Papers by Shaylih Ryan Muehlmann
Public Culture, 2020
The term narco is one of the most loaded in the contemporary global lexicon, and the fear and oth... more The term narco is one of the most loaded in the contemporary global lexicon, and the fear and othering it evokes is comparable to the effect terrorist has worldwide and communist had during the Cold War. In Mexico, in particular, the term narcotraficante and the related assumptions and narratives that describe the illegal trafficking of drugs have strongly informed official and media discourses about the causes of the extreme levels of drug-related violence that have devastated the country.
In Infrastructure, Environment, and Life in the Anthropocene. Kregg Hetherington, Ed., Pp. 45-65.
In this review, I explore some of the lines of inquiry that have emerged in anthropology and clos... more In this review, I explore some of the lines of inquiry that have emerged in anthropology and closely related disciplines around the theme of drugs and gender. The critical research on drugs over the past few decades has tended to focus on how prohibition policies are racialized, which has been important for revealing the injustice and racism found in drug policies and in com-monsense notions about drugs and drug use. Drawing from intersectional theorists who have long argued that racial categories are never experienced or imposed as singular identities separate from gender, language, class, and sexuality, I argue in this article that the literature on gender and drugs has struggled with two main interrelated problems: determining (a) how to understand gender and race together and (b) how to theorize gender in relation to power when these two factors are often conflated with each other in both popular discourse and theoretical dispositions about the war on drugs.
The Mexican government's "war on drugs," carried out with full support from the United States, ha... more The Mexican government's "war on drugs," carried out with full support from the United States, has gained a visible media presence in the past few years, particularly because of extremely high levels of violence. This violence, however, has been largely represented in the media as a masculinized battle between cartels and military forces. Official discourses often insist that most victims are men directly involved in narco-trafficking, oversimplifying the nature of the violence (which is often created by military forces) and missing women's presence among the victims as well in activist circles. This essay problematizes these misconceptions by examining the recent emergence of activism among Mexican women affected by the violence of the " war on drugs. " In particular, I analyze, first, how women who lost family members to this violence became active protestors of government policies and, second, the affective and political relations they forge as part of this activism. Based on fieldwork in Mexico City and the United States, I examine the trajectories and experiences of women involved in the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity (Movimiento por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad) and The Mothers' Network (La red de las madres). Specifically, I analyze the way that gender roles, kinship ties, and motherhood informs the experience of many activists but also the ways in which some of them make sense of their agency in their roles as sisters, daughters or indeed through their experiences of violence not expressed through an affiliation with kin.
In this paper I analyze the rhetorical practice of ''counting down'' last speakers of endangered ... more In this paper I analyze the rhetorical practice of ''counting down'' last speakers of endangered languages as those speakers age and eventually pass away. In recent media attention on language obsolescence, a popular narrative convention is to announce the death of ''one of the last speakers'' of an endangered language. Drawing on fieldwork in a Cucapá settlement in the Colorado River Delta of northern Mexico, I examine the effect of enumerating language speakers in the context of the death of a prominent elder and fisherwoman. I show how for some Cucapá people at the center of this ''countdown,'' the technique has induced an enumerative malaise, or an exasperation with these measurement practices.
Books by Shaylih Ryan Muehlmann
"When I Wear My Alligator Boots examines how the lives of dispossessed men and women are affected... more "When I Wear My Alligator Boots examines how the lives of dispossessed men and women are affected by the rise of narcotrafficking along the U.S.-Mexico border. In particular, the book explores a crucial tension at the heart of the “war on drugs”: despite the violence and suffering brought on by drug cartels, for the rural poor in Mexico’s north, narcotrafficking offers one of the few paths to upward mobility and is a powerful source of cultural meanings and local prestige.
In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in rural villages, from the vibrant folklore popularized in the narco-corridos of Norteña music to the icon of Jesús Malverde, the “patron saint” of narcos, tucked beneath the shirts of local people. In When I Wear My Alligator Boots, the author explores the everyday reality of the drug trade by living alongside its low-level workers, who live at the edges of the violence generated by the militarization of the war on drugs. Rather than telling the story of the powerful cartel leaders, the book focuses on the women who occasionally make their sandwiches, the low-level businessmen who launder their money, the addicts who consume their products, the mules who carry their money and drugs across borders, and the men and women who serve out prison sentences when their bosses' operations go awry."
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Papers by Shaylih Ryan Muehlmann
Books by Shaylih Ryan Muehlmann
In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in rural villages, from the vibrant folklore popularized in the narco-corridos of Norteña music to the icon of Jesús Malverde, the “patron saint” of narcos, tucked beneath the shirts of local people. In When I Wear My Alligator Boots, the author explores the everyday reality of the drug trade by living alongside its low-level workers, who live at the edges of the violence generated by the militarization of the war on drugs. Rather than telling the story of the powerful cartel leaders, the book focuses on the women who occasionally make their sandwiches, the low-level businessmen who launder their money, the addicts who consume their products, the mules who carry their money and drugs across borders, and the men and women who serve out prison sentences when their bosses' operations go awry."
In the borderlands, traces of the drug trade are everywhere: from gang violence in cities to drug addiction in rural villages, from the vibrant folklore popularized in the narco-corridos of Norteña music to the icon of Jesús Malverde, the “patron saint” of narcos, tucked beneath the shirts of local people. In When I Wear My Alligator Boots, the author explores the everyday reality of the drug trade by living alongside its low-level workers, who live at the edges of the violence generated by the militarization of the war on drugs. Rather than telling the story of the powerful cartel leaders, the book focuses on the women who occasionally make their sandwiches, the low-level businessmen who launder their money, the addicts who consume their products, the mules who carry their money and drugs across borders, and the men and women who serve out prison sentences when their bosses' operations go awry."