The Moral Economy of Drug Trafficking: Armed Civilians and Mexico’s Violence and Crime

• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20982941
• Author: Irene María Álvarez-Rodríguez
• Published date: 01 January 2021
• Date: 01 January 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20982941

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 236, Vol. 48 No. 1, January 2021, 231–244

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20982941

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

231

The Moral Economy of Drug Trafficking

Armed Civilians and Mexico’s Violence and Crime

by

Irene María Álvarez-Rodríguez

Translated by

Victoria Furio

The consolidation of armed civilian collectives in the Mexican state of Michoacán arose

in a setting in which the illegal regional economy no longer focused on drug smuggling

but had turned to a variety of criminal activities and in which the perspective of a moral

economy had been restored. This restructuring of the criminal economy was a strong fac-

tor in the emergence of the armed collectives.

La consolidación de colectivos civiles armados en el estado mexicano de Michoacán

surgió en un entorno en el que la economía regional ilegal ya no se centraba en el contra-

bando de drogas, sino una variedad de actividades delictivas y el restablecimiento de la

perspectiva de una economía moral. Esta reestructuración de la economía criminal se

convirtió en un factor importante en el surgimiento de los colectivos armados.

Keywords: Moral economy, Extractivism, Organized crime, Collective action, Drug

trafficking

The poor knew that the one way to make the rich yield was to twist their arms.

—E. P. Thompson

We don’t bother anybody, but we don’t let anybody bother us either.

—Martín

Irene María Álvarez-Rodríguez is a postdoctoral researcher at the Colegio de México, where

she is conducting an ethnographic study about the links between organized crime and civil

society in the states of Guerrero and Michoacán. From 2017 to 2019 she served as a researcher

for the project “Assessing the Potential for Civil Organizations in Regions Affected by Criminal

Violence to Hold State Institutions to Human-Rights-based Development,” sponsored by the

Colegio de Michoacán at its Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) and the

University of Aberdeen and funded by the ESRC/Newton Fund. She gratefully acknowledges

the support of the Economic and Social Research Council. An earlier version of this article was

presented to the CIDE’s drugs policy seminar, and she thanks those who attended and the

anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments. She dedicates this article to the

people of the coastal highlands, treasured friends. Victoria Furio is a translator and conference

interpreter located in Yonkers, NY.

982941LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20982941Latin American PerspectivesÁlvarez-Rodríguez / MORAL ECONOMY OF DRUG TRAFFICKING

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