Promesas rotas: una mirada interseccional sobre la cocaína, las mujeres y la cárcel en el Perú

Abstract

This paper aims to strengthen a link between the history of cocaine and female imprisonment in Lima, Peru. First, I review the history of the traditional use of coca leaf in Peru and the development, use, and prohibition of cocaine, in a global framework. Second, I show how these are linked with the appearance of the category of figures knowns as «mules» and I analyze how women are targeted by the international drug trafficking networks to fill this role. Third, I analyze how drug trafficking can be considered as a survival strategy for many gendered, racialized and precarized women. Finally, I emphasize the idea that the profile of the women imprisoned in Lima for drug trafficking has to be understood from intersectional and global tendencies.

Keywords

• women
• gender
• Peru
• cocaine
• prison
• coca