War on drugs or war on the poor? How bandit hunting formed a cover for Mexico's counterinsurgency campaign

If the drug trade has helped define the modern Mexican state, writes the author of a new article in The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, so too have wars on drugs. In "From Bandit Hunting to a War Against 'Social Poisoners': Counterinsurgency as Drug War and Drug War as Counterinsurgency in 1960s–1970s Southern Mexico," author Alexander Aviña argues that the strategies eventually employed against Mexican drug traders were first developed in the violent suppression of rural guerrilla movements.

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