Long before today’s entanglements with coke, meth, and weed, the Americas were a proving ground for global drug cultures. The millennium of shamanistic and Azec psychedelics, colonial and Atlantic stimulants such as coffee and tobacco, and national drug goods like tequila and coca preceded the menacing 20th Century xplosion of illicit drug trafficking and shed light on our changing relationships to mind drugs and their commerce.
Paul Gootenberg, SUNY Distinguished Professor, Stony Brook University, is a historian of Latin America who specializes in the history of the Andean drug trade and the fields of Peruvian and Mexican history, as well as historical sociology. He earned an M. Phil from the University of Oxford and a PhD from University of Chicago. He has written numerous articles and several books, most recently, Andean Cocaine: The Making of a Global Drug.