Lucia. Testimonies of a Brazilian Drug Dealer's Woman (review)

Lucia, Testimonies of a Brazilian Drug Dealer's Woman is based on a long series of interviews conducted by ethnographer Robert Gay with Lucia, a favela (shantytown) dweller in Rio do Janeiro. Gay exemplifies Wright Mills' sociological imagination, taking heed of his warning that "No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and their intersections within a society has completed its intellectual journey." (Wright Mills 1959:6) With Lucia, Gay succeeds in taking such a trip.

Two threads run through the book exemplifying the intertwined destinies of individuals and societies. On one hand, their dialogues unveil the life experiences of drug dealers and favelados, providing a vivid portrait on how violence, the drug trade and weakened democracy are closely intermingled. On the other hand, these links are reconstructed from the viewpoint of Lucia's life course, thus also exposing the interlocking inequalities based on "race," class and gender in a rapidly changing urban setting.

In the first four chapters ("Getting in," "Rogério," "Marcos" and "Bruno") Lucia's romantic relationships with drug dealers serve as a point of departure to dissect the mechanisms at work in drug trafficking. Through the reconstruction of Lucia's poignant moments during her years shared with traficantes, we become outraged by the narrations exposing police and judiciary involvement in drug commerce, the illegal trade of guns, the kidnapping of dealers for monetary gain, and the assassination of traficantes and, increasingly, innocent civilians. In short, Lucia and Gay show from the bottom up the "undeclared civil war between increasingly violent drug gangs and the police"(6) that is waged in Brazilian cities.

Complementing the narrative on the inner workings of the drug trade are Lucia's experiences with the job market and school. The last four chapters ("School," "Work," "Born Again" and "Getting Out") document the harsh conditions experienced by shantytown dwellers in their attempts to improve their lives. The story of Lucia, her partners and her friends show that if shantytown dwellers are lucky enough to get a job, they still have to endure meager payments and cope with discrimination for being poor or dark-skinned.

The chapters are well-constructed, with telling interviews followed by two to four pages of sociological analysis of the dialogues' themes that place Lucia's experiences in a larger context. Two minor criticisms can be raised regarding these analyses. The endeavor of "getting in" a dangerous shantytown to do ethnography has a value of its own because we can rarely gain access to the personal experiences of inhabitants of these "difficult zones," much less the meanings they attach to them. Yet the book provides primarily a depiction of Lucia's household, with only scattered comments about the shantytown as a whole. The reader misses a thick and thorough description of the favela and Gay's own experience of "getting in." Similarly, there is a brief description and analysis about the criminal organizations and their expansion, but you expect more on this topic since it is one of the book's core themes.

Summing up, we can extract three main lessons from this book: first, we learn how drug trafficking serves to undermine a fledgling democracy. The changing landscape of shantytowns due to the increasing violence associated with the drug trade is closely linked to the disappearance of neighbor associations or their transformation into gang-appointed fronts detached from the real needs of the favelados. Second, the book shows how violence and the "war on drugs" actually work in favor of corrupt officials, suggesting that an improvement in opportunities for work, education and housing could be a better strategy to tackle the drug trade than the use of force and repression. Third, we see how the intersection of "race," class and gender inequalities constrain life chances. For example, women involved with drug gangs are victims of violence and objectification; however, escaping this condition is complicated by the discrimination and subtle violence all favelados...