TY - BOOK ID - 78071619 TI - When I wear my alligator boots : narco-culture in the US-Mexico borderlands PY - 2014 SN - 0520276779 0520957180 9780520957183 0520276787 9780520276789 9780520276772 9780520276789 PB - Berkeley, California : University of California Press, DB - UniCat KW - Drug control KW - Drug traffic KW - Rural poor KW - Rural poverty KW - Poor KW - Economic conditions KW - Mexican-American Border Region KW - American-Mexican Border Region KW - Border Region, American-Mexican KW - Border Region, Mexican-American KW - Borderlands (Mexico and U.S.) KW - Mexico-United States Border Region KW - Tierras Fronterizas de México-Estados Unidos KW - United States-Mexico Border Region KW - Social conditions. KW - anthropologists. KW - anthropology. KW - borderlands. KW - criminology. KW - dispossessed. KW - drug addiction. KW - drug cartels. KW - drug mules. KW - drug trade. KW - drug trafficking. KW - drug violence. KW - drug workers. KW - folklore. KW - gang violence. KW - imprisonment. KW - jesus malverde. KW - men and women. KW - mexican culture. KW - mexico. KW - migrant studies. KW - militarization. KW - modern culture. KW - money. KW - narco culture. KW - narcotrafficking. KW - nortena music. KW - public anthropology. KW - rural poor. KW - rural villages. KW - sociology. KW - united states. KW - us borders. KW - war on drugs. UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:78071619 AB - 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. ER -