Campesinos Gomeros: Economic Inequalities and Gender Dynamics in the Sierra of Atoyac

The state of Guerrero, located in the southeastern region of Mexico has previously been divided into seven regions due its geographical, social, and cultural differences. In 2023, the government of Guerrero initiated a regional project to establish an eighth region, that would recognize fourteen municipalities in the state’s mountain range: La Región Sierra. Situated alongside Guerrero’s extensive history of drug production, this paper will analyze the historical development of the Gomero population in the Sierra of Guerrero, focusing on the gender dynamics of poppy cultivation from 1975 to 1990. An analysis of security reports on Guerrero from the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS), and the National security archives, the Archivo de la Represión, arrest documents in local and federal prisons, and testimonies of mothers, and family members regarding local disappearances found in the Archivo General, will allow us to understand how, in the building of networks of power and complicity in this area, some became expendable while others gained economic and political growth. Previous studies have demonstrated the connections between Guerrero’s drug production, and the Mexican state’s violent state formation processes, in response to the presence of guerrilla populations (Pantoja and Rangel 2022; Craig 1980; Mercille 2014; Gilinghamn 2011; Alan Knight and Benjamin T. Smith 2005; Libertad Argüello 2019; and Pierre Guassens 2018). Building on previous scholarship on state formation and drug distribution and violence in Guerrero, this paper will explore the connections between drug production and state violence through a gendered perspective.