INTRODUCTION²

Problem drug use and criminal income and drug markets are usually analyzed in isolation. Regarding problem drug use, there are prevailing views that stress the so-called “inadequacy of the self” ( ^{Reguillo, 2010} ), and which posit the existence of individual predisposing factors toward “addictions” without engaging in a critical discussion of the role played by structural conditions or the possible meanings of drug use for drug users. Illegal drug markets, on the other hand, are generally discussed at meso and macro levels, with a tendency to focus on the violence this phenomenon causes. In this article, I suggest there is a need to establish a connection between both levels of analysis (micro and meso) to uncover how security policies affect populations’ health and, in particular, how changes in the dynamics of local drug markets affect individual drug use trajectories.

Specifically, I describe how the socioeconomic conditions of the city of Hermosillo, rifts within organizations engaged in organized crime³ and emerging dynamics in such organizations, and the lack of sufficient public addiction treatment programs have led to, on the one hand, a local market for methamphetamine and heroine and a resulting increase in heavy use of these substances with no alternatives to reduce harm or access public treatment services. On the other hand, a greater presence of organized crime groups in neighborhood spaces facilitated conditions that would encourage younger problem drug users to take up a career in crime, viewing the illegal drug market as an option that could enable them to survive, advance socially, and earn the respect of their peers. This setting has seen an increase in drug-related risks and harm, resulting in greater levels of social marginalization and exclusion, and heavier, riskier patterns of drug use, among other consequences.

This paper is organized into five parts. The first presents the theoretical perspective from which problem drug use and its relationship with organized crime are addressed. The second part describes the methodological strategy employed to collect and analyze empirical material. Subsequently, the article presents the broader context in which study participants shaped their own criminal and drug use trajectories, before exploring the life stories of three male drug users from three different generations, which reveal changes in the association between study participants and criminality.

The article concludes by suggesting that reorganizations in the criminal world, carried out in response to state strategies to eradicate it, along with the social stigma around the figure of the “addict,” have facilitated the entry of impoverished young problem drug users into the lowest rungs of criminal groups, increasing their exposure to violence and death while legitimizing the social control of poor youth through these deadly mechanisms by portraying them socially as “unfit” for the system –in other words, as surplus population.

STIGMA AS A SOCIAL CONTROL STRATEGY

Drug use is seen here as a sociocultural practice with meanings and consequences interwoven in a complex web of social, economic, political, historical, and cultural conditions that tie in with subjects’ life stories. As such, drug use is a diverse and changing practice with meanings, representations, and dynamics that evolve over time to conform to changes in sociocultural frameworks, the availability of substances in markets, the types of sociability constructed around them, and subjects’ individual life circumstances.

Neither are the effects of drug use on individuals’ lives homogeneous. Indeed, these effects are mediated by users’ social class and sex, and the way they connect to conventional society, which condemns drug use as a threat to cultural expectations linked to the values of productivity and rationality resulting from capitalism as a form of social organization ( ^{Romaní, 2010} ).

In these terms, it is in interaction between subjects and/or social groups occupying different parts of the social structure, and among whom power is distributed unequally, that drug use is construed as a transgressive practice, and the transgressor is labeled and eventually stigmatized ( ^{Link & Phelan, 2001} ).

Stigma, according to Goffman (2006), is the result of social relations in which a particular characteristic of an individual becomes a discreditable attribute. In keeping with ^{Link and Phelan (2001)} , the construction of stigma requires the co-occurrence of labeling, stereotyping, separation, loss of status, discrimination, and the exercise of power. These mechanisms are mutually reinforcing and interchangeable; however, it is the exercise of power by one group over another that enables stigmatization.

Effective stigmatization through the figure of the “addict” legitimizes discrimination and social exclusion processes, bringing about new inequality in access to opportunities that overlaps with other pre-existing types of inequality (based on gender, class, ethnicity, etc.), exacerbating the social disadvantage and depriving the participants of this study of the little capital within their reach and the means of cashing in on this capital, thus worsening “the spiral of decapitalization and accumulation of disadvantages (both material and symbolic)” ( ^{Reguillo, 2010, p. 396} ) throughout their lifetime. It is within the context of this process that an association with violent or criminal groups takes on meaning, while changing drug use experiences and associated meanings, bringing about new conditions that may potentially worsen substance dependence.

The hypothesis I develop in this study is that problem drug use, and subsequent association with organized crime groups, are the result of the tension caused among the participants of this study by the internalization of an aspirational framework that emphasizes monetary success, social advancement, and consumption as ideals for wellbeing, and the difficulty of achieving these goals through institutional channels or socially accepted means due to their subordinate position in the opportunity structure⁴ ( ^{Merton, 1995 [1938]} ).

