Introduction: Consolidation

of the Cigano Moneylending Niche

in the Early Twenty-First Century

The Teacher and the Moneylender

Gilson is a 50-year-old high school teacher who lived in Santaluz, a small
town not far from the Atlantic coast of Bahia, northeast Brazil. In
November 2009, we were sitting in a bar, talking extensively about things
that interested me—the economic situation of his household, the ways in
which he managed money, and his plans for future investment. He then
told me how, in 2004, he urgently needed money for a small business
venture he had opened.
At the time, he could not borrow from any of his banks, since several
loan payments were due soon. Instead, he approached his friend, who he
knew was lending money on interest. But as the friend did not have the
sum needed, he suggested Gilson arrange a loan from Ciganos, or Gypsies,
on 40 per cent monthly interest. Gilson agreed, and the next day they
visited a Cigano tent settlement in Bomfim, a small village about 30 kilo-
metres from Santaluz. There they talked to a Cigano, who told Gilson to
return alone the following day. He told Gilson this in a way so that the
friend would not hear, as Gilson felt the man did not want to include the
friend in the deal and to offer a better interest rate.

© The Author(s) 2018 1

M. Fotta, From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending in the Era of Financial Inclusion,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_1
2  M. Fotta

When Gilson returned the following morning, the two agreed on the
20 per cent monthly interest and the Cigano told him that the money
would be ready in five days. In the meantime, however, Gilson managed
to defer one bank payment and no longer needed to borrow money. He
nevertheless came back on the agreed date in order to ‘talk to’ the Cigano
and to ‘thank him’, as ‘I did not know if I would ever need him again’.
‘I think [the Cigano] might even have been Orlando’, Gilson noted,
but added that he could not remember anymore.
Until a few months before our conversation, Orlando had lived in a
big house in Santaluz, but had since left the town. Still, he remained the
most well-known Cigano in the town, and many non-Gypsies thought of
him as the chefe (chief ) of Ciganos in the region. I never discovered
whether the man Gilson met was indeed Orlando, since Orlando, too,
was vague about it—as he has always been regarding his deals and clients.
Be that as it may, throughout the years whenever I witnessed Orlando
meeting Gilson randomly, whether in Santaluz or elsewhere, the former
would greet Gilson amicably with a big smile: ‘Hello, professor! How are
you today?’

* * *

But why would Gilson, a public employee who worked for both munici-
pal and state high schools and had a stable income, think he would ever
‘need’ Orlando? And how does Gilson’s understanding of Orlando’s use-
fulness relate to his view of, and entanglement with, other sources of
credit? And how do loans from a bank, a friend (amigo), or a Cigano
compare? In turn, how does Orlando’s moneymaking depend on being
recognised as a Cigano by people like Gilson and his friend? And how
does his life, and that of the Cigano community to which he belongs,
connect with lives of their non-Gypsy clients? These are some of the ques-
tions that this book will try to answer.
Orlando belongs to a population of Brazilian Romanies who call
themselves Calon and are popularly known as Ciganos (Gypsies). Calon
Ciganos have lived in Bahia since at least the end of the sixteenth century;
another significant population of Romanies in Brazil is that of the Roma,
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  3

