The Bottlenecks of Free Trade: Paraguay's Mau Cars and Contraband Markets in the Triple Frontier

Abstract

In the Triple Border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este is famous for stolen cars. Since Ciudad del Este is a bottleneck for smuggling routes in the hemisphere, the smuggling market — or mau activities — raises a series of questions about legitimacy and commercial capitalism. I show how mau cars are articulated in a series of traffic jams, from 'lining up' on the international bridge, the work of 'car hunters' who confiscate stolen vehicles, to an elite customs force in charge of car surveillance. Paraguay smuggling. Mau is an expression and a mechanism to regulate border capitalism, accumulation and free trade. Therefore, you should try tomau as a regulatory form of economic governance in dynamic tension with public and official trade terminology, such as economic "integration" and "free movement" that dominate the common market of Mercosur. [Bureaucracy, border capitalism, smuggling, informal economy, borders, Paraguay, Triple Border, free zone]