This does not mean there is an automatic relationship between poverty and violence, lawlessness and/or problem drug use; rather, the analysis presented here attempts to show how this context of structural tension has taken shape within a framework characterized by an institutional vacuum, worsening social exclusion, and the spread of organized crime ( ^{Reguillo, 2012a} ). The objective of the narratives constructed is to show how the narrators’ life stories have been challenged by each of these aspects, in different ways for each generation, and how the complex relationship between subjectivities and context creates a favorable platform for the efficient recruitment by organized crime groups of “disillusioned, impoverished youth seeking recognition” ( ^{Reguillo, 2012a, p. 40} ).

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The study population is made up of males who have injected illegal drugs at least once in the month prior to interviewing and are resident in Hermosillo, Sonora. Due to the population characteristics, critical case sampling was used ( ^{Martínez Salgado, 2012} ) and as such, the study participants are the most stigmatized and vulnerable users in the diverse universe of illegal drug users in Mexico. This selection of extreme cases reflects an interest in understanding what, at the time, was known as “HIV-risk contexts” within the framework of a broader study that focused on analyzing the structural characteristics that contributed to high HIV prevalence observed among injecting drug users (IDUs) in the city.

The data I analyze in this study was collected by means of an ethnographic participant observation exercise in IDU meeting places between January 2010 and December 2012 in Hermosillo. This enabled me to build trust with the participants, while defining the population and gaining an insight into their meeting places and socialization dynamics. In 2014, I selected meeting places that attracted the highest number of IDUs in order to gain a deeper understanding of the socialization and drug use practices that facilitated HIV transmission. Given that these spaces were chiefly occupied by males, I elected to make them the focus of my study, as it became clear that women had different drug use dynamics. Similarly, female socialization practices in peer groups and the ways they associate with organized crime groups are different from those of males, and as such, I felt they warranted a separate in-depth study.

The spaces chosen were located close to places were drugs were dealt and used, in the north of the city. The ethnographic work involved conducting day-long visits once a week from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Access to these spaces was facilitated by IDUs with whom a prior relationship had been established. Being there allowed me to witness the comings and goings around areas where drugs are purchased and used, and engage in informal conversations about the wide range of issues that shaped participants’ daily lives. This dayto-day presence helped to better understand the neighborhoods and other social and community actors, with whom I also struck up informal conservations aimed at broadening my understanding of the history of the sector, changes in the dynamics of drug dealing and use, and associated community conflicts. All this information was systematized in field diaries, which were part of the analysis.

Additionally, thirteen life stories were collected among the men who occupied these spaces on a daily basis, using an in-depth interview based on the instruction “Tell me about your history with drugs, from the time you began until now,” which sought to elicit a free story around individual lives that would enable a detailed reconstruction of drug use trajectories and how they relate to other life trajectories, together with the dynamics of drug dealing and use. The theoretical sample was stratified by birth cohort or generation (1960s, 1980s, 1990s), in an attempt to gather sufficient evidence to illustrate changes in the dynamics of drug dealing and use in each generation. As will be explained in the following section, each generation is the echo of a different stage in the history of illegal drug production, trafficking, and commercialization in Mexico and the socioeconomic history of Hermosillo.

The interviewees gave informed consent to be interviewed, and the study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of El Colegio de Sonora. The interviews were conducted in participants’ houses and public spaces like parks and coffee shops close to the meeting places. All interviews were audio-recorded and then transcribed for analysis by constructing life stories ( ^{Bertaux, 1983} ) organized by generation.

In general terms, study participants come from poor households and, at the time of the interview, continue to hold the same social position as their parents and are employed mostly in low-skilled manual jobs. A generational comparison reveals that younger participants attained higher levels of schooling. The maximum level of schooling attained is a full middle school education, which, although lower than the average in Sonora (10 years of education), is the average level of education for the Mexican population as a whole (9 years) (Intercensal Survey, ^{Inegi, 2015} ). As far as drug use trajectories are concerned, no generational differences were observed in starting ages, but the type of drugs did differ.

While those born in the 1960s started out on inhalants,⁵ those born in the 1980s started mostly on psychotropic pills and/or marijuana, and those born in the 1990s began on crystal meth.

For this article, I analyze the life stories of three participants in the study –one for each generation (1960s, 1980s, 1990s)– who were directly involved in drug dealing in Hermosillo. Emergent themes were identified in each story and used to analyze the data as a whole. The participants’ names have been changed in this article.

