Gender Roles in the Drug Trade - Essay Example

Exploited or Exploiters Gender Roles and Power Politics in the Drug Trade Recent years have seen a marked rise in the number of women involved in drug trafficking and in the violence that invariably results from warfare among the major cartels and from attempts at interdiction. The National Women’s Institute has reported a 400 percent rise between 2007 and 2010 in the number of Mexican females convicted for activities connected to drug trafficking (Ramsey, 2011). That figure complicates (some would say belies) the traditional notion of women as victims of the drug trade; indeed, women have for some time served in a wide range of capacities, ranging from drug “mules” to assassins. There are recent examples of this mass socio-cultural shift: the arrest of the renowned “Queen of the Pacific,” Mexican drug lord Sandra Avila Beltran, and the portrayal of a brutal female drug kingpin by Salma Hayek in the soon-to-be-released Oliver Stone film Savages. Despite the unquestionably heavy feminine presence in the drug trade, the historically macho world of drug smuggling can still be said to have victimized women. Women, particularly in Latin American countries, have come to identify equality with access to commercial opportunity in the most lucrative business venture available to them: the drug trade. In this way, in their struggle for gender parity, women have wittingly become part of the same destructive cycle with which men have typically been associated. This may, in part, be driven by persistently high rates of violence against women in Latin America, with women seeking a measure of control amid the carnage (see graph, page 6). By asserting their femininity, some achieve power but compromise their moral existence in what can best be characterized as a devil’s bargain. This does not just happen in Central and South America: in the U.S., for example, the percentage of females imprisoned for drug-related offenses rose from 11 percent in 1979 to more than 30 percent by 2003 (Greene and Pranis, 2003). In their 2003 report, Greene and Pranis asserted that “women arrested for involvement in the drug trade tend to play peripheral or minimal roles, selling small amounts to support a habit, or simply living with intimates who engage in drug sales” (2003). While this may once have been true, the burgeoning drug trade has carried women to power and international infamy on a scale heretofore unknown and unanticipated by many for whom females have always been the prototypical victims of the drug trade and the collateral damage it creates. New lifestyle, new opportunity This is not to argue that countless women are not thus victimized. But their increasing presence at the highest levels of some of the most powerful drug organizations indicates that women are susceptible to the same economic and psychological motivations that have previously been ascribed to men only. In his widely cited anthropological study of the Mexican drug trade, Hugh Campbell has ascertained that female drug smugglers enjoy “a pleasurable lifestyle and relative autonomy from men,” aggrandizing their power in the same violent and ruthless ways as men. Campbell examines a female subject he identifies as Zulema, whose pursuit of the high-risk, high-return lifestyle is typical of the new breed of women in the trade. “Contrary to standard interpretations of women’s motivation for entry into drug smuggling, Zulema was initially attracted to crime, including drug-selling, by the opportunity it presented for adventure and revolt against bourgeois lifestyles” (antropologi, 2008). Such women have done more than simply reject poverty and a non-descript lifestyle; they seek the “high” that comes from a powerful adrenaline rush. There is an element of glamour to the drug underworld, and in a sense women have long been a part of the image it projects in mass culture. There is a long association between beauty and illicit activity. During Prohibition, bootleggers were famous for showing off beautiful female companions, once known as “molls.” One is reminded of the girlfriend, played by Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface, a woman whose own attractiveness and sexual power added to the exhilarating world in which the drug lord, played by Al Pacino, moved and for which he was willing to risk everything. Sandra Avila Beltran, and others like her, have transcended this image, having wielded sexual attractiveness like a weapon, so much so that Avila has become a legend in Mexico (a ballad written in her honor likens her beauty to that or a thorny rose). In this way, attractive women have used their sexuality to win influence in the drug trade, so much so that the drug cartels have in recent years come to regard feminine sexuality as a business asset: “Because a woman could use her appearance to bypass security officers, DTO affiliates began attending beauty pageants held in Latin America in order to approach contestants with the lures associated with drug trafficking…Colombian beauty queen and lingerie model, Angie Valencia…was supposedly using other young, beautiful models to transport drugs in an international