commonunity

american anthropological association, a stand against the criminalization of drugs.

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American drug policy has direct effects on discrimination against Mexicans and Central Americans. We do not know how much Mexico’s drug war has cost. It is not a simple calculus, as many of the expenses are incurred at the state and local levels, and indirect costs are many. At the federal level, though, budgetary expenditures in security increased from 4.8% of the budget in 2005 to 6.6% in 2010. It is safe to say that, with an official increase of 3.2 million people living in poverty in the 2008-2010 period, US drug policy stimulates Mexican migration to the United States, even as it contributes to the criminalization of the migrant. Human rights violations stemming from immigration policies in places like Alabama, Arizona, and Georgia are a legitimate concern for the AAA; so is the violation of human rights exposed by the recent Human Rights Watch’s report on the Mexican Drug War.

Finally, there is the direct implication of drug policy for the practice of anthropology.

Concerned with the implications of the drug war for the practice of anthropology within Mexico, we held a small focus-group meeting with 6 anthropology students from various Mexican institutions. Each author also had numerous private and a few collective discussions of these issues. Here are some of the points that were raised in these conversations.

American anthropologists who are familiar with Mexican anthropology know that field research has been central to the practice of the discipline there. Indeed, Mexico’s undergraduate programs have traditionally included a rigorous fieldwork component in the curriculum. Some of those field projects have either been cancelled or seriously stymied by lack of support and confusion as to how best to face the current situation of insecurity. Mexican students’ ability to do field research is seriously in jeopardy.

Several schools have taken informal measures to discourage field research in specific regions; others have eliminated individual fieldwork, and tried to substitute it with brief group expeditions. Teachers are often unsure of how to act in the face of rumors and press reports on insecurity in significant numbers in rural and urban communities. Curricular innovation is cautious and slow by design in Mexican universities, so there has not yet been an adequate general response to the new situation in the teaching of anthropological methods. Because safety conditions have deteriorated rapidly, most of these measures that teachers and students have taken are ad hoc, and have not yet been streamlined into formal policies. But safety concerns are there, and they are very real.

Mexico’s Colegio de Antropólogos y Etnólogos does not have an emergency hotline or publish tallies of anthropologists who have been killed, raped or kidnapped during fieldwork. It should; and so should the AAA. We do not yet have an organization that collects and denounces these facts, the way journalists do.

Protection against the new risks connected to fieldwork is a subject that came up insistently in our conversations. In Mexico, like everywhere else, students carry out the bulk of anthropological field-research. But they have no health and life insurance coverage to cover fieldwork risks. They are receiving little support, or even recognition of the need of support. Most publicly funded field research in Mexico is done by way of grants, with senior researchers hiring undergraduate and graduate student field researchers. These assistant positions generally carry no health and life insurance attached to fieldwork risks. Universities that foster student field research rarely provide health or life insurance coverage. Fieldworkers are unprotected.

It is time for American anthropologists to get actively involved in the movement for the decriminalization of drugs in the United States, and in the support of their colleagues south of the border. Currently, US drug-policy runs against American public interest, it has failed to reduce drug consumption, and its favorite remedy – prison – is worse than the sickness that it is meant to cure. American drug policy is ravishing Mexico, increasing immigration to the United States, and justifying discrimination against immigrants.

If these reasons prove to be insufficient to mobilize our association, we should add one final consideration: American drug policy is making the practice of anthropology in Mexico hazardous, at precisely the time when our research is most sorely needed.