ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relevance of race, class, and indigeneity for how intellectual property (IP) piracy is framed, debated, and policed in contemporary Guatemala. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with Maya men who manufacture and market knockoff fashions in the highland region as well as on journalism, policy documents, and anti-piracy propaganda, it examines how racial and cultural narratives about who IP pirates are serve to justify stricter enforcement policies. It argues that the shift from what has historically and disparagingly been called the “Indian problem” to emerging narratives about a “piracy problem” in Guatemala and the wider Latin American region reveals a great deal about changing relationships of indigenous peoples to the state and international market systems, paying special attention to how hybrid identities and social locations are problematized as being particularly threatening to national and international legal and economic orders.
