In this article I propose that gender inequality promotes--directly or indirectly--vulnerability to HIV as a consequence of a multidimensional violence (structural, symbolic and physical) experienced by injection drug using (IDU) women in The Mission District (San Francisco). Given the female subordinated position stipulated by the street ideology, I analyze how drug dependence afforded by precarious strategies of subsistence places IDU women under multiple dangers and threats. In this setting, unequal gender relations are part of a complex system of transactions in the street economy and a way to reduce or increase the everyday violence. Facing multiple dangers and risks, some women adopt a subordinated position, some try to negotiate the conditions of the exchanges and the others resist the exploitation. Finally, everyday violence under conditions of gender inequality and scarcity of resources imposes a logic defined by the challenge of survival under the threat of immediate dangers, which transform HIV into a secondary risk.

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Included within the field of research on changes in drug use patterns and vulnerability are conditions of emergency related to economic crisis, wars, and political conflict. This study addresses the complex connections between the rapid propagation of freebase cocaine (FBC)-locally known as "pasta base" or "Paco" in Argentina and the normalization of the consequences of Argentina's 2001-2002 political-economic crisis. On the basis of the results of an ethnographic study carried out in three neighborhoods of the Greater Buenos Aires area between 2001 and 2005, this article aims to analyze how changes in the material and social living conditions are interrelated with the high toxicity of FBC/Paco and engender the emerging compulsion of its consumption and deterioration to the bodies, subjectivities, and social activities of active drug users from these shantytowns. By analyzing the changes in transactions directly or indirectly involving drugs-specifically those ranging from cocaine to FBC/Paco-we can argue how structural poverty, "new poverty," is not only associated with the expansion of FBC/Paco but is also shaped by its use, modes of consumption, associated health problems, and sufferings.

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O presente trabalho é sobre o Cuidado. A proposta consiste na abordagem de cuidado como um conjunto de tecnologias corporais, vinculares, subjetivas e políticas. Especificamente há anos venho documentando a problemática nos bairros marginalizados da área metropolitana de Buenos Aires: quais são os modos "adequados" de cuidar de outros, não só em relação aos "novos problemas", mas também aos que, como dizem os pró-prios atores sociais, "não se sabe como cuidar ", "não se deixam cuidar ", ou aos que não se ajustam ao conjunto disponível de sujeitos e práticas das tradições locais de cuidado. "Outros" e "problemas" sobre os quais, além disso, há o registro de uma longa história de intervenção por parte de diversas instituições (políticas, justiça, saúde, policiais, religiosas, não governamentais etc.). Através da avaliação das particularidades de algumas práticas, de saberes e estratégias com que os familiares de usuários/as de drogas -e residentes em geral -respondem diante do rápido emagrecimento desses jovens, o objetivo do presente trabalho é expor a problemática das práticas e dos processos envolvidos e categorizados como de Cuidado para outrosespecificamente, para usuários/as de drogas em contextos sociais marginalizados da área metropolitana de Buenos Aires. Neste caso, esses "outros" *