The spatialities of cocaine trade in Guinea-Bissau

In a meeting of the UN Security Council, on 12 December 2007, a UN official stated that “the threat posed by drug traffickers is so great that the state is on the verge of collapse (…). Guinea-Bissau has lost control of its territory and cannot administer justice.” With a fourth of the cocaine consumed in Europe passing through the Upper Guinea Coast every year, Guinea-Bissau has been designated, “Africa’s first narco-state.” It is feared that the state will be corrupted and ruined by the cocaine connection working through it, bringing it closer to a state of anarchy and lack of formal governance. However, despite the common fear of such transnational crime little is known about the social and political logic at play. The paper examines the emergent cocaine trade in Guinea-Bissau. It describes the country’s coming into being as a regional hub for the trafficking of cocaine from Latin America to Europe and shows how the cocaine trade has become entangled with and trickled into the lifeworlds, hopes and fears of parts of the city’s impoverished population. While cocaine is seen to have brought with it a range of political and societal insecurities it is also perceived as a social catalyst, a development that can open new horizons of possibility and reconnect people to avenues of social being and worth.
Since 2013 Henrik E. Vigh is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen. Before he has been  associate professor in the same department, senior researcher at the Rehabilitation and Research Centre for Torture Victims, and a post-doc with Department of Anthropology. He holds a PhD in Social Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen.