RESUMO
In Putumayo, a jungle borderland in southern Colombia, thousands of farmers derive their livelihood from the cultivation and processing of coca leaf, exposing themselves to fertilizers, pesticides, and other toxic chemicals on a daily basis. In this article, we show how the coca growers' relationship with chemicals and the health risks to which they are exposed, are politically and institutionally structured. We discuss the specific impact of anti-narcotics policy in a broader context of deep inequalities and document the emergent and adaptive day-to-day attempts of the farmers to navigate the structural risk environment.
Assuntos
Coca , Cocaína , Humanos , Colômbia , Antropologia Médica , AgriculturaRESUMO
There is strong evidence suggesting that harm reduction policies are able to reduce the adverse health and social consequences of drug use. However, in this article I will compare two different countries to demonstrate that some social aspects lead to the adoption or rejection of harm reduction policies. In this case, countries where drugs are seen as a security concern are less likely to adopt these harm reduction policies. For that purpose, I will compare Colombia and Uruguay's political, normative, and social aspects, which are considered drivers in the adoption of harm reduction policies, as well as how those factors influence the treatments available for substance abuse disorders.
Assuntos
Redução do Dano , Drogas Ilícitas/provisão & distribuição , Política , Política Pública , Colômbia , Humanos , Transtornos Relacionados ao Uso de Substâncias/terapia , UruguaiRESUMO
This article responds empirically to the question posed by Stan Cohen about "why, when faced by knowledge of others' suffering and pain-particularly the suffering and pain resulting from what are called 'human rights violations'-does 'reaction' so often take the form of denial, avoidance, passivity, indifference, rationalisation or collusion?". Our context is Mexico's "war on drugs." Since 2006 this "war" has claimed the lives of around 240,000 Mexican citizens and disappeared around 60,000 others. Perpetrators include organized criminal gangs and state security services. Violence is pervasive and widely reported. Most people are at risk. Our study is based on qualitative interviews and focus groups involving 68 "ordinary Mexicans" living in five different Mexican cities which have varying levels of violence. It investigates participant proximity to the victims and the psychological defense mechanisms they deploy to cope with proximity to the violence. We found that 62 of our participants knew, directly or indirectly, one or more people who had been affected. We also found one dominant rationalization (defense mechanism) for the violence: that the victims were "involved in something" (drugs or organized crime) and therefore "deserved their fate." This echoes prevailing state discourses about the violence. We argue that the discourse of "involved" is a discourse of denial that plays three prominent roles in a highly violent society in which almost no-one is immune: it masks state violence, stigmatizes the victims, and sanctions bystander passivity. As such, we show how official and individual denial converge, live, and reproduce, and play a powerful role in the perpetuation of violence.
Assuntos
Negação em Psicologia , Drogas Ilícitas , Estigma Social , Violência/psicologia , Adolescente , Adulto , Idoso , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , México , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Pesquisa Qualitativa , Estereotipagem , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Between 1994 and 2015, militarized aerial fumigation was a central component of US-Colombia antidrug policy. Crop duster planes sprayed a concentrated formula of Monsanto's herbicide, glyphosate, over illicit crops, and also forests, soils, pastures, livestock, watersheds, subsistence food and human bodies. Given that a national peace agreement was signed in 2016 between FARC-EP guerrillas and the state to end Colombia's over five decades of war, certain government officials are quick to proclaim aerial fumigation of glyphosate an issue of the past. Rural communities, however, file quejas (complaints or grievances) seeking compensation from the state for the ongoing effects of the destruction of their licit agro-forestry. At the interfaces of feminist science and technology studies and anthropology, this article examines how evidentiary claims are mobilized when war deeply politicizes and moralizes technoscientific knowledge production. By ethnographically tracking the grievances filed by small farmers, I reveal the extent to which evidence circulating in zones of war - tree seedlings, subsistence crops, GPS coordinates and bureaucratic documents - retains (or not) the imprints of violence and toxicity. Given the systematic rejection of compensation claims, farmers engage in everyday material practices that attempt to transform chemically degraded ecologies. These everyday actualizations of justice exist both alongside and outside contestation over the geopolitically backed violence of state law. Rather than simply contrasting everyday acts of justice with denunciatory claims made against the state, farmers' reparative practices produce an evidentiary ecology that holds the state accountable while also ' senti-actuando' (feel-acting) alternative forms of justice.
RESUMO
BACKGROUND: The War on Drugs has raised the incarceration rates of racial minorities for non-violent drug-related crimes, profoundly stigmatized drug users, and redirected resources from drug prevention and treatment to militarizing federal and local law enforcement. Yet, while some states consider shifting their punitive approach to drug use, to one based on drug treatment and rehabilitation, nothing suggests that these policy shifts are being replicated in Puerto Rico. METHODS: This paper utilizes data from 360 PWID residing in four rural towns in the mountainous area of central Puerto Rico. We initially recruited 315 PWID using respondent-driven sampling (RDS) and collected data about risk practices and conducted HIV and HCV testing. During a second phase, we conducted 34 micro-ethnographic assays, in which we randomly recruited 34 participants from the first phase and included their ego networks in this phase. Our ethnographic inquiry produced significant data regarding the effects of the war on drugs on the local drug trade, drug availability, and injectors' social networks. RESULTS: Findings suggest that repressive policing has been ineffective in preventing drug distribution and use among those in our study. This type of law enforcement approach has resulted in the disproportionate incarceration of poor drug users in rural Puerto Rico, and mainly for nonviolent drug-related crimes. In addition, incarceration exposes PWID to a form of a cruel and unusual punishment: having to quit heroin "cold turkey" while the prison environment also represents a HIV/HCV risk. In turn, the war on drugs not only diverts resources from treatment but also shapes treatment ideologies, punishing non-compliant patients. CONCLUSION: Shifting the emphasis from repression to treatment and rehabilitation is likely to have a positive impact on the health and overall quality of life of PWID and their communities.
Assuntos
Crime/prevenção & controle , Usuários de Drogas/legislação & jurisprudência , Controle de Medicamentos e Entorpecentes , Infecções por HIV/prevenção & controle , Hepatite C/prevenção & controle , Serviços Preventivos de Saúde , Qualidade de Vida , Abuso de Substâncias por Via Intravenosa , Adulto , Crime/economia , Controle de Medicamentos e Entorpecentes/métodos , Controle de Medicamentos e Entorpecentes/estatística & dados numéricos , Feminino , Infecções por HIV/etiologia , Hepatite C/etiologia , Humanos , Masculino , Pessoa de Meia-Idade , Avaliação das Necessidades , Serviços Preventivos de Saúde/métodos , Serviços Preventivos de Saúde/organização & administração , Porto Rico/epidemiologia , População Rural , Abuso de Substâncias por Via Intravenosa/epidemiologia , Abuso de Substâncias por Via Intravenosa/psicologia , Abuso de Substâncias por Via Intravenosa/terapiaAssuntos
Publicidade Direta ao Consumidor/economia , Publicidade Direta ao Consumidor/legislação & jurisprudência , Custos de Medicamentos/legislação & jurisprudência , Controle de Medicamentos e Entorpecentes/economia , Controle de Medicamentos e Entorpecentes/legislação & jurisprudência , Drogas Ilícitas/economia , Drogas Ilícitas/provisão & distribuição , Comércio/economia , Comércio/legislação & jurisprudência , Humanos , Estados UnidosRESUMO
Nas duas ou três últimas décadas tornou-se comum o debate em torno dos malefícios produzidos pelo comércio e uso de substâncias ilícitas no Brasil. O problema das drogas, como ficou mundialmente conhecido nos discursos oficiais e midiáticos, passou a ser, se não o único, ao menos o mais importante determinante de uma série de mazelas sociais que atingem tanto os países ricos (classificados de consumidores), quanto os países pobres (os produtores e exportadores das diabólicas substâncias). Essa situação que, nos dias de hoje, afigura-se como extremamente perniciosa pode ser melhor entendida resgatando-se alguns elementos da história de sua constituição. Nesse sentido, traçamos uma suscinta história da proibição das drogas em âmbito mundial e nos valemos do conceito foucaultiano de biopoder e o de tanatopolítica da Guerra às Drogas desenvolvido por André Saldanha Costa para tecer breves comentários sobre o problema das drogas no Brasil. Nessa primeira aproximação, podemos afirmar a importância desses dois conceitos para o entendimento da vida despolitizada dos traficantes de drogas, bem como das políticas governamentais, tanto jurídicas quanto da saúde, voltadas a essa questão. (AU)
In the last two or three decades has become common the debate on the harmful effects produced by trade and use of illicit substances in Brazil. The "drug problem" as it became known worldwide in official and media discourses, has become, if not the only, at least the most important determinant of a series of social ills that affect both the rich countries (classified as consumers), and the poor countries (the producers and exporters of these "evil substances"). This situation that today is extremely pernicious, may be better understood through some elements of the story of its constitution. In this sense, we draw a succinct history of drug prohibition worldwide and we use the Foucauldian concept of biopower and the concept of death policy designed by André Saldanha Costa to comment briefly on the "drug problem" in Brazil. In this initial approach, we can affirm the importance of these two concepts for the understanding of the depoliticized life" of drug traffickers as well as the governmental policies, both legal and health focused on this issue. (AU)