Abstract

ROJAS PEREZ, Hugo Saúl  and  FLETES-OCON, Héctor Bernabé. Regional State configuration: The mercantile order and interpretive community on the Mexico-Guatemala border. Estud. front [online]. 2017, vol.18, n.35, pp.1-21. ISSN 2395-9134.  https://doi.org/10.21670/ref.2017.35.a01.

We offer an ethnographic description of the circulation of vegetables on the border between Mexico and Guatemala. These goods move from one country to the other through ant-style piecemeal trafficking on misdirected paths: they enter constantly as contraband in small quantities, using tolerated border crossings. The objective is to show how the interactions between the border actors involved construct a local order that is different from that of the State’s normative parameters. An order is founded on a series of unwritten rules that govern the practices of crossing, thereby creating an “interpretive community.” This paper clarifies why the operating personnel from different levels of the Mexican government charged with overseeing trade are not outside of this community but rather compose an important part of it and how the State is empirically constructed within it, starting from the idea that the State is not an all-encompassing and coherent entity.

Keywords : border commerce; local order; interpretive community; empirical construction of the State; Mexico-Guatemala border.

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