primarily from Eastern Europe, who started arriving around the end of
the nineteenth century. Calon Ciganos have thus co-constituted the
Bahian social world for centuries, not only as stock figures of folklore and
popular imagination, but also as people who occupy specific economic
niches and who relate to other Bahians in particular ways. Indeed, the
ethnogenesis of Calon as a distinct Romani population is intimately tied
to the South Atlantic colonial and postcolonial history and the formation
of Brazilian society and economy.
Gilson, like other Santaluzans, recalled that in the past, Ciganos would
pass through the town and sometimes erect their tents next to the river
for longer or shorter periods of time. He also remembered them as clients
of his father, a dental technician who used to make gold teeth for Ciganos.
At that time, Calon Gypsies specialised as itinerant traders of animals.
Today, however, most live in houses and are recognised as moneylenders.
In many towns in the Bahian interior, if one knows where to look (and
what to look for), one can identify groups of Calon men standing on
squares or in front of banks in the morning, waiting for clients. As the
vignette above suggests, Cigano moneylending relies on such ready avail-
ability. At the same time, however, it also depends on the management of
ethnic distance: a non-Gypsy client might even feign not to remember
the details of his deals, even though he had returned to talk to the mon-
eylender and they remain on friendly terms.
By looking at how people like Orlando, a Cigano moneylender, and
Gilson, a non-Gypsy school teacher, connect through relations of mon-
etary debt, and by discussing the role that the Brazilian state has played
in this regime, the book speaks to those recent works that focus on ways
that the state-sponsored project of expanding credit provision, or finan-
cialisation, has impacted intimate relations and future aspirations (e.g.
James 2015; Schuster 2015). It describes how the community life of the
Calon in Bahia is reproduced through debt relations, and how the forg-
ing of distinct relations of debt and credit becomes an aspect of the pro-
cess through which people fabricate and maintain their lifeworlds (e.g.
Chu 2010; Han 2012). Specifically, it argues that the loans extended to
non-Gypsies or the production of deferred payments among Calon, as
well as the technologies of monetary management that are used in both,
while continuous with non-Gypsy practices, serve as tools to recreate
4  M. Fotta

‘Caloninity’, so to speak. Here, specific dynamics of debt and repayment

confirm people’s convictions that an individual’s enmeshment in social
relations and participation in the lives of others are central for leading a
proper life—what Calon call vida do Cigano, ‘a Gypsy life’ (Vilar 2016).
Ultimately, the modernisation of the Bahian interior, the end of the
mass demand for work and transport animals, and the expansion of offi-
cial financial services to people and areas of life that until then had lain
outside of its orbit—the process of so-called financial inclusion—might
have been events ‘externally induced’, but the emergence of the Cigano
niche has been ‘orchestrated’ by Calon themselves (Sahlins 1985: viii).
True, this niche belongs to a particular milieu, with its ethnic stereotypes
and its productive structure, but it is not solely determined by it. The
lives of Calon Ciganos are fully embedded in the monetary economy and
depend on exchanges with non-Gypsies. But if recent socio-economic
changes have entailed the reorientation of subjectivities and reshaped
social life in Bahia, Calon have used these new alignments to recreate
themselves anew as Calon. Through attaining a certain stability over time
by means of the repetition and layering of diverse kinds of relationships
(including their juxtaposition), through conceptual and value calibra-
tion, and by drawing on established images about each other, a recogni-
sable social form—a Cigano moneylending niche—is created and
maintained.
A niche thus presupposes the fabrication of its own dimensions. As we
will see throughout this book, Calon differentiate between varied forms of
monetary exchange—various types of loans that come with different
names and standards, and which specify relationships between the parties
involved. This production of a distinction between what could be heuristi-
cally called the ‘inside’—one’s home range, settlement, or family—and
‘outside’—that is, the rest of the world—is characteristic to ethnic trader
communities who, by means of money and exchange, transgress physical
and local limitations and expand the reach of communities and individu-
als in time and space (Hart 2000). In discussing how opportunities emerge
through transgressing an ethnic niche threshold while simultaneously
recasting it, this book joins other works on middlemen minorities or trad-
ing diasporas, a topic still rarely explored in the Latin American context
(e.g. Bonacich 1973; Cohen 1971; Curtin 1984; Kagan and Morgan
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  5

2009; Tassi 2017). Its main contention is that the Calon niche represents
a specific form of integration into the market economy, what Chris
Gregory (2009) has termed a non-institutional householding. It is a kind
of householding that, unlike manorial or peasant householding, does not
gesture towards autarky, and because it is embedded in the dominant mar-
ket economy, it does not come with fixed and transcendent institutional
arrangements. Nevertheless, it comes with ethical principles, values, and
motives of its own as Martin Olivera (2016) has also shown for the Gabori
Romanies of Romania. Different kinds of exchanges constantly recreate
one’s social gendered position within one’s family and realise different
types of relatedness, producing distinctions between one’s family, enemies,
known Calon, other Ciganos, and Jurons, as Calon call non-Gypsies.

