Tornar-se mulher usuária de crack: trajetória de vida, cultura de uso e políticas sobre drogas no centro de Salvador-BA

Abstract

This ethnographic study aimed to investigate the culture of crack use among women living on the streets of city center of Salvador, looking at the dynamics of this culture, the peer-to-peer construction of informal social control, and formal social control coming from a society structured out of oppression. In order to observe the daily life of this culture, I followed the participants of the research in scenes of crack use. Subsequently, the fieldwork led me to accompany these women in other urban areas of search for health care and justice services, and the construction of a local feminist militant group. Through the reference bibliography for the theme it was possible to direct my gaze to the understanding of the grammar of everyday violence directed at these women, fierce by the direction of a drug policy that uses the strategy of war against drugs that has presented itself as a war against the women. As a result, I reflect that the vast majority of women surveyed resort to abusive use of crack as a method to alleviate the suffering of gender and racial violence suffered throughout their life trajectories, as well as to develop political strategies for resistance, protection and mobilization among women. I conclude by pointing out that drug policy, as it is nowadays, reinforces oppressions of race, gender and class constituting an arena marked by social injustice in the life of women. The response to these oppressions appears in the research from building the field of anti-prohibitionist feminism that politically organized women affected by the war on drugs.