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Drugs Around the Corner: Domestic Drug Markets and Violence in Colombia and Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Angélica Durán-Martínez
Angélica Durán-Martínez*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Lowell. Angelica_duranmartinez@uml.edu
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Abstract

Over the past decade, drug consumption has increased in Colombia and Mexico, countries traditionally concerned with drug production and trafficking. Governments and observers have associated this growth with spikes in violence. Drawing on drug consumption surveys and fieldwork in four cities, this study argues that contrary to this perception, there is no automatic connection between domestic drug markets and violence. Violence depends on whether large drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) control low-level street dealers and on whether those DTOs have a market monopoly at the local level. When dealers are independent, violence might be sporadic, but when DTOs control dealers, violence can explode (given competition between DTOs) or implode (if one organization holds a monopoly). Control over dealers provides DTOs not only income but also informants and armed muscle. This article also shows that domestic drug markets are not new, and have grown incrementally in the past two decades.

Type
Research
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 57 , Issue 3 , Fall 2015 , pp. 122 - 146
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2015

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