Contraband Cultures

A fresh and non-stereotypical take on smuggling in Latin America. Contraband Cultures reframes smuggling activities across Latin America (including the Caribbean) and its diasporas through the lenses of kinship, political movements, economic exchange, and resistance to capitalist state hegemony, countering the popular representations of smuggling in the region as chaotic, lawless, violent, and exotic.

This book includes a broad range of chapters from social science and humanities scholars, and it uses various methodologies, theoretical traditions, and analytic approaches to explore the efficacy and valence of smuggling as a lens to examine personhood, materiality, statehood, and political (dis)connection across Latin America. Its combination of historic documentation and contemporary ethnographic research highlights the development of these cultural practices while grounding them in the capitalist and colonial refashioning of the entire region since the sixteenth century.