When I Wear My Alligator Boots

When I Wear My Alligator Boots PDF Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520957180
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
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.

When I Wear My Alligator Boots

When I Wear My Alligator Boots PDF Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520957180
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
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.

When I Wear My Alligator Boots

When I Wear My Alligator Boots PDF Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520276787
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
"This book tells the story of the poor, often indigenous workers living in the borderlands who are recruited to work in the lowest echelons of the drug trade, as burreros (mules) and narcotraficantes (traffickers). Shayleh Muehlmann spent over a year researching in a small community in the borderlands. This book brings her stories to a wider public, narrating the experiences of a group of indigenous fishermen in northern Mexico who have become involved in the drug trade, and exploring how the narco-economy has provided a reprieve for men and women attempting to survive while their primary form of livelihood, fishing, has been criminalized by the state because of its alleged negative environmental impact. The book examines the rise of narcotrafficking as one of the economic alternatives sought by local people and how this work is seen by many as a way of resisting forms of domination imposed on them by both the Mexican and U.S. governments. Muehlmann explores a tension at the heart of the "war on drugs." For many men and women living in poverty, the narco-economy represents an alternative to the exploitation and alienation they experience trying to work in the borderland's legal economy which has been increasingly dominated by the presence of U.S.-owned maquiladoras (assembly plants) and ravaged by environmental degradation. Despite the lawlessness and violence of the cartels and the ruinous consequences this process has had for some of the most vulnerable people involved, narco-trafficking represents one of the few promises of upward mobility for the indigenous poor in Mexico's north. "--Provided by publisher.

Coastal Lives

Coastal Lives PDF Author: Maximilian Viatori
Publisher: Critical Green Engagements: In
ISBN: 0816539294
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
"This book shines a light on how changes to Peru's fishing policies and fishery management affect the lives of impoverished artisanal fisherman"--Provided by publisher.

Pink Boots and a Machete

Pink Boots and a Machete PDF Author: Mireya Mayor
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 1426207212
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
Renowned primatologist Mayor recounts her journey from NFL cheerleader to Fulbright Scholar to field scientist and, ultimately, to National Geographic explorer.

Where the River Ends

Where the River Ends PDF Author: Shaylih Muehlmann
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822354454
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Living in the northwest of Mexico, the Cucapá people have relied on fishing as a means of subsistence for generations, but in the last several decades, that practice has been curtailed by water scarcity and government restrictions. The Colorado River once met the Gulf of California near the village where Shaylih Muehlmann conducted ethnographic research, but now, as a result of a treaty, 90 percent of the water from the Colorado is diverted before it reaches Mexico. The remaining water is increasingly directed to the manufacturing industry in Tijuana and Mexicali. Since 1993, the Mexican government has denied the Cucapá people fishing rights on environmental grounds. While the Cucapá have continued to fish in the Gulf of California, federal inspectors and the Mexican military are pressuring them to stop. The government maintains that the Cucapá are not sufficiently "indigenous" to warrant preferred fishing rights. Like many indigenous people in Mexico, most Cucapá people no longer speak their indigenous language; they are highly integrated into nonindigenous social networks. Where the River Ends is a moving look at how the Cucapá people have experienced and responded to the diversion of the Colorado River and the Mexican state's attempts to regulate the environmental crisis that followed.

The Texanist

The Texanist PDF Author: David Courtney
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477312978
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

But I Am an Alligator

But I Am an Alligator PDF Author: Lauren Child
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101646950
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 28

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Book Description
Lola has a favorite alligator costume that she wants to wear absolutely everywhere. Charlie tells her she can't wear it ALL the time, but Lola argues that she can. Much to Charlie's embarrassment, Lola wears her alligator costume to the supermarket and the park. She even plans to wear it for her school talk called "All about Me!" Can Charlie stop Lola from making a fool of herself in front of the whole school?

Life and Death on Mt. Everest

Life and Death on Mt. Everest PDF Author: Sherry B. Ortner
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691211779
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 396

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Book Description
The Sherpas were dead, two more victims of an attempt to scale Mt. Everest. Members of a French climbing expedition, sensitive perhaps about leaving the bodies where they could not be recovered, rolled them off a steep mountain face. One body, however, crashed to a stop near Sherpas on a separate expedition far below. They stared at the frozen corpse, stunned. They said nothing, but an American climber observing the scene interpreted their thoughts: Nobody would throw the body of a white climber off Mt. Everest. For more than a century, climbers from around the world have journ-eyed to test themselves on Everest's treacherous slopes, enlisting the expert aid of the Sherpas who live in the area. Drawing on years of field research in the Himalayas, renowned anthropologist Sherry Ortner presents a compelling account of the evolving relationship between the mountaineers and the Sherpas, a relationship of mutual dependence and cultural conflict played out in an environment of mortal risk. Ortner explores this relationship partly through gripping accounts of expeditions--often in the climbers' own words--ranging from nineteenth-century forays by the British through the historic ascent of Hillary and Tenzing to the disasters described in Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air. She reveals the climbers, or "sahibs," to use the Sherpas' phrase, as countercultural romantics, seeking to transcend the vulgarity and materialism of modernity through the rigor and beauty of mountaineering. She shows how climbers' behavior toward the Sherpas has ranged from kindness to cruelty, from cultural sensitivity to derision. Ortner traces the political and economic factors that led the Sherpas to join expeditions and examines the impact of climbing on their traditional culture, religion, and identity. She examines Sherpas' attitude toward death, the implications of the shared masculinity of Sherpas and sahibs, and the relationship between Sherpas and the increasing number of women climbers. Ortner also tackles debates about whether the Sherpas have been "spoiled" by mountaineering and whether climbing itself has been spoiled by commercialism.

Deported to Death

Deported to Death PDF Author: Jeremy Slack
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520969715
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
What happens to migrants after they are deported from the United States and dropped off at the Mexican border, often hundreds if not thousands of miles from their hometowns? In this eye-opening work, Jeremy Slack foregrounds the voices and experiences of Mexican deportees, who frequently become targets of extreme forms of violence, including migrant massacres, upon their return to Mexico. Navigating the complex world of the border, Slack investigates how the high-profile drug war has led to more than two hundred thousand deaths in Mexico, and how many deportees, stranded and vulnerable in unfamiliar cities, have become fodder for drug cartel struggles. Like no other book before it, Deported to Death reshapes debates on the long-term impact of border enforcement and illustrates the complex decisions migrants must make about whether to attempt the return to an often dangerous life in Mexico or face increasingly harsh punishment in the United States.

Women Who Become Men

Women Who Become Men PDF Author: Antonia Young
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Based on extensive interviews, this text tells the frank and engrossing stories of these women, setting their lives within the wider context of a country undergoing radical upheaval and social transformation.