“Some Do it Out of Necessity, Others Because They Like Money and Others Because They Find it Easy”: Motivations for the Involvement of Women in Drug Trafficking in Peru

ABSTRACT

Latin American feminist scholars have constructed valuable analyses on how structural inequalities, feminization of poverty, and patriarchy are the main reasons women get involved in drug trafficking. As the primary material and emotional providers of their families, and to fulfill their gendered responsibilities as reproducers of care, it has been shown that women participate in illegal activities mainly out of economic “necessity.” Nonetheless, this approach may create a homogeneous and passive imaginary of women involved in drug trafficking that is linked to Marianista femininity. The paper contributes to Southern Criminology in the task of constructing localized knowledge from the South. It aims to acknowledge women’s diversity to pursue a more nuanced perspective of women’s motivations and start to contextualize and analyze the concept of “necessity.” The paper analyses 22 interviews of women sentenced for drug trafficking in Peru and proposes six motivations for their involvement: (1) Strengthening autonomy and independence, (2) Pursuit of material-hedonistic fulfillment, (3) Desire for recognition and power, (4) Trust-based involvement, (5) Involvement driven by addiction, and (6) Involvement as unwitting participants due to deception. It concludes that the notion of necessity is influenced by class and territory, shaping women’s motivations and involvement in drug trafficking. Additionally, their motivations are not solely driven by economic needs but also by psychological and affective ones.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ According to the Peruvian national government, drug trafficking is a “crime against public health and is classified in articles 296 to 298 of the Penal Code. It consists of promoting, favoring, or facilitating the illegal consumption of drugs through manufacturing or trafficking, or possessing such substances for this purpose” (Digital Platform of the Peruvian State, 2024).

² To address the literature review, I follow feminist researchers in Latin America, who had made valuable contributions to denounce women’s vulnerabilities, but they(we) are usually over-shadowed in English-written journals. In that sense, the concentration on their research not only responds to the creation of a regionalized analysis of women’s involvement of drug-trafficking, but to a political stand to dialogue with feminist researchers from the Global South.

³ The interviews are part of a broader study. The entrance to the prisons was possible given an inter-institutional agreement between the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and the National Penitentiary Institute in Peru, and given the fact the Research Group of Forensic and Penitentiary Psychology (in which I am a member) has been working in prisons for more than fifteen years. INPE enables the entrance for researchers, but the research team has to explain the research to the women deprived of their liberty, and their participation was voluntary.

⁴ These prisons are all located at national or international boundaries. Santa Monica, Anexo Chorrillos, and Virgen de Fátima are women’s prisons located in Lima, the capital of Peru, where a significant proportion of the female prison population are found. The Iquitos prison is located in Amazonia and borders Colombia and Brazil, while the Tacna prison is near the border with Chile. Finally, the Ayacucho prison is located in the region of the same name, which constitutes a “corridor,” or a national boundary, between the entrance to the rainforest, the Andes, and Lima.

⁵ This research project was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.

⁶ Indigenous people from the Andean region of Peru.

⁷ Particularly, those women who smuggle through the terrestrial national borders, research has demonstrated that in the Peruvian borderlines formal, informal, and illegal markets intertwine, and actors may operate in any of these economic spaces interchangeably. These spaces are not exclusionary but complementary (Dammert et al. 2017).

⁸ “You are going to lose” is a colloquial way of referring to capture by the authorities and imprisonment.

⁹ These are women hired in bars to accompany clients and make them drink alcohol. Occasionally, they may also perform striptease dances in the bars. They may or may not have a sexual relationship with clients.

¹⁰ Spanish-language acronym for “Valley of the Apurímac, Ene and Mantaro rivers,” a region linked to coca cultivation and cocaine production, where Adela is originally from.

¹¹ “Le doy vuelta” might be translated loosely as “I will take care of them,” in the sense of engaging in a violent action with the intention of harming or even killing someone.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú .

Notes on contributors

Lucia Bracco

Lucia Bracco is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social Science at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and a member of the Research Group of Penitentiary and Forensic Psychology. I hold a Ph.D. in Women and Gender Studies from the Department of Sociology of the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, a master’s degree in Gender Studies, and a Licentiate degree in Clinical Psychology, both from the PUCP. My research themes focus on women’s criminalization and punishment, the relationship between domination and resistances/agency, and the imbrications between gender and culture.