Armed Violence and Poppy Cultivation in Mexico
In Badiraguato, a rural, marginalized community in Mexico, the mayor enthusiastically commissioned the construction of a belvedere where, like Hollywood Hill, monumental letters stand out over the landscape. It has to be said that the village, in the heart of the steep Sinaloa region, has been featured on screens all over the world by a Netflix series following in the footsteps of Mexico’s most notorious « Narcos », Joaquín El Chapo Guzman and Rafael Caro Quintero. It is also the epicenter of a « war on drugs » that has claimed more victims since the beginning of the 21st century than the conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq.
But how do the people who remain invisible in this great saga, who subsist in this region without jobs, who run a grocery store, cultivate a small plot of land or hold a position in the local administration, live their daily lives? How does one get around in this landlocked area, where a bad encounter can happen at any moment? Who are the poppy growers, caught between military repression and exploitation by those who buy their crops? What does it mean to be a woman in a place suspended from the violence of men? And how do you make sense of the murders that punctuate daily life?
This sensitive ethnography lifts the veil on a forbidden zone that is the flip side of our globalized economy, by getting as close as possible to the people’s logic of action. The anthropological investigation brings us face-to-face with the uncertainty that reigns when, once again, « dawn has broken over a dead man ».
