The Bottlenecks of Free Trade: Paraguay's Mau Cars and Contraband Markets in the Triple Frontier

Abstract

Resumen En la Triple Frontera entre Argentina, Brasil y Paraguay, la ciudad paraguaya de Ciudad del Este es famosa por los autos robados. Dado que Ciudad del Este es un embotellamiento para las rutas de contrabando en el hemisferio, el mercado del contrabando—o actividades mau—arroja una serie de preguntas sobre la legitimidad y el capitalismo comercial. Muestro cómo los autos mau se articulan en una serie de embotellamientos, desde ‘hacer fila’ en el puente internacional, el trabajo de ‘cazacoches’ que confiscan los vehículos robados, hasta una fuerza élite de la aduana encargada de la vigilancia de los autos de contrabando de Paraguay. Mau es una expresión y un mecanismo para regular el capitalismo de frontera, la acumulación y el libre comercio. Por lo tanto, se debe tratar a mau como una forma reguladora de gobernanza económica en tensión dinámica con la terminología pública y oficial del comercio, como la “integración” económica y la “libre circulación” que dominan el mercado común del Mercosur. [Burocracia, capitalismo fronterizo, contrabando, economía informal, fronteras, Paraguay, Triple Frontera, zona franca]

Those Who “Don’t Move” Dynamics of Mobility at Two Crossing Points on the Guatemala-Mexico Borderland, from the Experience of Workers Who Vitalize the Region

“…This ambiguity allows groups and people behind these interests to trade many products without having to go through import-export rules and regulations, which means better profits moving around in a faster and easier manner. Economic integration and free circulation take another meaning in borderlands such as this, as Schuster also has shown in her study about cars' contraband at the Argentina-Brazil-Paraguay borderland [16].…”

“…For instance, in her work in an Argentinian border town, Jusionyte [14] shows that local actors-local journalists in her case study-have a specific point of view on what they consider a legitimate activity, explaining that, according to her analysis, in many cases "the letter of the law and local practices, as well as local social and moral regimes, often do not coincide" (p. 243). Similarly, Aguiar [15] and Shuster [16], in studies based on the tri-border region of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, show how regulatory ambiguity creates gaps that allow exchange across borders and the reproduction and survival of local economies.…”

“…Even when their services are linked more to one side of the border than to the other, they facilitate movement across the line and, in general, around the border region. Their activity and the service they provide "recast the meaning of free trade and processes of 'integration'" (p. 25,16). They do it so efficiently not only because they know how to ride a tricycle, a tuk tuk, or a cámara or hold a turno as money changers, but also because they are local inhabitants whose lives and (im)mobility patterns are profoundly involved in a binational environment.…”

Narco‐Infrastructures and the Persistence of Illicit Coca in Loreto

“…This notion of stealth is crucial to the analysis of Ieva Jusionyte (2015), who, in the triple‐border zone between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, similarly shows how traffickers of drugs and other forms of contraband appropriate state materials and symbols to facilitate illicit flows (see also Schuster 2019). Her ethnographic work uses the heuristic of camouflage to describe how traffickers disguise their activities by donning the cloak of the state, appropriating vehicles, and uniforms to lend an air of legitimacy.…”

The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling

“…For poor women making do in the margins of Ciudad del Este's commercial boom, their investments -and the social security they were hoped to engender -were most often fuelled by mounting debts (see Han, 2011Han, , 2012. By the early 2000s, the economy sagged under pressure from Brazilian customs enforcement and the slow-moving effects of regularizing regional customs laws through the Mercosur Southern Common Market (Dent, 2017;Rabossi, 2012;Schuster, 2019a). Seeking social security through commercial windfalls was ever more untenable for low-income families (Schuster, 2019b).…”