Flying Under the Radar: Low-Profile Drug Dealers in a Mexico City Neighborhood

This study examines a relatively obscure group who occupy a unique position in the overall structure of drug distribution: low-level independent dealers. Using ethnographic methods, fieldwork, and interviews in several Mexico City neighborhoods, we discuss the activities, strategies, and characteristics of what we designate as low-profile drug dealers. Working as freelancers, they exploit their community connections to operate relatively autonomously. They are socialized to function on a subterranean level of narcotrafficking avoiding the attention of drug trafficking organizations and law enforcement. They manage licit (front businesses) and illicit (back businesses), and tend to be in their late twenties with past experience in riskier criminal pursuits. Because their proceeds from the sale of drugs supplement household income, their activities expand and contract according to financial need.