Abstract
This chapter argues that Calon physical sustenance and societal reproduction are premised on the continuation of relationships with Jurons. Clients come from all social backgrounds. Calon aim to establish one-way flows of money from long-term non-Gypsy clients to their households, and use their reputation as being cold-hearted and money-driven in order to ensure that their loans do not turn into personalised forms of reciprocity. Yet loans are often unsuccessful, with the most potentially lucrative able to cause equally spectacular failures.
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Notes
- 1.
It is for this reason why a non-Gypsy agiota waited each Saturday by the gates of one company in Santaluz. When workers finished their work, received their weekly salary cheques, and were unwilling or incapable to wait until Monday to cash them in town, they exchanged them with him for a 10 per cent commission.
- 2.
Generally speaking, there are two types of loans with Bolsa FamÃlia cards, pensions or other benefits. Very infrequently, Calon men ‘bought’ cards in the following manner: say one receives R$128 per month. A Cigano would buy it for one year for R$1000. Every month for 12 months he would receive the full cash benefit before giving the card back. The risk here was that at times, people blocked their cards. Galeguinho, a big non-Gypsy agiota in Santaluz, organised it differently. He would normally lend someone only R$100, with R$28 being the interest. Once a month, Galeguinho’s assistant, together with a client, would go to the bank and take out the whole sum. The assistant would collect the interest and keep the card, giving the client the rest. Usually a client would fall short and be unable to pay the principal.
It is possible that the visibility of withdrawing money from a cash machine in a bank , in combination with the meagreness of sums and a preference for real ‘deals’ rather than ‘pawning’ (penhora), made this a less desirable option for Ciganos. Some Calon told me that they felt pity for their poor clients and that is why they preferred not lending to them. Most would agree that lending below R$1000 was not worth it.
- 3.
Gilberto Freyre, who is famous for arguing that the sexual relations between masters and slaves resulted in specific intimate warmth of Brazilian slavery and that children were born of these interactions, also suggested, for instance, that Ciganos were probable authors of ‘mysterious’ thefts of (free) children, later sold as slaves (1951: 790).
- 4.
Notas promissórias were standardised and defined by law in 1908. Paid harassers and debt collectors existed in the past as well.
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Fotta, M. (2018). Chapter 5 Lending Money to Jurons. In: From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending in the Era of Financial Inclusion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_6
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