“Blowback’ and Changing Commodity Chains in the Hemispheric ‘War’ on Cocaine, 1900 – 2015” by Prof Paul Gootenberg

In his talk, Gootenberg will survey the long-term shifts of cocaine’s western hemisphere cocaine over the twentieth century, informed by the “blowback” effects of the escalating U.S. “war on drugs”: this history informs today’s crises of drug violence in Mexico and Central America as well as suggestive shifts in cocaine politics.