Abstract
With an ongoing global war on drugs, obtaining access to the social world of drug markets can be plagued with difficulty. Moreover, many studies on the trafficking of drugs have ignored or not considered the experiences of women. The studies that have included women have portrayed them either as victims or as participants in emancipation. Fleetwood sets out to change these “dualisms” or gendered binaries in the literature by studying male and female drug mules (someone who carries drugs across international borders for someone else) in order to make women sociologically visible. The context for gathering insights were produced by interviewing and observing foreign women and men incarcerated in two Ecuadorian prisons. Rather than being a lone ethnographer, she was part of team of researchers who were conducting fieldwork studies in the prison. Entrée simply required a passport and a listening ear that helped break up the boredom and monotony for many of the women and men who were serving 8 to 12 years in prison. Getting people to talk about trafficking however required overcoming obstacles by using a unique blend of methodology and narrative analysis, which I will outline in this book review, and by encountering some insurmountable adversities.
The book Drug Mules includes eight chapters that begins with a review of the literature, setting the context of the study and the participants, and then outlining the process for women and men who were engaged in the trafficking of drugs across international borders. The global media and societal characterizations have described women as victims (drug mules) and males as exploiters (traffickers). Fleetwood describes how the public attention of drug mules began in the early 1990s and the stories primarily focused on Black and ethnic minority women from “Third World” countries. As the world’s cocaine was produced in Latin America, distributing this drug around the globe required transportation and Ecuador was key among these routes. However, in order to receive national security investments, Ecuador signed an agreement with the United States in 2002 that required increasing the number of people arrested and the quantity of drugs seized which resulted in an increase in the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses. In Quito, Ecuador, 70% to 80% of women prisoners were charged with drug offenses and 23% were foreign nationals from many parts of the globe. Ecuador was described as having some of the harshest sentences for trafficking and the prisons have been a focal point for human rights abuses and protest.
Methodologically, the author reflexively presents her personal background in terms of ancestry, age, gender, and privilege to conduct interviews in a location where she is an outsider. Fleetwood’s first visit to the prison occurred in 2002 as an undergraduate student. Around this time she had visited Quito, Ecuador, from the North to learn Spanish. Gaining entry into the prison was relatively easy, but getting the women to open up required effort. Fleetwood describes this as the “code of silence” and an overall taboo against discussing trafficking. Women were stigmatized for trafficking charges and also faced potential repercussions for being perceived as a snitch for talking about their offense. Undeterred by the silence, Fleetwood followed a narrative methodology to listen to everything, create opportunities for different types of narratives, and engage in probing and prompting to learn more about how these women and men described their lives and the situations that led them to become a drug mule. Fleetwood continued her research until 2007 and obtained 31 formal respondents who provided a total of 80 combined interviews, as some respondents were interviewed up to 5 times. Interviews were nearly equally divided between males and females. The majority of the data were collected during a period of 16 months from 2005 to 2006 where Fleetwood would visit the prison up to 20 hr a week, that is, 3 days at the women’s prison and 1 day at the men’s.
The stories were set in narrative criminology that shaped the methods, theory, and analysis to blend material realities and culture into (1) an ethnomethodological telling of a situation and (2) as a guide to action. Such an approach allowed Fleetwood the ability to critique the language for how the drug war was framed, and concepts used, in addition to developing an understanding of how women and men described how they came to be in an Ecuadorian prison. Fleetwood found most women were not targeted for this type of work, but rather drug traffickers prefer individuals who can assimilate and blend in by speaking a foreign language, being well traveled, and often times appearing like a tourist. She describes how many young European backpackers can make excellent recruits to smuggle drugs as mules and can be of any age, gender, or class background. Thus, rather than the stereotypical targets profiled by law enforcement, traffickers wanted to ensure their investment arrived undetected. Drug mules themselves could earn an average of US$6,000 to US$9,000 per transport which offered many incentives toward fulfilling economic or romantic needs for participants and larger profits for traffickers.
The strengths of the methods, narrative analysis, and the emphasis of the importance of women make this book an important contribution to the war on drugs and drug market literatures. However, no book review is complete without some points of reflection. In particular, this reviewer was interested in learning more about why Ecuadorian women refused to participate in this study. Since the author was an outsider to this country, as were the interviewees, it made me curious to learn more about the role of drug mules and traffickers from a postcolonial theory or crime control model that was alluded to in the conclusion. There was also mention of the oldest pavilion of the prison housing primarily poor Afro-Ecuadorian women who were categorized as troublesome or violent whereas the newest section was housed by educated, middle-class women of whom many were foreign nationals. Since the media began by painting the picture of drug mules as women of color from third world countries, it was refreshing to read a book that did not reinforce these stereotypes or attempt to steal the stories of women of color for personal academic gain. However, it presents a challenge for future insider/outsider research that can offer increased insight into indigenous forms of agency and subjective experiences told by women of color in their own words.
The overall outcome for Drug Mules: Women in the International Cocaine Trade is an insightful analysis of both the process of transporting drugs and the roles in which structure and agency inform individual decision making in addition to carving out space for which readers can learn from the women in the telling of these events. The book provides an enlightening read and a future paperback edition will allow educators the opportunity to assign this book to their classes in order to continue these discussions.