Analysing women in Latin American organised crime groups

This presentation explores some of the female protagonists in organized crime in Latin America and suggests that the importance of women in the management and operation of criminal syndicates in the drug trade has been underestimated and largely undocumented. I profile some of the major players in Mexico and Central America in the early 2000s to show how women of all socio-economic backgrounds are involved in the region's cocaine trade as well as gang structures. The coverage of gender in organized crime tends to work under the assumption that men only have criminal intent, and women who are involved are constantly co-opted by "bad hombres." Although we acknowledge that the victimization of women is a grave problem in organized crime realms, we also suggest that women have agency and ambition in the illegal drug business. Power in the criminal world is often seen through the prism of violence, but women's spaces, and their relationships with each other, is rarely examined. Research suggests that the fact that women are so constantly underestimated by those covering and prosecuting crime is a factor that they use to their advantage to go under the radar. But my research suggests that women are now present at most levels of operation in Mexico's cartels, and also a major part of the rank and file of Central America's Mara Salvatrucha gangs. Our inability to see them is more a result of the lens we're using to look, rather than what the situation is.