Border Multiplicities: At the Cross-Roads between Improvisation and Regulation in the Andes

ABSTRACT

Focusing on illicit trade between Peru and Bolivia, this article is concerned with border-work as it unfolds at the cross-roads between improvisation and regulation. The argument of the article is two-fold. First, it argues that cross-border trade in this context must be understood as socially and spatially embedded. The trade involves a sense of local autonomy and networks of cooperation and exchange that not only facilitate illicit trade, but also adds legitimacy and value to cross-border trade, despite its illegal dimensions. Second, the article argues that commodity flows in this context actualize questions about what, where and when the border is. Due to the social and spatial embeddedness of cross-border trade and the authorities’ difficulties to limit the smuggling, border-work is multiplied, taking place in various sites beyond the delineated border. The article illustrates how the flow of a particular commodity, namely fuel, has resulted in an intensification and multiplication of border-work due to smuggling.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the people in Peru and Bolivia who agreed to participate in this research and generously shared their experiences. Many thanks also to Magaly Cardich for her research assistance, and to Norma Fuller for her support. A big thank you to John A. McNeish who provided the research grant from the Research Council of Norway to realize this research, as well as the benefit of academic exchange with a generous group of researchers through the “Contested Powers” project: Thank you all! Thank you also to Oscar Ugarteche for his valuable input, and to José Carlos Aguiar for his useful comments and encouragement. I am grateful to Penny Harvey who read and commented upon the first draft of this article, and to the researchers connected with the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change in Manchester, who also provided me with useful inputs on an earlier draft. I would also like to thank Eileen Myrdahl and Nora Haukali for assisting me with the editing, and the reviewers who contributed valuable comments and criticism. Some of the ethnographic material in this article also features in a chapter I have written for the book Contested Powers: The Politics of Energy and Development in Latin America, edited by John-Andrew McNeish, Axel Borchgrevink and Owen Logan, published with Zed books in 2015. The title of this chapter is “Everything moves with fuel: Energy politics and the smuggling of energy resources”.

Notes

1 The names of all my interlocutors have been altered.

2 About one-third of prices in Peru.

3 Energy resources are also illegally exported from Ecuador, due to subsidization of the energy sector.

4 Along Cuenca Suche, the river that goes through Desaguadero, there are a range of un-authorized mining businesses.

5 Eufemia buys Peruvian fuels from employees at the hospital, who receive the fuel as a bonus from their employer.

6 I have changed the original names of some of these villages.

7 In 2011, it was estimated that illegal export of fuels represents a loss of approximately $450 million US dollars per year (La Razón, La Paz, January 27, 2011).

Additional information

Funding

The Research Council of Norway (project number 201312/H30).