Changing cocaine use practices: neo-liberalism, HIV-AIDS, and death in an Argentine shantytown.
Cocaine consuming patterns are changing among young drug users who live in "The Villa," a shantytown located in Greater Buenos Aires. After years of drug injection dominance, cocaine snorting became the preferred drug consuming practice while deep and fast structural and cultural transformations have been taken place as part of the neoliberal program implemented in Argentina during the 1990s and the final economic default in 2001-2002. In this article, I analyze how drug users understand and explain these changing practices, including the following aspects: deteriorating economic conditions, the transformations of survival strategies, moral codes, social network organization, violence regulating mechanisms, criminal activity, and police repression. Based on an ethnographic study carried out during the last eight months in "The Villa," I suggest that intense and generalized cocaine injection in shantytowns has logistic, organizational, and structural requirements that cocaine snorting does not have. Particularly, I explore two main aspects associated with these changing cocaine consumption practices: the consequences of the many Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)-related deaths, which occurred among older drug injectors, and the progressive social fragmentation tied to the extreme economic deprivation, deepened social exclusion, and growing everyday violence.
Epele
María E
ME
Programa de Antropología y Salud, Facultad de Filosofia y Letras, Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina. epele@netverk.com.ar
D000280:Administration, Inhalation; D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D001118:Argentina / Q000453:epidemiology; D019970:Cocaine-Related Disorders / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000401:mortality; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000401:mortality; D006801:Humans; D007267:Injections; D011057:Politics; D011203:Poverty / Q000208:ethnology*; D011204:Poverty Areas; D012922:Social Change; D012934:Social Isolation; D012944:Social Support; D015819:Substance Abuse, Intravenous / Q000208:ethnology / Q000401:mortality / Q000821:virology; D014754:Violence