cocaine ring” (Mares, 2011). For other women the lure of power and riches in the drug trade brings out another side of their personality, one that is much more reminiscent of a traditional drug kingpin. Campbell’s Zulema, for example, “discarded the discreet attire of her social class and donned a masculine chola outfit…(her) macho style and determination gained her acceptance in the…male- dominated drug world” (antropologi, 2003). In this way, drug smuggling brings with it a “freedom from male control” that few women in Mexico and other Latin American countries could ever hope to attain (2003). They have leveled cultural stereotypes and the assumption that the only place for women in the world of drug trafficking is that of “trophy wife” (2003). Clearly, there is more ambiguity associated with women as both victims of, and perpetrators in, the drug trade. Exploiters and exploited A 2011 New York Times article revealed many of the grittier details of female drug involvement, many of which have been obscured by more newsworthy stories like Beltran’s. The Times shows that women are involved in virtually every aspect of the industry, from bottom to top – “More women are working in every aspect of the economy, ‘including drug trafficking,’” the Times article quotes a University of Texas researcher as saying (Cave, 2011). To that end, their sex can provide a ready means of concealment. American border patrol officials have reported an increase in the number of young, attractive women wearing short skirts who have been caught with drugs taped to the inside of their legs (2011). Others have been used to lure and kidnap men through the promise of sex (2011). And some have turned to the most lethal and dangerous means of using the drug trade to make their fortunes. In early 2012, a 26-year-old woman named Maria Jimenez was arrested for having assassinated 20 people in and around the northern Mexican city of Monterrey on behalf of the Los Zetas drug cartel. Nicknamed La Tosca, Jimenez was reportedly paid $1,700 per month for her services, which included the killing of numerous rival drug gang members and the murder of a police officer (Moran, 2012). Jimenez may be on the extreme end of such activity among females, but she is by no means alone. Her infamy and that of other women has caused a gradual erosion of long-held pre-conceptions among law enforcement officials and the general public about the extent of feminine involvement in perhaps the most vicious criminal activity on the planet. The fact that ambiguity still surrounds the issue of women in the drug trade makes women such as La Tosca exponentially more dangerous because such presumptions confer a degree of anonymity and concealment. Conclusion Drug smuggling organizations have adapted in recent years to meet new challenges presented by law enforcement agencies and rival gangs. This has resulted in unprecedented violence, technical sophistication and influence with governments that find themselves increasingly compromised by the resiliency and fluid nature of the cartels. In this new landscape, women have found new paths to power that were inaccessible just a few years ago. The situation has altered traditional gender roles at the highest levels of the drug underworld; it has also exacerbated an already considerable level of ambiguity. If women, such as Sandra Avila Beltran, can use their sexuality and physical attractiveness to access power, are they simply employing their personal resources the way a man would draw on natural aggressiveness and physical personal strength? Or does it mean that their traditional place in the hierarchy has remained essentially the same, and that women such as Beltran and Maria Jimenez are simply exceptions to the rule? Ultimately, one must concede that women have learned that to become as powerful as men, they must match them in savagery and opportunism, as such beating them at their own game. Courtesy: InSightCrime (http://www.insightcrime.org) Works Cited Cave, Damien. “Mexico’s Drug War, Feminized.” The New York Times. 13 August 2011. Greene, Judith and Pranis, Kevin. (2003). “Part I: Growth Trends and Recent Research.” Institute on Women and Criminal Justice. New York: Women’s Prison Association. LeBel, Etienne P. “Prosperous Deviance: Drug Trafficking.” Thesis, 3 March 2003. Retrieved 24 September 2012 from http://publish.uwa.ca. Marea, Andrea. “The Rise of Femicide and Women in Drug Trafficking.” COHA. 28 October 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2012 from http://www.coha.org/the-rise-of-femicide-and-women-in-drug-trafficking/. Moran, Lee. “Mexico’s Deadliest Female Assassin, 26, Confesses to Kidnapping, Drug Dealing and the Killing of TWENTY People.” The Mail Online. Retrieved 25 September 2012 from http://dailymail.co.uk/new/article. Ramsey, Geoffrey. “Women in Mexico’s Drug War: Victims and Villains.” Insight: Organized Crime in the Americas. 13 December 2011. Retrieved 30 August 2012 from http://www.insightcrime.org/insight-latest-news/item/. “Study: Drug Smuggling as Vehicle for Female Empowerment?” antropologi.info. 15 July 2008. Retrieved 24 September 2012 from http://www.antropologi.info. Read More