The fact that the narrative analysis is structured as a story that develops over time, with a beginning and ending, makes it possible to forge comprehensive links between historical time, social time, and individual time, helping to show how they affect each other ( ^{Chase, 2005} ). To that end, the following section describes the socioeconomic conditions experienced in Hermosillo between 1970 and 2000, the changes documented during this period in the dynamics of illegal drug dealing, and how these changes have manifested themselves in the city. I go on to describe how these social and historical changes impacted the participants’ lives in terms of the drugs they had access to, the type of trajectory constructed, and their relationship with organized crime.

HERMOSILLO, INEQUALITY AND DISILLUSIONMENT: NOTES ON THE SOCIOECONOMIC CONTEXT AND THE PRODUCTION, TRAFFICKING, AND COMMERCIALIZATION OF ILLEGAL DRUGS FROM 1970 TO 2016

Poppy cultivation in Mexico’s northern states, including Sonora, is not a recent phenomenon. Crops of papaver somniferum, commonly known as poppy, have been reported since the first decade of the 20^th century in various municipalities across the state⁶ and initially associated with the presence of a Chinese population ( ^{Astorga, 2015} ).

Hermosillo’s geographical location, 66 miles from the coast of the Sea of Cortés and 178 miles from Arizona (see Map 1 ), among other reasons, have made this city a key setting for heroin trafficking since 1920. This is not just due to its proximity to the Pacific, but its location on the railroad⁷ connecting Mexico City to Nogales ( ^{Astorga, 2015} ). Since then, the highways connecting Hermosillo to Nogales (a border city between Sonora and Arizona) and the railroad have been seen by U.S. agents as routes for opium, heroin, and marijuana trafficking, while Hermosillo was considered a city with a substantial population of opium smokers.

Source: Google Maps, 2019.

Map 1. Location of the City of Hermosillo, Sonora  

Due to its strategic importance, from 1920 Sonora became a key focus area for the implementation of illicit crop eradication campaigns, which became more frequent from 1938 under pressure from the U.S. government ( ^{Astorga, 2007} , ²⁰¹⁵ ). Consequently, during the 20^th century, poppy and marijuana crops were gradually relocated to less accessible parts of the state, in the Sierra Madre Occidental, ultimately becoming concentrated in the so-called Golden Triangle in the mountain range shared by the states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua ( ^{Astorga, 2015} ). From 1970, the mountain-dwellers faced increased pressure to give up their marijuana and poppy plantations, a process that crystallized with “Operation Condor” in the mountainous terrain of the Golden Triangle towards the end of the decade ( ^{Astorga, 2007} ).

The 1980s saw the greatest population growth in Hermosillo, which was partly the result of an exodus of impoverished peasants that had begun in the 1950s but intensified in the late 1970s. Military incursions in rural areas, along with ongoing conflicts over land and water since the turn of the century⁸ ( ^{Sanderson, 1981} ), were among the factors behind this exodus. So it was that in 1980, irregular settlements began to spring up to the north of the city, which were regularized at the end of the decade and gave rise to the neighborhoods where the lives of the study participants play out.

According to ^{Covarrubias (1990)} , the 1980s in Sonora were also characterized by significant rural decapitalization and the resulting crisis of the agricultural sector, along with an increase in the importance of industry, particularly maquiladoras⁹  and the automobile industry. Despite the new jobs created in the city, the decade saw the highest census unemployment rate (6.6%) and a significant decrease in wages, salaries, and social benefits, putting pressure on families to increase participation in informal labor ( ^{Lara Enríquez, 1990, p. 83} ).

According to ^{Covarrubias (1990)} , in addition to the decrease in public investment in social welfare, the processes described above also brought about an increase in inequality, which worsened in the 1990s and was accompanied by socio-spatial segregation processes and rational discrimination narratives.

In this context, the emergence of criminal organizations involved in the production, trafficking, and commercialization of illegal drugs in the 1980s marked the transformation of illicit crop farmers into transnational entrepreneurs, exponentially increasing their economic power, capacity for violence and ability to bribe local and national drug control agencies ( ^{Astorga, 2007} ; ^{Nill Sánchez, 2013} ). From that point, Hermosillo came under the control of the Sonora Cartel group, and was subsequently occupied by the so-called Sinaloa Cartel.

The establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the devaluation of the Mexican peso in 1994 marked the rural and urban economic crisis of the late 1990s, a decade in which poverty and inequality continued to increase in Hermosillo and Sonora. Two-thirds of jobs created in the state were informal, and unemployment reached 18% by the end of the decade ( ^{Camberos & Yáñez, 2003} ). Although 86 000 new jobs were generated, there was a 28% shortfall in formal jobs¹⁰ ( ^{Covarrubias, 2000} ). The number of people living in poverty increased by 52%, of whom 12% lived in extreme poverty ( ^{Camberos, 2000} ).

