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 factor in the emergence of the armed collectives.

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