University:
University of Wyoming
Course:
POLS4445 | Drug War Geopolitics in the Americas
Academic year:

2023
Views:

270

Pages:

1
Author:

Allison B.

Through our readings this week, it is clear that individuals’ livelihoods and social reproduction influence their decision to produce drugs/drug plants for economic benefits and out of cultural situations. As Magliocca et al. explains, understanding why individuals produce drugs/drug plants is necessary for the U.S. and other Latin American governments to enforce drug policy. These strategies as we’ve discussed include drug crop eradication which increases the operating costs and dangers of drug producers, seemingly diminishing their efforts to produce. However, this notion isn’t true when understanding drugs are not only produced/grown for their economic benefits. Ledebur’s reading on Bolivia explains that since the early 1980s, the Bolivian government as a whole has depended on economic returns from international cocaine sales, and Bolivian farmers on “coca cultivation for survival” (143). As we’ve discussed in this course, coca is vitally important to indigenous Andean cultures and its use is a tradition that has long exceeded modern drug policies and DEA involvement. Also, U.S. military and drug control authorities through eradication programs like the Joint Task Force had some success in initial eradication, but at the cost of human rights abuses that resulted in the aggravation and resentment of both the Bolivian government and public. Perramond analyses the drug trade (specifically marijuana and poppy) in Northwestern Mexico. With the people groups of the Tohono and the Raramuri, they each play their own distinct role in the trade/transport of narcotics. The Drug War and policies in the region have disproportionately impacted indigneous populations and violence in the region grows. With these policies, Perramond describes a “great irony” (217) of how escalation leads to higher drug prices in Mexico and in the US, only adding value to the narcotics.