At Puerto Madryn, a small town on the coast of Patagonia, a lone freighter was unloading one day last week. A big wooden crate slipped from its hoist, splintered on the docks, and out tumbled a bright pile of costume jewelry from Japan. "Enough trinkets," said a bored customs officer, "to adorn every nanny goat in Patagonia." The jewelry, as the customs officer well knew, would soon be heading north from barren, duty-free Patagonia as a routine part of Latin America's most wide-open smuggling operation.
Ever since 1880, all of Argentina south of the 42nd parallel has been an on-again-off-again...
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