What kind of political work is accomplished when news agencies circulate descriptions of drug “kingpins” in shootouts, drug barons called “The Monster,” lingerie models running drug gangs, and “unsuspicious, beautiful angels” couriering illicit drugs across the Atlantic? This paper examines political and media representations of international illicit drug traffickers in the Americas since September 11, 2001, focusing specifically on the gendered and racialized orders produced and the ways such representations inform and are enacted through U.S. anti-drug policies and practices at U.S. border sites. I argue that the gendered and racialized representations of “the drug trafficker” help legitimate a militarized U.S. illicit drug policy, particular anti-immigration practices, and U.S. state power while shaping inequalities vis-a-vis economic neoliberalism. Drawing specifically on the literature in feminist security studies, I pay attention to the intersections and productions of gender, race, class, sexuality and nation within the practices of U.S. illicit drug control policies along the U.S. southern border over the last 17 years.

Dr. Ellie Schemenauer is Associate Professor and Chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater. Her research interests include feminist security studies, illicit drug trafficking in the Americas, feminist pedagogy and activism. Her work has been published in the International Feminist Journal of Politics, the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, Feminist Collections and others. As a member of a small academic department, she teaches widely in the field of Women’s and Gender Studies including courses like Global Gender Politics, Gender and Sexuality in Cross-cultural Perspective, Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies, Gender and Violence and more. Dr. Schemenauer has a Ph.D. in International Relations from Florida International University.

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