Histories of Drug Trafficking in Twentieth-Century Mexico [Paperback]

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.Wil G. Panstersis a professor of social and political anthropology of Latin America at Utrecht University. He is the editor ofViolence, Coercion and State-Making in Twentieth-Century Mexico: The Other Half of the CentaurandLa Santa Muerte in Mexico: History, Devotion, and Society(UNM Press).

Benjamin T. Smithis a professor of Latin American history at the University of Warwick. His works includeThe Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade;The Mexican Press and Civil Society, 1940–1976: Stories from the Newsroom, Stories from the Street; andThe Roots of Conservatism in Mexico: Catholicism, Society, and Politics in the Mixteca Baja, 1750–1962(UNM Press).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 ofHistories of Drug Trafficking in Twentieth-Century Mexicomake it essential reading for scholars of modern Mexico.--Paul Gillingham, author ofCuauhtémoc's Bones: Forging National Identity in Modern Mexico“A cutting-edge, boots-on-the-grounl³Ð