Abstract
A remarkable change in security matters set the course for politics in Latin America in recent years. The putative causal relationship between migration and crime cyclically sustains the discourses that require more safety and police force intervention, police autonomy to suppress, and reduction of the age of criminal responsibility. This panorama, accompanied by the state postponement of prison and security infrastructures, is framed and worsened by the tendency to criminalize borders, which are seen as porous and dangerous zones. The notion that these spaces favor the contamination and corrosion of the nation-state promotes rhetoric about borders that need to be disassembled. Simultaneously, an odd growth of the technological market specialized in border security, suggests specific forms of relationships between the social and environmental conditions, illegal markets, security policies and nationalist discourses in favor of sovereignty. I analyze the municipality of Aguas Blancas, bordering with Bolivia, where the transit between the legal and the illegal shapes specific ways of life and exposes the nets woven through the managing of illegalisms at diverse scales (Goldman 1999; Foucault 2014). My analysis connects ‘simulations’ in Baudrillard’s (1978) sense, performances of imaginary scenarios that become reality, with ‘temporary autonomous zones’ in security matters, areas outside routine legal-administrative governance (Bey 1996). The anthropological approach in this work was based on in situ interviews and observations aimed to understand the relationship between illegal practices and security.
Highlights
18th Century pirates and corsairs created an “information network” covering the globe: primitive and basically dedicated to forbidden businesses, the net worked admirably
I’ll consider that the assemblages between the temporary autonomous zones and the control and security simulations can be rendered viable through ‘political goods’ that refer to the exchange of economic values, and asymmetrical relationships between people with diverse status and power, to favor certain goals and generate reciprocal bonds over time (Misse 2017). This idea is directly linked to the notion of ‘illegalisms’ coined by Foucault (2014) with the purpose of tearing up in some way the illusory dichotomy of the legal/illegal dualism, whose management depends on such goods
The border ends in La Salada, or for example, in the Barrio de Once in Buenos Aires City, which concentrates people coming from Bolivia (Gago 2014) and that, eventually, allows links to coordinate networks of trust in the movement of illegalized substances
Summary
A remarkable change in security matters set the course for politics in Latin America in recent years. I’ll consider that the assemblages between the temporary autonomous zones and the control and security simulations can be rendered viable through ‘political goods’ that refer to the exchange of economic values, and asymmetrical relationships between people with diverse status and power, to favor certain goals and generate reciprocal bonds over time (Misse 2017) This idea is directly linked to the notion of ‘illegalisms’ coined by Foucault (2014) with the purpose of tearing up in some way the illusory dichotomy of the legal/illegal dualism, whose management depends on such goods. In light of these resources, we observe border dynamics as results of exchanges, conditions, and circumstances that shift as variable and elusive to the central legal order
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