A Woman Formed the First Cartel? Historical imagination and realities of the US-Mexico drug war

Abstract

Weaving together three historical and contemporary case studies of Mexican female drug traffickers, this article challenges continued scholarly claims that little is known about women’s involvement in organized crime prior to 2000s. Women’s drug organizations are multi-dimensional affairs, built on familial and social networks that have historically expanded to incorporate police and state agents. This article tracks several such organizations to expand the “new drug history,” and demonstrating historical continuities in the women’s roles, how policing agents perceived and publicly decried them, and how journalists constructed narratives about them in the media.