REBECCA B. GALEMBA Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver “Corn is food, not contraband”: The right to “free trade” at the Mexico–Guatemala border ABSTRACT With no local outlet to sell their corn harvests as a result of neoliberal policies, residents on the Mexico–Guatemala border pursued an alternative strategy. They mobilized to smuggle corn from Mexico to Guatemala and asserted that this constituted legitimate “free trade.” Residents reinterpreted free trade to imply their right to “freely” sell corn over the border, thereby challenging the implications of official free-trade policies that were anything but free. Yet, as locals participate in this growing trade and negotiate with state officials, they may contribute to the neoliberal economic dynamics, increasing regional inequalities, and patron–client state relations they otherwise protest. [contraband, corn, Mexico, Guatemala, free trade, neoliberalism] Corn is not contraband. It is a basic grain. We all need it to eat ... [After CONASUPO closed,] 1 people were looking for a place to sell their corn. We had meetings with the municipal president and he informed us about free trade. We entered into an agreement [to sell corn to Guatemala] since there was nowhere to sell it. Now corn comes from all over the municipality and sometimes even further. There are agreements that no one should bother [this trade] ... This is called “free trade.” —Mexican border resident O n a typical day, along a five-mile clandestine road that crosses the Mexico–Guatemala border, exhaust and dust from the traffic of ten-ton trucks drift through the stalks in the surrounding corn- fields. Several small groups of local men look for shade in a series of depots established along the road as they await their turn to transfer cargo between Mexican and Guatemalan trucks. A variety of goods are smuggled in both directions through this route, but the most com- mon and vigorously defended is corn. In 2006, at least 24,000 tons of Mex- ican corn entered Guatemala through this rural border road (Figure 1), 2 which runs through the dry, hot, and largely flat region of Frontera Co- malapa, Chiapas, Mexico, and La Democracia, Huehuetenango, Guatemala (Figure 2). 3 Three Mexican and two Guatemalan communities lie along this border route (Figure 3). 4 Both nations’ official laws consider this trade contraband since merchants commercialize corn through an unmonitored international border and evade inspections and taxation. Locals had a dif- ferent idea. When I asked why so many truckloads of corn flowed unen- cumbered over the border, residents asserted that it was “free.” They in- sisted, “Corn is food, not contraband.” Some even added that it was “free” because “Mexico signed a free trade agreement.” AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 716–734, ISSN 0094-0496, online ISSN 1548-1425. C  2012 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1425.2012.01391.x