Join us for a presentation by Professor Laura Blume sponsored by Latin American and Caribbean Studies!
Building on over a decade of ethnographic work in Honduras, this presentation will dissect the national and international political forces that enable the cocaine trade to flourish in rural communities, while at the same time pouring resources into militarization in the name of counternarcotics. Beyond exploring patterns of criminal politics, this talk will explore the consequences that the cocaine trade and the forces ostensibly combating it have had on local Honduran communities. Focusing on the predominately Afro-Indigenous Moskitia region, this talk will elucidate the implications for Indigenous territorial governance as well as explore gender dynamics in illicit markets.
Laura Blume is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada, Reno. Her research focuses on the politics of violence and criminalized economies in Central America. She is the author of The Art of Trafficking: How Politics Shape Narco-Strategies and Violence in Central America (Oxford University Press, 2025). Her work has also been published in Comparative Political Studies, World Development, Geoforum, Political Geography, and she is a frequent contributor to NACLA.
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