Editor’s Note: This week we’ll continue our series of interviews with the authors of the newest edition of the Social History of Alcohol and Drugs, which focuses on the intersection of drugs and US foreign relations. Today we’re excited to talk to Aileen Teague, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. After her fellowship, she will begin her appointment as Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service. She completed her Ph.D. at Vanderbilt University in 2018. Aileen specializes in the history of U.S.-Mexico (Latin America) Relations, Drug Control, and National Security. Her work has been supported by a number of fellowships and grants including Fulbright and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. She is currently revising her dissertation into a book manuscript. You can read Aileen’s article in its entirety (until May 1!) here.
I am a postdoctoral fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs and will begin as Assistant Professor of International Affairs at Texas A&M University’s Bush School of Government and Public Service next year. I was born in Colon, Panama, traveled the world as part of a military family, and served in the Marine Corps prior to my academic career.
What got you interested in drugs (and their history)?
As someone who has lived or worked on a number of overseas U.S. military bases (Panama Canal Zone, Guantanamo, Okinawa, the Philippines, etc.), my larger interest has always been U.S. interventionism. By the 1970s and 1980s questions of U.S. anti-drug interventionism become entangled in U.S. domestic policy issues in a singular way that drew me in, and I haven’t looked back!
Aileen Teague
Explain your journal article in a way that your bartender wouldn’t find boring.
Many of us are familiar with Mexico’s more recent drug violence and powerful drug cartels. My work provides a historical explanation of how we got here. It points to the 1970s as a critical period in establishing U.S. and Mexican drug enforcement policies, strategies, and tactics, which have played a role in shaping current antidrug issues and the landscape of border security.
Is this part of a larger project? What else are you working on?
My article draws from my dissertation, which I am currently revising into a book manuscript.
Based on your research and experience, what do you see as the frontier or future of the field?
I think the future of the field, especially with respect to contemporary drug history in Mexico, will involve a lot more oral history gathering, engagement with journalistic narratives, and will thrive with the declassification of archival materials in the coming years.
What scholar, living or dead, would you most like to have dinner with?
Mark Twain; he was such a keen observer and commenter of society and culture during one of the most interesting periods in American history.