Corn is food, not contraband
The right to "free trade" at the Mexico-Guatemala border
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2279433 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Rebecca Galemba (0000-0003-4116-3749, University of Denver, corresponding author), Rebecca B Galemba |
| Year | 2012 |
| Volume | 39 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 716-734 |
| Publication date | 2012-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Ethnologist (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0094-0496 • E-ISSN: 1548-1425 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01391.x |
| OpenAlex | W2045690242 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 16 |
| References cited | 26 |
With no local outlet to sell their corn harvests as a result of neoliberal policies, residents on the Mexico-Guatemala border pursued an alternative strategy. They mobilized to smuggle corn from Mexico to Guatemala and asserted that this constituted legitimate "free trade." Residents reinterpreted free trade to imply their right to "freely" sell corn over the border, thereby challenging the implications of official free-trade policies that were anything but free. Yet, as locals participate in this growing trade and negotiate with state officials, they may contribute to the neoliberal economic dynamics, increasing regional inequalities, and patron-client state relations they otherwise protest
Economics · Free trade · Free trade agreement · Inequality · International trade · Negotiation · Neoliberalism (international relations · Political economy · Political science · State (computer science · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies
Governance Beyond the Law
On and Off the Record
Beyond the matrix of oppression
Multiple narratives of il/legality and im/morality
How to Smuggle Contraband and Influence Border Policy
Formal or Informal, Legal or Illegal
Improvised Transnationalism
Permissive Politics and Entrepreneurial Transgression in a Chinese Border Town
Remapping the Border
Bodies that count
Economic origins of border fortifications
Magendo
The Bottlenecks of Free Trade
Making Law
On Precariousness and the Ethical Imagination
Guaranteed contraband
Neoliberalism as Exception
The Chiapas Rebellion
The Struggle for Maize
Broccoli and Desire
Sweetness and power
Maya Saints and Souls in a Changing World
The Social Life of Things
Ethnography in/of the World System
Border games
Illicit Flows and Criminal Things
Introduction
Economic globalization from below
Bringing the Moral Economy back in ... to the Study of 21st‐Century Transnational Peasant Movements
Indigenous Movements and Their Critics
Gangs in the Global City
Global Maya
We are the border
The Moral Economy of the Peasant
Topologies of Power
Informal and Illicit Entrepreneurs
Blackouts and Progress
| Unique citing works | 16 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,14 |
| Citation span | 2012 - 2025 (14) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 16 |