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Paper short abstract:

Macehual Maya villagers engage in community forestry, but accusations of illegal logging persist despite government regulations. This presentation suggests that “pachocheo” (timber theft) allows Maya communities to reclaim sovereignty over their territories against environmental regulations.

Paper long abstract:

Since the late 1980s, Macehual Maya villagers in Carrillo Puerto (Quintana Roo, Mexico) rely on community forestry for their monetary income, extracting tropical timber within their commons for the wood and construction industries. Despite heavy government regulation on logging activities to prevent overexploitation and deforestation, accusations of fraud, theft and contraband are rampant in the timber supply chain. Participants often label each other as “pachocheros”, implying that they exceed legal logging limits, operate outside designated forestry areas, and use false permits or lack official documentation.

Drawing from approximately a year and a half of fieldwork (2021-2023) in this indigenous region, I will delve into a specific ethnographic case in the Maya village of Naranjal, where an internal conflict arose after the entire community received fines from the Mexican environmental agency for burning a protected forest area for agricultural purposes. Due to the community assembly’s effort to shift the collective fine onto Timo, the peasant deemed responsible for the fire, he threatened to retaliate by revealing the common, albeit illegal, practice of extracting wood outside the village’s designated forestry areas.

In exploring the accusations and justifications of “pachocheo”, expressed from both moral and ecological standpoints, I will argue that, for my Maya interlocutors, this form of illegality represents a form of ‘social banditry’ or ‘gleaning’, aiming to reclaim individual and collective sovereignty over territories legally theirs but subject to complex and at times contradictory environmental legal frameworks.

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Paper short abstract:

Fayuca, a term used in Mexico to refer to merchandise smuggled across the border, is a phenomenon characteristic of border economies. This paper describes how people living along the Mexico-Belize border assert their right to move fayuca across the border and maintain their livelihoods.

Paper long abstract:

Fayuca, a term used in Mexico to refer to merchandise smuggled across the border and sold on the informal market, is a phenomenon characteristic of border economies and "globalization from below." The community of Subteniente López, located on the banks of the Rio Hondo in southern Quintana Roo, is the most important crossing point into Belize and the Corozal Free Zone. Most villagers earn a living by working as “hormigas” or "ants”, people who walk across the international bridge and bring fayuca with them on their way back into Mexico. Their livelihoods depend on access to the old bridge that connects their community to the Corozal Free Zone. The opening of a "new" international bridge called "Chactemal" on the periphery of the town and the closure of the old bridge will pose a serious threat to the economic survival of the community. This paper describes how, over the past decade, community members have asserted their right to use the old bridge to move fayuca across the border while striving to maintain their livelihoods in the context of limited economic opportunities.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper is a praxiographic investigation of the Mexico-Guatemala border and how it is re-bordered in the face of different 'risks'. It draws on fieldwork with the Suchiate River's rafters, who make a living off tolerated smuggling and 'do' the border differently per each emergency.

Paper long abstract:

This paper takes material semiotics to explore how the Suchiate River border, between Mexico and Guatemala, is done in the face of different risks. The river's rafters are tolerated smugglers, and their work consists of crossing the border by river, back and forth, every day. These actors are in the closest proximity to its ebbs and flows, which gives them a valuable position to account for its multifarious nature. Through memory and observation, this article reconstructs their engagements with the border during 2005's Hurricane Stan, continuous migrant caravans, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper shows that the rafters' usual engagements with a porous border change in the face of each risk, drawing attention to distinct forms of reborderings on the material, legal and biopolitical dimensions. Furthermore, by working with a praxiographical lens, this paper shows different versions of the border - an overflowing river, a half day's work, and a thin line - being made hang together. What results is an account of how this international boundary is ontologically multiple in the face of different 'risks'.

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Paper short abstract:

In the midst of political conflict between Venezuela and Colombia, a group of women migrants navigate the different layers of inequalities, exclusion, and violence by doing smuggling activities across the border.

Paper long abstract:

In this process of smuggling in the border, I used an intersectional approach to understand how the women interact with armed actors (criminal and related to the State) as a way to survive the impact of the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis and the Colombian heritage of armed conflict. Using ethnography, photography, and life story interviews, I joined the group of women in their smuggling activities, documenting their struggles and the ambivalent state approaches to the issue of migration, violence, and trafficking in the borders.

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Paper short abstract:

Colombian smugglers of Venezuelan gasoline turn to collective action and trade unionism to militate for the decriminalisation of gasoline sale and the provision of vocational retraining programmes, and start up capital. These programmes give us insight into the production of the Colombian subject.

Paper long abstract:

Through the 90s and 2000s the Colombian border city of Cúcuta was famous for its contraband and in particular the smuggling of cheap, state-subsidised petrol from Venezuela into Colombia. The petrol smugglers and vendors are known as pimpineros and are named after the four litre petrol cans known as pimpinas. A huge community thrived around these activities and a movement of political organising developed. A formal trade union for the pimpineros was formed in 2013 that helps its members with human rights abuses perpetrated against them by armed gangs. The union has also negotiated state funding for the set-up of several consecutive, co-operative, businesses aimed at providing an exit from the smuggling trade.

This paper looks at these entrepreneurial projects and their supporting institutions to help us to frame pimpineros as a vulnerable population who are seen as needing state intervention rather than being Illegal actors such as paramilitaries or mafia. The term emprendedores forzados – forced entrepreneurs (a play on the legal term desplazados forzados – forcefully displaced peoples) emphasises the vulnerable aspects of the population, as well as hinting towards the heavy influence of Colombia’s entrepreneurial culture on the programme.