Histories of Drug Trafficking in Twentieth-Century Mexico - by Wil G Pansters & Benjamin T Smith (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

This work brings together a new generation of drug historians and new historical sources to uncover the history of the drug trade and its regulations. While the US and Mexican governments developed anti-drug discourses and policies, which criminalized both high-profile traffickers and small-time addicts, these authorities also employed the criminals and cash connected to the drug trade to pursue more pressing political concerns. The politics, socioeconomic relations, and criminal justice system of modern Mexico have been shaped by these public and covert policies as well as by subnational histories of drug production and trafficking. The essays in this study explore this complicated narrative and provide insight into Mexico's history and the wider contemporary global drug trade.

Review Quotes

"A cutting-edge, boots-on-the-ground approach to researching drug trafficking provides us with new insights gleaned from archival collections only recently opened to the public."--Andrae M. Marak, coeditor of Smugglers, Brothels, and Twine: Historical Perspectives on Contraband and Vice in North America's Borderlands

"A groundbreaking book. . . . At last, a history of drugs in Mexico that goes beyond kingpins and explores instead the complex network of complicities, political interests, cultural determinants, and economic ramifications underpinning the trade."--Gema Kloppe-Santamaría, author of In the Vortex of Violence: Lynching, Extralegal Justice, and the State in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

"With a nasty irony, contemporary Mexico's most important phenomenon, the drug trade, has been the least historically understood. This book changes that. The methodological, conceptual, and empirical heft of Histories of Drug Trafficking in Twentieth-Century Mexico make it essential reading for scholars of modern Mexico."--Paul Gillingham, author of Cuauhtémoc's Bones: Forging National Identity in Modern Mexico