In this context, trafficking organizations enjoyed increased power, not just because, as a result of NAFTA, the volume of drugs exported to the United States increased and money laundering became easier ( ^{Payá, 2006} ), but also because they became a job option for farmers made destitute by the importation of corn from the United States and young people from low-income sectors who were unable to find work in border cities ( ^{Knight, 2012} ).

This increase in the power wielded by criminal drug trafficking organizations entailed a loss of any subordination to authorities; the beginning of territorial disputes, resulting in an increase in violence in border cities; the creation of local drug markets through the opening of ^tienditas (literally, “little shops”), ¹¹ by way of which poor neighborhoods became key spots for territorial control ( ^{García, 2013} ); and a heightened military presence in areas considered strategic for drug trafficking.

The election of the National Action Party (PAN) to the presidency in 2000 marked the end of 70 years of single-party rule in Mexico by the PRI. Among other consequences, this political change eroded the channels of mediation and control between the state and criminal organizations ( ^{Ríos Contreras, 2012} ). Additionally, the fall in the prices of heroin¹² and cocaine, and reduced demand for Mexican marijuana in the United States, exacerbated territorial disputes between groups of traffickers ( ^{García, 2013} ). This situation, in conjunction with political decentralization,¹³ drove these groups to form private armies, propelling violence in the country to historic levels ( ^{Ríos Contreras, 2012} ). Poorer young people were key actors in the establishment of these armies (op. cit.).¹⁴

Armed forces have been deployed on a constant basis since 1940 to control the production, and later the trafficking and commercialization, of illegal drugs in Sonora and other states playing a major role in these processes ( ^{Astorga, 2007} , ²⁰¹⁵ ). However, criminal organizations’ increased capacity for response, along with the state’s diminished capacity to control and negotiate with them, was put forward as an argument to increase the number of military personnel, broaden their scope of action, and extend their presence in cities over the last twenty years. All this took place within a context of reduced job opportunities, for young men in particular, ¹⁵ and the suspension or downsizing of social programs aimed at that sector of the population.

During the Felipe Calderón administration (2006-2012), also under the National Action Party, the militarization process in cities was stepped up to an unprecedented level in the context of the so-called “War on Drugs”, which sought to, among other objectives, capture the leaders of organizations involved in the production, trafficking, and commercialization of illegal drugs. At the time, Sonora underwent military interventions on an almost permanent basis ( ^{Atuesta Becerra, 2018} ). However, even with this heightened military presence, displays of violence were limited in Hermosillo until 2010, when the local press began to report frequent targeted killings in public spaces in broad daylight, clashes between heavily armed groups, kidnappings, and forced disappearances ( ^{Ospina Escobar, 2016} ).

It was precisely in 2010 that reports emerged of the breakup of criminal groups under the leadership of Arturo Beltrán Leyva, who had been killed that year and exercised a territorial monopoly on Hermosillo through the Sinaloa Cartel criminal group. This marked the beginning of an unprecedented increase in crime and homicide rates in Hermosillo, capital of the state of Sonora. Between 2006 and 2017, for example, the number of murders skyrocketed from 39 to 154 (Mortality statistics. Deaths from homicide by city of registration, ^{Inegi, 2018a} ). In 2016, Sonora was the sixth highest-ranking state in terms of crime rate per 100 000 inhabitants (42.6) (Crime rate. Sentences by state and municipality, ^{Inegi, 2018b} ).

Neither has the increased military presence in the state since 2006, in the context of the misnamed “War on Drugs”, managed to control the supply of drugs in the state. From 2008 to 2017, the amount of methamphetamine seized by the Secretariat of National Defense (SEDENA) and the Navy shot up from 81 kg to just over 27 000 kg, with the greatest reported amount seized in 2015 (36 000 kg). The state of Sonora ranked fifth nationally for methamphetamine seizures, with 10.7% of the national total, and along with Baja California, accounted for 70% of methamphetamine seized by U.S. border patrol between 2012 and 2016 ( ^{Arredondo, 2018} ).

Furthermore, the military presence has been inefficient in reducing the demand for drugs in Sonora, such that by 2012, the city of Hermosillo, the state capital, had the third highest number of injecting drug users, after Ciudad Juárez and Tijuana ( ^{Censida, 2010} ).

THE EPIDEMIC OF INJECTED DRUGS IN HERMOSILLO, SONORA

Reports by the Epidemiological Surveillance System of Addictions (SISVEA) for Sonora show an increase in the proportion of people who started drug use with cocaine, methamphetamine, and heroin.¹⁶ According to the National Survey of Drug Use Among Students (ENCODE, 2014), in Sonora in 2014, 1.3% of middle school students and 3.7% of high school students had used cocaine at some time, and 0.9% and 2.6%, respectively, had used methamphetamine at least once ( ^{Villatoro-Velázquez et al., 2015} ).

From 2012, methamphetamine and heroin emerged as the main drugs that drove users to attend treatment centers. Whereas in 2007, 15% of users seeking help at non-governmental treatment centers reported heroin as the drug with the highest impact, by 2009 this proportion had risen to 24.6%, and remained at this level until 2016, the date of the most recent national addiction survey. Methamphetamine was reported as the drug with the highest impact by 69% of adults attending treatment centers in 2017 ( ^{SISVEA, 2018} ). My hypothesis is that the growing prevalence of methamphetamine use in Hermosillo is associated with the establishment of a local drug market and the greater control exerted by organized crime groups over the last decade in neighborhood spaces, attributable to, among other factors, the breakup of the so-called Sinaloa Cartel.

The three narratives I present below describe how the socioeconomic changes experienced in Hermosillo, along with changes in the ways in which criminal organizations involved in the production, trafficking, and commercialization of illegal drugs operate, intertwine with the life stories of different generations of male problem drug users in Hermosillo, increasing drug use-related risks.

FROM ILLEGALITY TO CRIMINALITY: TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE DYNAMICS OF DRUG DEALING IN HERMOSILLO

CONCLUDING REMARKS

The three narratives presented here illustrate changes in the dynamics of drug dealing and the local drug market in poor sectors of northern Hermosillo between 1970 and 2016. In particular, a cross-generational interpretation of these narratives reveals the changes that have occurred in the types of drugs sold in this sector of the city, the intermediaries through whom drugs arrive in the neighborhoods, the relationships between distributors and users, and the type of relationship users from each generation establish with the police and the way they associate with criminal groups and actors that enable the supply of drugs in this sector of the city.

The changes described by the participants in the dynamics of drug dealing and use show how the social changes described in the brief overview of the history of illegal drug production and commercialization processes in the country have manifested themselves on an individual timeline, and the specificities that this social history translates into in the context of Hermosillo. This tale reveals how an increase in military and police presence has not just failed to stem the dynamism of local drug markets, but has actually increased deaths and criminalization among impoverished youth.

Analyzed from a generational perspective, the life stories of Rafael, Aurelio, and Vicente show how families in northern Hermosillo have faced worsening poverty from one generation to the next, how young people in this sector of the city have found themselves increasingly marginalized, and how organized crime has presented itself in different ways. This increased presence of organized crime has led to new forms of sociability in neighborhoods and transformed young men’s income-generating options and identity referents, along with the dynamics of drug dealing and use.

Although all three participants faced conditions of economic hardship and the stigma of being an “addict” due to drug use, the type of actors used to procure drugs exposed them to different levels of violence within contexts of drug dealing and use specific to each generation, marking differences in their criminal trajectories. Violence is less present in the account given by Rafael –the participant from the oldest generation– and takes on ever increasing relevance in the identity construction of younger users and as a foundation for relationships with others, their peers, institutions and/or their rivals. Additionally, the crime trajectories of younger generations began with more serious crimes (homicides) and were marked by early admission into prison (before the age of 18), hindering these younger subjects’ social inclusion and consolidating their criminal trajectories.

In a world where identities are increasingly constructed around appearance and consumption, joining organized crime –even within its lowest ranks– offers those who are young and living in poverty a window of opportunity to achieve their aspirations. As inequality in society increases, exclusion becomes more pronounced and social spaces are eroded, violence increasingly serves a function as a resource to gain respect and find one’s place in the world.

The stigma around the “addict” and the accompanying discourse on the failure of the “self” black out the key role played by the institutional and psychological violence faced by these young people throughout their lives, inequality, and social segregation in shaping the tragic fate associated with these young men who experience problem drug use. These young people are the incarnation of the sharpest contradiction of capitalism, as bearers of values and ideals imposed by the very system that excludes them from the benefits it offers, while perversely deriving profit from their yearning for inclusion. Stigma and exclusion transform these young people into disposable soldiers who fight to the death for drugs and distinction. Their deaths and dependence on drugs only matter to their families –when such families exist– as they constituted a surplus population long before they became addicted to drugs and found in violence a way of living and constructing their identity.