From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending

In a mid-twentieth-century description of the social composition of
Sergipe, a state that borders Bahia and that also belongs to the northeast
region of Brazil, Felte Bezera (1950: 118) observed that ‘among us, the
designation Cigano carries a cultural rather than ethnic meaning, signify-
ing a nomadic lifestyle sustained through exchanges and trade [trocas e
barganhas]’.1 It is still true today that Ciganos are not unambiguously
viewed by other Bahians as an ethnic group, and considered even less to
be an ethnic ‘minority’ in a European sense. At the same time, however,
nomadism and travelling as the mode of life is seen by both Calon and
non-Gypsies as a thing of the past, the memory of which marks Cigano
distinctiveness in the present (e.g. Fotta 2012; Goldfarb 2004). Moreover,
the term agiota (moneylender) has become a synonym for a Cigano, thus
replacing the terms mascate (an ambulant trader) or negociante (a trader)
used over the past two centuries, and the term gringo (a foreign ambulant
trader) from the seventeenth century. I suggest that the emergence of
moneylending as a recognised Calon specialisation—a niche—in recent
decades has to be understood as a transformation and intensification of
their previous activities, of ‘trocas e barganhas’.
In the Bahian interior of today, Ciganos represent one source of credit.
German anthropologist Elisabeth Thiele refers to them as an ‘informal
6  M. Fotta

bank’ (2008: 144), while an article from the 2005 financial section of
Folha de São Paulo dubbed them ‘the bankers’ of the Bahian sertão (the
semi-arid hinterland).2 The article describes how for the agave farmers in
Valente, a town about 300 kilometres from where I did my fieldwork,
Ciganos represented an important source of credit, second only to the
agave merchants who owned storage spaces and organised crop transport.
The merchants paid against the future crop, thus financing the planting.
Other sources of credit—banks and a co-operative—were not popular;
the cooperative did not even spend the money allocated to it by the fed-
eral government. Dealing with Ciganos did not require any bureaucracy
of the farmers, although their interest rates were considered ‘high’—‘10
on every 100’ per month. The farmers knew that Ciganos could be found
on the main street, although many preferred to deal with them in the
evening when nobody could see them. In Valente, stories circulated about
those who ‘lost everything’ to Ciganos. These are quite common views, in
my experience.
While in the past Ciganos were seen primarily as ambulant traders of
animals and other goods, there are indications that in other periods and
places, they were also known to lend money on interest. A 1957 diction-
ary of slang from Rio de Janeiro (Viotti 1957) provides under the entry
cigano, among other, two definitions that refer to a moneylender—agiota
and onzeneiro. Onzeneiro is derived from onze (eleven)—a percentage of
an interest rate—and dates back to at least sixteenth-century Portugal.
Other synonyms in the dictionary—sovina (miser) and espertalhão (‘con-
fidence man’)—also point to a perception of Ciganos as people involved
with money and money speculation in a way that violates norms of
appropriate sociability. In Rio de Janeiro, evidence of Cigano moneylend-
ing indeed goes back further. José Rabello, a Cigano, was one of the city’s
richest inhabitants at the beginning of the nineteenth century; among
other things, he organised ‘Gypsy festivities’ for the Royal Court. Vivaldo
Coaracy (1965: 74) writes that ‘Rabello, who received a position in the
military, dedicated himself to financial and bank operations. In other
words, he was a prestamista. On interest, naturally.’ A rumour circulated
in Rio de Janeiro that Rabello had so many golden bricks hidden in his
house that the ceiling collapsed under their weight—a legend that ‘was
probably invented by some of his clients’, Coaracy concludes (ibid.). In
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  7

