CONTRABAND COFFEE FREE

CONTRABAND COFFEE FREE

Galemba's landmark book helps readers understand a region where smuggling is conceived as free trade and borders are not walls that divide but pathways for encounters.' This unique ethnography offers an intimate approach to the lives of Mexico-Guatemala border inhabitants and their struggles to survive in neoliberal times. ' Contraband Corridor dares to humanize those involved with the trafficking of contraband. Her grounded, 'bottom up' account draws much-needed attention to this too often overlooked border while carefully avoiding the alarmism and sensationalism found in popular depictions of cross-border smuggling.' 'Galemba has given us a rare glimpse into everyday life in the shadows along the MexicoвЂ“Guatemala border. Contraband Corridor contends that security, neoliberalism, and illegality are interdependent in complex ways, yet how they unfold depends on negotiations between diverse border actors. Galemba argues that securitized neoliberalism values certain economic activities and actors while excluding and criminalizing others, even when the informal and illicit economy is increasingly one of the poor's only remaining options. Yet smuggling also exacerbates prevailing inequalities, obstructs the possibility of more substantive political and economic change, and provides low-risk economic benefits to businesses, state agents, and other illicit actors, often at the expense of border residents. Smuggling basic commodities across the border provides a means for borderland peasants to make a living while neoliberal economic policies decimate agricultural livelihoods. Rather than assuming that extralegal activities necessarily threaten the state and formal economy, Galemba's ethnography illustrates the complex ways that the formal, informal, legal, and illegal economies intertwine. Challenging assumptions regarding security, trade, and illegality, Rebecca Berke Galemba details how these residents engage in and justify extralegal practices in the context of heightened border security, restricted economic opportunities, and exclusionary trade policies. Contraband Corridor seeks to understand the border from the perspective of its long-term inhabitants, including petty smugglers of corn, clothing, and coffee. The MexicoвЂ“Guatemala border has emerged as a geopolitical hotspot of illicit flows of both goods and people.

Contraband coffee