Benjamin Smith
Countries of Expertise
Specialties
- Addiction/Drugs/Drug Policy
- Child Soldiers
- Coercive Population Control
- Deportees/Criminal Deportees
- Ethnic Discrimination/Persecution
- Ex-Combatant Reintegration
- Forced Conscription
- Gang-Related Violence/Non-State Actors
- Gender-Based Violence (GBV)/Domestic Violence/Family Violence
- Government/State Actor Persecution
- Healthcare Access/Health Systems Capacity
- Journalist Persecution
- Land Tenure Dispute
- Mental Illness
- Political Persecution
- Prison Conditions
- Religious Discrimination/Persecution
- Risk Of Retaliation
- Safe Internal Relocation
- Sexual Abuse/Assault
- Torture
- Trafficking
- Tribal Discrimination/Persecution
About Benjamin Smith
Dr. Smith has been writing about Mexico for over twenty years. Currently, he specializes on twentieth-century politics, the narcotics trade and crime. His most recent book, The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade was published by Ebury/Norton in 2021. As a historian of nineteenth and twentieth-century politics, he started my research in the archives, villages, churches, and markets of the predominantly indigenous state of Oaxaca. Since then he has branched out to write about about indigenous politics, Catholicism, conservatism, newspapers, journalism, censorship and civil society. He has regularly appeared on TV, radio and in the press to talk about issues of Mexican politics, crime, social movements, Catholicism, and narcotics.
Dr. Smith has served as an expert witness in asylum cases in the United States and the United Kingdom. He has written c. 180 export reports, predominantly for Mexican asylum seekers in the United States. Most have concerned persons fleeing criminal or cartel violence. He has also dealt with cases involving religious, political, and gender discrimination.
