“MONSTROUS AND ILLEGAL PROCEEDINGS”: LAW ...

economies to the forces of global capitalism. These processes reached their zenith with the
creation of Mercosur, a customs union that sought to recreate the integration of the old
cross-border commercial relationships that defined the Río de la Plata borderlands
throughout much of the 19 th century.
The forces of globalization, however, do not imply a uniform flattening of identities.
Rather, it has given rise to alternative solidarities that are often unbound by geographic
constraints. As Arjun Appadurai observed, globalization can also paradoxically serve as a
powerful “localizing process.” 5 Appadurai argues that global processes can create room for
distinct local appropriations of “the materials of modernity.” Local traditions, imaginations
and understandings continually refashion products and images targeted to a global audience.
Moreover, the world’s increasing interconnectedness paradoxically breeds “local”
communities that stretch across space. The local itself becomes redefined around self-
forming communities of shared identities and beliefs. Caught in the middle, the nation-state
seems under almost constant assault from above and below. Appadurai concludes that the
“[n]ation-state, as units in a complex interactive system, are not very likely to be the long-
term arbiters of the relationship between globality and modernity.” 6
Evidence of the growing weakness of the nation-state and national identities seems
everywhere. In the Mexican borderlands, drug cartels have erected an illicit economy and a
violent form of governance. In the Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, outlet malls attract
Brazilian shoppers and, according to the United States government at least, international
terrorist organizations have found refuge. International corporations have grown
increasingly powerful and correspondingly more difficult for national governments to
5 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: The Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 17.
6 Ibid., 19.
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