On and Off the Record: The Production of Legitimacy in an Argentine Border Town

Abstract

Based on ethnographic research in Puerto Iguazú, an Argentine town bordering Brazil and Paraguay, this article explores how journalists maneuver between stories for, on, and off the record to maintain a locally valid boundary between law and crime. Journalists occupy a multifaceted position in the Iguazú community: as residents, they often participate in the informal circulation of legal and illegal goods across the border; as cultural producers, they create representations about it. Coverage relating to informal trade depends on local schemes of legality and legitimacy that juxtapose the rights and rules for those living in this small border community with national legislation, which disadvantages the remote town and serves to obstruct cross-border exchanges. Due to the discrepancy between local understanding of legality and national laws, many potentially newsworthy illegal exchanges are not addressed in the media. On the border, where consensus regarding the legality and legitimacy of many common practices is unstable, this article shows how local news production plays an important part in determining what is legal, illegal, legitimate, or illicit. [legality, legitimacy, media, border, Argentina] For the Record: A Journalist with a CameraZooming in on a landmass across Río Paraná, the camera moves past an abandoned convention center and focuses on a green and yellow landmark, a monumental version of the border demarcation signs found throughout Latin America. Its colors blend with the surrounding Brazilian subtropical jungle. As the camera swiftly turns in a clockwise direction, it pans over Río Iguazú and the lush vegetation, barely spotting another marker: painted in sky blue and white, an obelisk built in 1903 to celebrate Argentine national sovereignty. Finally, as the camera glides further to the right and returns across Río Paraná, it captures a red, white and blue Paraguayan signpost, rising tall above the river port."We will share the experience of crossing by boat from Puerto Presidente Franco, Paraguay to Puerto Iguazú, Argentina," comments the voice behind the camera. "Unique in the world: three countries, two rivers." Two journalists and I present our documents to a man in a checkered shirt sitting on the rocks by the river. When earlier that morning we took a bus across the Tancredo Neves Bridge from Argentina to Brazil and then across the Puente del Amistad [Friendship Bridge] uniting Brazil and Paraguay, migration control did not stamp our passports, so we could not get departure stamps either. Money for the tickets can be paid for in any combination of currencies: Argentine pesos, Brazilian reais, or Paraguayan guaraníes. We gather our fares and board the ferry.The journalist with the camera records every minute of the trip. Then she briefly turns off the device as she approaches an acquaintance. "Esteche! What are you doing here?

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

“…Set against this public discourse lamenting the slow transition to “free trade” under Mercosur is the reality of constant transborder commerce orchestrated by ordinary borderlanders. Much of this traffic is “off the record,” in Ieva Jusionyte's (:244) framing: locals—including news media and state officials—depend on cheap access to food and domestic goods and carefully negotiate how much information about trade to reveal to outsiders. Thus, despite the fact that trade delegations from all three countries lament the continuing barriers to “free trade,” traffic on the Friendship Bridge can be so gridlocked that Ciudad del Este has a local TV station that offers a live CCT video feed of the bridge (Figure ).…”

“…In public discourse, smuggling and piracy are cast as “problematic” disruptions to the ordered flow of legal trade . The ambiguity of what exactly has been “legalized” (Jusionyte :244) by the trade deal is tactically deployed by a variety of actors. In Paraguay, the powerful Zacarías family (city mayors from 2001 to 2018) uses discourses of public “disorder” and contraband to dispossess informal vendors in the city center (Tucker ).…”

Language Activism on the Airwaves: Pulaar Radio Broadcasting in the Senegal River Valley

“…As stated above, Pulaar community radio broadcasters operate as “border journalists” (Jusionyte, ), whose work relies on border‐crossing practices made possible by linguistic, kinship, and commercial ties that have long spanned what Robinson () calls the “Senegalo‐Mauritanian zone.” However, the reality that the Senegal River constitutes a political boundary does create constraints on how the radio stations conduct business. A staffer at Pete FM 102.0 recalled how when he and some of his colleagues once arrived on the north bank of the Senegal River Mauritanian border guards confiscated their recording equipment.…”

States of Camouflage

“…From the early days of my ethnographic fieldwork with news journalists in Puerto Iguazú (see Jusionyte , ), I have visited the firehouse regularly. Press reporters I accompanied stopped there several times a week to inquire about emergency calls and rescue operations.…”

“…It was a public secret that some employees in the customs office enabled their family members, business associates, or those who agreed to pay bribes to sidestep border trade regulations. As such, it was not easy to distinguish illegalized yet socially legitimate practices, such as small‐scale contraband for personal consumption, and unlawful illicit flows, like drug trafficking (see Jusionyte ). But it was even harder to estimate to what extent the outlawed activities intertwined with formal state institutions and practices.…”