Erasmus University Rotterdam International Institute of Social Studies, Kortenaerkade 12, 2518 AX The Hague, Netherlands.
Int J Drug Policy. 2021 Mar;89:103091. doi: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.103091. Epub 2021 Jan 8.
Many discussions of mafia and criminal entrepreneurs typically focus on violence and illegality, and less on their possible roles in rural transformation, even when they are located in borderland economies linking the subsistence cultivators of illicit crops to regional and global markets. This paper assesses the life stories of drug lords, the Castaño brothers of Colombia and Roberto Suárez Gomez of Bolivia, to draw inferences into how such rural elites in the illicit drugs trade are not only specialists in crime but are also actors who regulate and manipulate, often coercively, access to land and resources, mobilise labour and shape its divisions, and promote certain forms of capital accumulation. This paper contends that a better understanding of the roles of these rural elites as pioneers for capital, intermediaries in commodity chains, and arbitrageurs between state and borderlands may provide ways of unpacking key challenges to peacebuilding and economic transformation in borderlands where illicit economies thrive.
许多关于黑手党和犯罪企业家的讨论通常集中在暴力和非法活动上，而较少关注他们在农村转型中可能扮演的角色，即使他们位于连接非法作物维持生计者与区域和全球市场的边境经济区也是如此。本文通过评估哥伦比亚的卡斯塔尼奥兄弟和玻利维亚的罗伯托·苏亚雷斯·戈麦斯等毒枭的生平故事，推断出非法毒品贸易中的此类农村精英不仅是犯罪专家，而且还是监管和操纵（通常是强制性地）土地和资源获取、调动劳动力并塑造其分工以及促进某些形式的资本积累的行为者。本文认为，更好地理解这些农村精英作为资本先驱、商品链中介以及国家和边境之间的套利者的角色，可能为解决边境地区非法经济繁荣对和平建设和经济转型带来的关键挑战提供途径。
