
Border Junkies
Addiction and Survival on the Streets of Juarez and El Paso
Scott Comar(Author)
University of Texas Press
Published on 1. October 2011
Book
Hardback
246 pages
978-0-292-72658-1 (ISBN)
Description
The drug war that has turned Juarez, Mexico, into a killing field that has claimed more than 7,000 lives since 2008 captures headlines almost daily. But few accounts go all the way down to the streets to investigate the lives of individual drug users. One of those users, Scott Comar, survived years of heroin addiction and failed attempts at detox and finally cleaned up in 2003. Now a graduate student at the University of Texas at El Paso in the history department's borderlands doctoral program, Comar has written Border Junkies, a searingly honest account of his spiralling descent into heroin addiction, surrender, change, and recovery on the U.S.-Mexico border. Border Junkies is the first book ever written about the lifestyle of active addiction on the streets of Juarez. Comar vividly describes living between the disparate Mexican and American cultures and among the fellow junkies, drug dealers, hookers, coyote smugglers, thieves, and killers who were his friends and neighbours in addiction--and the social workers, missionaries, shelter workers, and doctors who tried to help him escape.
With the perspective of his anthropological training, he shows how homelessness, poverty, and addiction all fuel the use of narcotics and the rise in their consumption on the streets of Juarez and contribute to the societal decay of this Mexican urban landscape. Comar also offers significant insights into the U.S.-Mexico borderland's underground and peripheral economy and the ways in which the region's inhabitants adapt to the local economic terrain.
With the perspective of his anthropological training, he shows how homelessness, poverty, and addiction all fuel the use of narcotics and the rise in their consumption on the streets of Juarez and contribute to the societal decay of this Mexican urban landscape. Comar also offers significant insights into the U.S.-Mexico borderland's underground and peripheral economy and the ways in which the region's inhabitants adapt to the local economic terrain.
Reviews / Votes
"Border Junkies is a substantial entry into the developing catalog of literature about people who live in border towns and cities, as it shows one man's struggle to negotiate the cultural dynamics of the region while providing the reader with a sociological picture of that same region." - Journal of American CultureMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Austin, TX
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
26 b&w photos in section
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
511 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-292-72658-1 (9780292726581)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Content
Foreword Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Viajes Chapter 2: Arrivals Chapter 3: Down and Out Chapter 4: Assimilations Chapter 5: La Navidad Chapter 6: New Millennium Chapter 7: Insanity Repeats Itself Chapter 8: Migrations Chapter 9: Vigilance Chapter 10: Endings and Beginnings Conclusion Epilogue Index