Rio de Janeiro, such moneymaking activities were also connected with

the role of Ciganos as meirinhos, lower court officials, a profession that
was passed on hereditarily until the 1950s (Mello et al. 2004). Writing at
the end of the nineteenth century, Moraes Filho notes that ‘they were the
Ciganos of Cidade Nova [a Rio de Janeiro neighbourhood] who showed
off, the old justice officers, who set up home in the gallery underneath the
terrace, waiting for notifications of court orders and writs of garnishment’
(1904: 141).
For my purposes, however, it is important to note that the position of
Ciganos in Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century was unique (Fotta
n.d.). Not only do Ciganos in Bahia of the period come across in histori-
cal sources as poorer and less influential, there is also no explicit mention
of moneylending activities. Rather, until very recently, they were consis-
tently seen throughout the Brazilian northeast as small-time ambulant
traders and resellers of animals, trinkets, and also slaves during the time
of slavery. This does not mean, however, that Ciganos did not lend money
on interest, especially when one takes into account that until very recently
most trade throughout Brazil was done on credit. In Os Ciganos No Brasil
Moraes Filho reproduces a journal article from 1885, which describes an
arrival to a town in the state of São Paulo of Ciganos who, ‘it seems, have
become rich through trading with animals [negócio de animais]’ (1886:
192). The article then goes on to explain that ‘it is certain that it was
usura that has brought about this ambulant wealth’ (ibid. 193). Usura
here is used not in its current restricted sense of monetary loans made
against excessive interests, but to interest rates involved in transactions
more generally. ‘To conclude’, the article sums up, ‘this entourage goes
from land to land trading [negociando] with animals, slaves and with “the
future” of those who are not Ciganos, but who are being ignorant [incau-
tos].’ The word prestamista, with which Coaracy describes Rabello’s occu-
pation, has been used in northeastern Brazil to denote an ambulant trader
who sells his goods on instalments, prestações.
Indeed, the project of the Portuguese maritime empire was based on a
dense net of debt relations into which Ciganos entered on various terms.
Just a paragraph above his description of Cigano slave merchants in the
Valongo wharf in Rio de Janeiro during the first half of the nineteenth
century, English chaplain Robert Walsh (1831: 322) notes that slaves
8  M. Fotta

were sold on credit for up to ten years. And in a commentary to his paint-
ing Boutique de la rue du Valongo (1839), which depicts a Cigano trader
with a buyer from the state of Minas Gerais, the French painter Jacques
Debret discusses the difference between buying on credit and with cash:
‘[D]ue to the depreciation of paper money [papel moeda] over time the
price of a negro [bought on credit] becomes doubled, but the inhabitants
of São Paulo or Minas with ready cash [com dinheiro na mão], buy him
for the exchange rate of the day’ (Debret 1975: 190). In the eighteenth
century, on the other side of the Atlantic, bush traders in Angola—many
of whom were exiled Ciganos and Jews persecuted in Portugal and shut
out from other opportunities—accepted goods on credit from Portuguese
merchants in ports before going into the interior (Miller 1993: 126,
141).
This suggests that the emergence of the present-day Cigano money-
lending specialisation has its origins in a general economy of credit. In
this respect, it could be seen as a continuation and intensification of an
aspect of their activities which had previously been grouped under the
label of negócio, which was itself understood as form of usura. Until a few
decades ago, owing to a general cash shortage and the character of the
agricultural cycle—in which cash from selling crops alternated with a
lack of cash—the majority of animals in Bahia were bought and sold on
credit (fiado). The debt relations went in both directions: When Manuel,
a Calon man, died in 1985, his older sons paid his debts to a farmer from
whom Manuel had bought animals through fiado because they wanted to
continue dealing with him. This is also how an owner of both a small bus
company and a small farm (fazenda) near Santaluz, himself a client of a
few Calon, saw it: his family used to buy animals, mostly on credit, from
Ciganos who frequently camped on the family’s property, and this is how
they became agiotas over time.
The shift towards the core economic activity of today’s Calon men—
lending money on interest without any mediation by objects—is accom-
panied by a shift in the content of the prevalent image of Ciganos from
nomadic traders to agiotas who inhabit houses. Both must be seen in the
context of socio-economic changes. Measures that stabilised the currency
in the mid-1990s under the presidency of Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
followed by the policies under the Workers’ Party governments between
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  9

