From Family Feud to Organised Crime: The Cultural Economy of Cannabis in Northeast Brazil

• Published in: Bulletin of Latin American research Vol. 18; no. 3; pp. 343 - 360
• Main Authors: BICALHO, ANA MARIA DE SOUZA MELLO, HOEFLE, SCOTT WILLIAM
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford, UK Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.07.1999; Elsevier Science Ltd; Oxford Microform Publication
• Subjects: Aggression; Agriculture; Brazil; Brazil - ethnology; Brazil, Northeastern; Cannabis; cannabis farming; Community Networks - economics; Community Networks - history; Community Networks - legislation & jurisprudence; Crime; Crime - economics; Crime - ethnology; Crime - history; Crime - legislation & jurisprudence; Crop economics; Crops; Crops, Agricultural - economics; Crops, Agricultural - history; Culture; Drug trafficking; Drugs (marijuana); Economics; Family Characteristics - ethnology; Family feuds; Family Relations - ethnology; Family Relations - legislation & jurisprudence; Farming; Feuds; History of medicine; History, 20th Century; Homicide; inter-personal violence; Irrigation; Latin America; Marijuana; Murder; organised crime; Organized crime; Personal aggression; Police; Rural Health - history; Rural Population - history; Social conditions; Socioeconomic Factors; Violence; Violence - economics; Violence - ethnology; Violence - history; Violence - legislation & jurisprudence; Violence - psychology; Brazil
• ISSN: 0261-3050; 1470-9856
• DOI: 10.1111/j.1470-9856.1999.tb00139.x

Traditional family feuding and banditry as well as envy-inspired violence associated with capitalised irrigation have been intensified by the introduction of cannabis farming and organised crime in the Sertão of Northeast Brazil to the point that today the cannabis producing zone is one of the most violent places in the world. These three interrelated forms of contemporary violence arose, respectively, in the pre-1940 frontier setting, in the 1940 to 1980 period of rapid Brazilian industrialisation which depressed peasant sectors and stimulated the rise of capitalised irrigation and in the post-1980 period of economic stagnation and social-political crisis in Brazil which depressed consumer markets and induced the State to liberalise foreign trade policy to the detriment of periphery regions like the Northeast.