Bodies on the margins: Symbolic violence and discourses surrounding cocaine base paste consumption in Quito Cuerpos al margen: violencia simbólica y discursos en torno al consumo de pasta base de cocaína en Quito

Abstract

This article analyzes the mechanisms through which symbolic violence is maintained among people who use cocaine base paste (CBP). To do so, I use Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and compare three types of texts with discourses that represent CBP users, focusing primarily on the imaginaries that revolve around the body and corporeality.

I sought to identify a more official type of discourse by using texts from press articles and guides produced by CONSEP (the now extinct government institution that was responsible for the control and prevention of narcotic substance use); and those that represented unofficial discourse, texts from interviews with PBC users. In all these discourses, I was interested in finding common elements in how their bodies and corporeality were imagined.

I conclude that there is a “discursive recycling” in which many of the official representations that position consumers as victims, sick, criminals, or at the bottom of the social hierarchy are reused and accepted, often by PBC consumers themselves. This recycling shows an internalization of these discourses, which are established as an inescapable fate. Thus, those who consume naturalize and become participants in the symbolic violence in which they are immersed, perpetuating marginalization and reproducing the exclusion to which they are subjected.