Lectures from the Allen Room & Wertheim Study: Selling is more of a Habit: Women and Drug Trafficking in North American 1900 to 1970

     While contemporary analysis and popular culture had depicted “woman as victim” in international narcotics trafficking,  new images have emerged.  Women have always been part of the drug trade despite their fetishized representations in popular culture.   Using specific examples, Carey discusses how certain women gained financially from the smuggling and peddling of narcotics, and how they were often intimately involved in the planning and execution of the business.  Due to historical and economic shifts, women joined men in the creation of chief narcotic ports along the U.S.-Mexican border beginning in the 1910s and 1920s.  As the trade expanded, they deployed and employed new forms of technology to supply addicts in the major narcotics hubs of New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, and Toronto; cities far from Calexico-Mexicali, Tijuana, Ciudad Juárez, and Mexico City.
    Elaine Carey, writer in residence in the Library's Wertheim Study, and author of Plaza of Sacrifices: Gender, Power, and Terror in 1968 Mexico, will discuss her forthcoming book in which she examines women in the drug trade from 1900 to 1970. Despite century old attempts to legislate or police drug users and traffickers, the  growing  demand throughout the United States ensured that border regions served as sites of illicit trade that offered women, as well as men with the ingenuity, a place to conduct business, whether for supply, transit, contacts, or clients.

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