Chains of dispossession and communities in struggle: the illegal opiate market in Guerrero (Mexico)

In this paper, it is explored the impact of militarized and punitive methods of drug control on indigenous and peasant communities engaged in the cultivation of poppies in Guerrero (Mexico), within a context of neoliberal agrarian counter-reform and state repression, operating through a multi-level range of power brokers. Through the lens of ethnography and mixed methodology, it is examined the dynamics and changing characteristics of the commodity chain of heroin, from field production to consumption and money laundering, and it is analysed the different logics of dispossession involved, as well as the rationales of normative discourses in producing communities and their survival strategies. The framework of analysis behind is drawn from studies regarding the anthropology of the state, the anthropology of the «illicit», and of capitalism, and critical development studies.