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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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes processes of interaction, tension, conflict and economic interests in one of the major border areas between Mexico and Guatemala. Informal transborder trade involves several actors who have been building these processes pursuant to agency initiatives. From a conceptual perspective, supported by the dialectical relationship between the notions of a border the behavior of transborder actors, it is concluded that in the study area, an informal border-trade integration process has developed and its actors transcend the border, rendering that border permissive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]