Martin Fotta Current Project Martin Fotta Curriculum Vitae Current Project Latin American social science has long focused on how the poor fail to gain access to financial credit. Traditionally, a changing relationship between labour, land and credit has been depicted as leading to systemic changes (e.g Taussig 1980). In urban areas de Soto (2002), for instance, sees the lack of secure credit as the main reason for the lack of economic growth through informal economy. Yet there exist a myriad of credit institutions throughout the continent, which create a “dense financial life” (Abramovay 2004). Within North-East Brazil, these include official credit from banks, buying on debt (fiado), credit from patrons and merchants, agrarian syndicates, religious cooperatives, and communal instutitions like caixinhas, consórcios, bingos, balaidos, or campanhas. Loans with high interest rates from Ciganos (Ciganos Turcos, Calons and sometimes Romany) are especially widespread. This niche occupation has earned Ciganos the epithet “bankers of sertão.” My research explores how the the Ciganos earn their living, develop a social organization of subsistence, and create value through this niche (Guyer 1997). Through this example, I show that it is not possible to understand a variety of markets without detailed studies of credit institutions, especially since they were always presupposed by analysis of a capitalist market in the first place. Gypsies occupy a special place in the history of Brazilian modernization. Iberian Gypsies (identified by themselves as the Calons) were originally deported from Portugal to colonies as socially deviant and undesirable degredados, and could not easily fit into Brazilian categories of race. Their presence challenged existing social relations and institutional forms as traditionally conceived (da Cunha 1944; Freyre 1959, 1968; Ribeiro 1995). As a result, some scholars went as far as to claim that they disappeared from the country with the forging of a nation (Freyre 1951b).

Although others have taken a more complex picture of development (e.g. Schwartz 1985), the autonomy of the Gypsies vis-à-vis these "gate-keeping concepts" (Appadurai 1986) has nonetheless made them marginal. Yet the Calons can provide a novel method for understanding the Brazilian internal economy. Their marginal, but important position reveals the economical dynamics of the society they live in. Long-distance commodity trade has been essential for the Calons since the nineteenth century. Gardner (1849) noted that they traded with "animals and trinkets" in Pernambuco. According to police reports from Rio de Janeiro, they were also responsible for running slave-trading establishments (Debret 1975;Soares 1988; Walsh 1831). Their social organization was particularly advantageous when trading with commodities and slaves in the dangerous sertão (backlands) region (Donovan 1992). Smaller Gypsy groups were connected to a network that linked several regions (Karasch 1987;Teixeira 2007). Over the time the content of their activities has changed, partly because slavery ended, and partly because commodity trade expanded. These days, they are primarily responsible for sale of used cars (in São Paulo), trade and transport of animals (in Minas Gerais and Goias) and lending of money (in Bahia). The spatial-economic strategies of the Calons relates to dynamics with other Brazilians, with other Calons and with their own kinsmen. When looked from the point of view of the villages the Calons in Bahia live in small communities. But when looking from the point of view of regions the networks (of relatedness and economic) span several municipalities. The cores of settlements are usually composed of groups of brothers, but the exact composition often changes. The women - as Calin - are clearly recognizable reading palms on the markets, while men - os Calon - tend to stay in a settlement. It is here, where people who want to borrow money come. Since the Calons do not possess perfect financial information about their clients each transaction runs a potential risk of non-payment. The money is often easier to get than from other sources of credit, but almost everybody in the region has heard a terrifying story of murders and family break-ups which occurred in a cases of failure to repay debts. The Ciganos thus occupy a position identified with the peripatetic populations of service providers and traders elsewhere (e.g. Rao, 1987): they are endogamous and mobile, distinguished through ethnic markers (segregation, language, kinship and gender relations), fulfill an important economic role, which has negative moral implications, and while often despised at an everyday level, they posses a certain measure of power in the supernatural sphere. This project also investigates the role of the Calon in the larger, rural Brazilian society. In the face of continued instability and low official credit, borrowing money from a peripatetic ethnic group is often a way for peasants to gain autonomy (MacGrath 2005). Due to the moral implications of debt, loans are only possible from an ethnic group outside traditional patronage and kinship relations. The Ciganos therefore become a "named form" (Guyer 2004b), an "inorganically connected, but an organic part" (Simmel 1950), which opens up possibilities forbidden by traditional social relations. The Calon therefore provide a novel, economical angle at exploring subaltern existence and its importance for the development of rural society in Brazil. This project will also produce the ethnography of the Gypsies in Latin America, who have been a part of its history since the colonization. It will add a very different case study to recent discussions on life on the margins, which has dominated Gypsy scholarship. Brazil cannot be approached through clearly-demarcated racial and ethnic identities; the Calons are not marginal in economic sense; do not belong to a persecuted and discriminated group in political sense; and did not come "too late" into an already-settled territory in a social sense. Their lifestyle is more than a result of a reaction to discrimination or of encapsulation (Cf. Day et al. 1999). Researching the dynamic stability of a niche could provide a better theoretical sense of the apparent resilience of the Gypsies.