2003 and 2016—including an increased minimum wage, the expansion

of formal-sector employment, and the broadening of access to official
credit—led not only to a period of economic growth, but also trans-
formed production and consumption across Brazil. Although, since 2014
these developments have given way to both economic and political crises
and recession, the preceding decade—during which most of the ethno-
graphic research on which this book based occurred—had witnessed the
forging of the mass consumer society and the expansion of financial
services.
All of this has impacted the ways in which Calon position themselves
within the local economy and assimilate it into their sociality. As one
Calon man explained to me, after ‘Lula’ (a popular name for Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva) became president it became difficult for Ciganos to trade;
their only option was to lend money on interest. In other words, money-
lending as the Calon economic occupation or the way it is organised can-
not be appreciated without taking into account the culturally and
historically contingent context in which it belongs. I will try to character-
ise this milieu by returning to my discussion with Gilson.

‘Gypsies Are Not the Only Moneylenders’

‘But Ciganos are not the only agiotas’, Gilson remarked after he had fin-
ished telling me about his experience with Orlando. I had come to know
this by then. Ciganos were marginal to informal moneylending in
Santaluz—in fact, many could barely make a living in this way. In the
town, the biggest agiotas were non-Gypsies. A few were shopkeepers—to
a greater or lesser extent, all independent shopkeepers extended credit to
their customers and lent money on interest. Other agiotas combined
moneylending with other activities, such as running gambling parlours.
When Galeguinho, the richest non-Gypsy agiota in Santaluz, was impris-
oned for drug trafficking, rumour had it that the police found 3000 cards
in his house—both bank cards and those for Bolsa Família, a targeted
conditional family grant for the country’s poorest households.
Gilson, too, had experiences with non-Gypsy agiotas. In 2000, his
mother had borrowed R$100 from Seu Raimundo, probably the
10  M. Fotta

second-­biggest moneylender in Santaluz, using Gilson’s cheque as col-

lateral. For the next few months, she kept paying only the interest, and
after a year gave Seu Raimundo another cheque from Gilson. His
mother never managed to pay back the loan in full; in 2003 she had a
stroke. A few months later, Seu Raimundo asked Gilson for a new
cheque telling him that his mother’s debt had risen to R$1800. Gilson
managed to get away with paying only half of the sum by arguing,
according to him, that it was not his debt and that if Seu Raimundo
insisted that he pay, he would notify the police.
Besides these known agiotas, many people—like Gilson’s friend who
brought him to Orlando—lend money on interest. This happens usually
within networks of acquaintances and neighbours. ‘They tried to involve
me in agiotagem [moneylending] too’, Gilson told me. This was in 2007
or so, when another friend of his had asked him for a loan. Since Gilson
had just received a larger sum—an accumulation of several delayed sala-
ries from the municipal school—he agreed.
‘Ten percent, isn’t it, Gilson?’ confirmed the friend when she came to
pay back the loan.
‘I am not an agiota. You pay me only the rate of inflation’, he appar-
ently told her, appalled. The grateful friend then suggested that she could
arrange for him to lend money to people, but that the interest rate should
be ‘at least at 10 percent’. Gilson declined.
Gilson insisted that he did not know anything about his mother’s loan
from Seu Raimundo and believed that she would have been given a loan
from a bank: she was receiving a widow’s pension, had a bank account,
and the bank director was her friend. He thought that she must have
needed the money urgently and the bank required a lot of paperwork. At
that period in history, however, only a small minority of Brazilians were
applying for bank loans, and more than 60 per cent of those applications
were rejected (Lavinas 2017: 90). Things have changed radically since
then, as we will see presently.
Most people in small-town and rural Bahia talk of a credit from agiotas
as ‘fast money’ and ‘without any bureaucracy’ which does not require
proof of income. It should also be stressed that agiotas are not only a last-­
resort source of credit. Politicians, landowners, and members of the lower
middle classes approach them because they have their own projects and
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  11

