Love in the Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico–US Border by Sarah Luna (review)

Abstract

B sex workers and missionaries have long struggled to have their labor recognized as such. Sarah Luna’s terrifically engaging and accessibly written ethnography Love in The Drug War: Selling Sex and Finding Jesus on the Mexico–US Border makes clear just how much labor—emotional and physical—goes into both forms of work. At first glance, readers might assume that both sets of workers are at odds with one another, since missionaries so often strive to end sex workers’ labor. But what sets this monograph apart from books that explore efforts to “rescue” or “save” sex workers is Luna’s persuasive portrait of the mutual respect, obligation, and friendship between the women missionaries and sex workers. Their respective labor and their relationships unfold against the backdrop of a “narcoeconomy” in Reynosa. Both groups of workers navigate this environment of ever-increasing violence while pursuing their “intimate, economic and moral projects” (3). The book draws on a year of field and archival research in Reynosa with sex workers and missionaries who had migrated there. To round out her archival research, Luna interviewed men between the ages of 65 and 90 who were members of the “Historical Society of Reynosa” and the “Veteran’s Club of Reynosa.” She also makes good use of handwritten memoirs by two sex workers, as well as blogs maintained by missionaries. The book opens with two excerpts that lay out why these women came to la zona, a prostitution zone composed of several city blocks and enclosed by cement walls in Reynosa, part of the state of Tamaulipas. Lucía, a former sex worker, “came to earn more money,” while Stacy, an American missionary, “never felt so invited into a genuine relationship with Jesus as