The informal Governance of the Drug Trade: Violence, social organization and cocaine production in the Chapare, Bolivia.

By Thomas Grisaffi

Bolivia is a drug production and trafficking center and yet it exhibits far less violence than other countries that form part of cocaine’s commodity chain across Latin America. With reference to a case study from the Chapare, a coca-growing and drug processing zone in central Bolivia, this article considers why this is the case. Building from the literature on embedded economies and the ‘subsistence ethic’ of peasant communities, it shows how the drug trade is part of a local moral order that prioritizes kinship, reciprocal relations and community well-being and in doing so restricts the possibilities for violence. In addition, the agricultural unions act as a parallel form of governance, providing a framework for enforcing illicit contracts and the peaceful resolution of disputes. It is argued that illicit crop and drug production can be understood as a form of autonomous grassroots development. This article draws on more than three years of ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2005 and 2019.

Paper presented at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) annual congress (virtual congress). 28th May 2021. 23p.