Partners in Crime

In the 1980s, the DEA and FBI arrested several major figures associated with the Chinese heroin trade from Southeast Asia to the United States. The information they got from these arrests revealed an international crime network spanning from Southeast Asia to Hong Kong, mainland China, South and Central America, Mexico, Canada, and the US, where Chinese organizations were collaborating with Black and Hispanic drug syndicates. Information from these arrests also suggested a complicated role for the drug trade in Cold War contests between communism and capitalism and in Global South struggles against British and American imperialism. Accounts by drug traffickers highlighted the pivotal role of the Vietnam War in expanding the trade, partly because it fueled US soldiers’ heroin addictions, partly because the drug trade financed contests between communist and anti-communist factions in Southeast Asia, and partly because the horrors of the war channeled desires for wealth and revenge against imperial powers.

Scholars studying Black and Asian solidarity movements have noted the significance of the Vietnam War in forging racial coalitions. But they have overlooked the crucial role of crime in anti-imperial projects and interracial group collaborations. This paper examines Black and Asian Vietnam War-era drug syndicates to better understand how crime was used to generate capital and gain advantages in global contests, by governments and traffickers alike. Further, this paper considers the role of the Vietnam War, not merely in shaping Third World solidarity movements, but in the intersecting projects of African American, Hispanic, and Chinese organized crime cartels.