Toward a new drug history of Latin America: A research frontier at the center of debates

Abstract

This introduction brings the issue of Latin American drug trades and cultures into conversation with the region's historiography. Illicit drugs are now notoriously associated with Latin America and represent untold billions in exports, generating over the last three decades tremendous violence, instability, and public controversy. Yet historians are just starting to seriously research the topic. Psychoactive drugs, broadly conceived, have been central in Latin American history from pre-Columbian times to the present; this piece offers a long-term periodization of drugs to uncover and analyze their complex and often-surprising roles. Rather than fetishize drugs, the essay maintains that they can be productively woven into the largest contexts and problems of Latin American history. After analyzing three methodological concerns of drug history - issues of transnationality and scale, the place of drugs in commodity studies, and the social constructivist approach to drug meanings and effects - the special issue editors introduce three exemplary new essays on the history of drugs in Latin America.