Economías inflamables en tiempos de COVID-19: La reventa de gasolina en la frontera de Venezuela–Brasil

The resale of Brazilian fuel on the Venezuela–Brazil border is an emerging event that facilitates a renewed sociopolitical understanding of local survival strategies beyond notions of societal resilience and informality in times of crisis. This economic activity rather belongs to a mercurial way of life that occurs in these cross-border spaces where gold is the locus of a commercial chain that links various underground economies. Based on collaborative ethnographic research, in this article we show that the resale of fuel occurs with even greater virulence in times of multiple crises and closed borders, which has exacerbated by the current Covid-19 pandemic turning prevailing underground economies into “flammable economies.” By this, we refer to an informal economy in times of crisis that is extremely volatile and contagious, whose effects proliferate fueled by the legal ambivalence that is becoming more extensive everyday.