Projects
Coca-Leaves, Cocaine, and Coca-Cola
The use of coca leaves for Coca-Cola production provides the foundation of the market for legal cocaine. These are the "legal" leaves, grown under government surveillance -- and the development of illegal production zones, high in the Andean mountains, has continued despite decades of diplomatic and military support for antidrug operations.
This is the story about a commodity chain that starts in the borderlands of Latin America, and runs through every rum and Coke, straight to the Mexican Drug War.
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There Were Four Opium Wars
Officially, there were two "Opium Wars," when the British fought for their right to sell Indian opium to Chinese addicts. The British Raj became an empire unto itself, fusing dozens of kingdoms into what would become the modern Republic of India, and today, the major illegal zones of production straddle the Raj's old borderlands.
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This is an argument to consider the French and American wars in Indochina as the third and fourth Opium Wars, as the wars in the Middle East are just one theater of a fifth war that's already here.
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Fine White Powders
Sugar is a fine white powder, and just like coke and dope, it’s all wrapped up in money and power. The basic difference is that the sugar dealers have been around for so long, they’ve gone legit. While the Mexican cartels have narcocorridos, the sugar dealers have national anthems - and school children around the world know their names.
This is a ninety-minute, three-act mix of performance art and public education, that ensures you'll never look at dessert, or the war on drugs, in the same way again.
Sugar Dealers
This is the story of European nation-building, told through the lens of Narcos -- the story of sugar and spice cartels, fighting over territory in the West and East Indies.
My goal is to teach geography, history, and politics with the language of smuggling routes, blood vendettas, and stark comic-book imagery.
Sugar Kingdoms
The Sugar Kingdoms series examines the development of the sugar industry in the United States, and its colonial possessions. Many of these were forbidden fruits of the Spanish-American War, but the first was an island kingdom -- Hawai'i - overthrown by a small group of lawyers and planters, hungry for the profits powder could bring them.
