Abstract

HERNANDEZ HERNANDEZ, Alberto. Tepito, Capitalism the Tough Way. The Thin Line Between Legality and Illegality. Alteridades [online]. 2018, vol.28, n.55, pp.99-111. ISSN 2448-850X.  https://doi.org/10.24275/uam/izt/dcsh/alteridades/2018v28n55/hernandez.

One of the biggest and most popular markets in Latin America is located in the district of Tepito, in Mexico City. There, the boundary between what is legal and what is illegal is diluted amid social and commercial dynamics related to the “globalization from the bottom-up”. From a socio-anthropological point of view, newspaper sources, observation and interviews, this paper explains how contraband, Korean and Chinese immigrants, and piracy networks in Tepito constitute a thin line between legality and illegality; linking its processes to what is (il)legal, such as the social and economic practices which operate from an ambivalent dimension in daily life.

Keywords : commerce; shadow economy; (il)legal; globalization from the bottom-up.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )