Our study suggests three overlapping dimensions of narco‐violence that should be considered terrorism: (a) narco‐terror as a struggle for regional political control; (b) narco‐terror as a practice ordered by cartel leaders rather than spontaneous violence of foot soldiers; and (c) narco‐terror as an expansion strategy from solely drug trafficking to other kinds of organised crime.
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