visions of gains, often preferring the personalised nature of loans from

informal moneylenders. Although people like Gilson can—and do—
borrow from banks, Gilson doubted that banks were very much better.
While their monthly interest was lower, as the payment was extended for
longer periods, he thought that one ended up paying almost the same
amount. In 2015, average rates for consumer credit stood at 139.78 per
cent per annum, and the average length of a loan was 50 months (ibid.:
94). In the case of consigned, or payroll, credit (crédito consignado), the
interest rate was fixed to 2.14 per cent per month, with loans that
extended between 36 and 80  months. Moreover, for consigned credit,
one has no control over payments, since these are deducted directly from
one’s paycheques or pensions and the terms cannot be renegotiated. There
is also a limit to how much one can borrow; officially, only 35 per cent of
one’s salary can be tied up with such credit. This was the problem for
Gilson’s sister in 2009. According to Gilson, she had too many credit
cards; because too much of her salary was tied up in consigned credit, she
had no other option but to borrow from him.
Gilson was convinced that most teachers borrowed from agiotas at one
point or another. Generally speaking, he was probably correct. Between
2003 and 2013, many teachers, municipal employees, and those formally
employed came to form what was dubbed as the ‘new middle class’ (nova
classe média), composed of the ‘previously poor’ (Klein et al. 2018) who
moved up the income bracket (Neri 2008). However, even during the
period of economic growth between 2005 and 2010, whether because
they had exhausted their official credit possibilities or because they did
not want to subject themselves to a bank regime, they sometimes turned
to moneylenders. Yet today, as then, many find themselves in a
­predicament where they cannot pay. ‘I know one [teacher] from whose
house a Cigano took a kitchen blender’, Gilson said.
Ultimately, this occurs because, in Gilson’s theory, ‘many people have
problems with SPC and Serasa’ after they fail to pay their credit card
debts or debts in stores. SPC and Serasa are credit reference agencies that
register people with late credit payments; today, at the height of the eco-
nomic recession, 30 per cent of Brazilian adults are listed with them.3
Even back in 2009, if people’s names were ‘dirty on the square’ (nomes
sujos na praça)—that is, if they were on these agencies’ lists—stores or
12  M. Fotta

banks would not provide them with more credit. Gilson explained, ‘Only
financeiras [credit institutions and financial companies] lend to them.
And this is taken directly from their bank accounts. There is no way one
can avoid paying it. So it is much easier [to borrow from an agiota]’.
The point I want to make here is this: in order to understand the sta-
bilisation of the Cigano moneylending niche, we have to take into
account not only the history of Calon integration into the local Bahian
economy, but also the place of this ethnic credit institution within the
dense environment of monetary flows and credit modalities. This envi-
ronment has been radically reshaped in the last 15 years thanks to the
state-led expansion of financial services.

 xpansion of Credit Under Social

E
Developmentalism
The economic and financial policies of Workers’ Party governments
(2003–2016) under President Lula and his successor Dilma Rousseff
combined extractivism with the promotion of consumption. The aim of
this ‘social developmentalism’, or ‘Lulism’ (Singer 2012), a form of
inward-looking developmentalist politics that relies on the central role of
the state, was to overcome Brazil’s underdevelopment through acting
upon a relationship between income distribution and economic growth:
expansion within the domestic market in combination with new finan-
cial infrastructure was expected to lead to new investment and innova-
tion (Lavinas 2017: 17–70). Key moves of social developmentalism of
the period included increases in the state-regulated minimum wage, to
which pensions, formally, and wages in the informal sector, customarily,
are pegged; the formalisation of employment and expansion of the for-
mal sector; tax breaks on certain durables; tax incentives and tax credits
which fostered transition to private and finance-based provision of social
services (especially in the areas of healthcare and higher education);
expansion of credit to a broad strata of society; and the creation of means-­
tested social assistance programmes.
In this way, the Brazilian state stimulated consumption through poli-
cies that broadened access to credit and altered the financial environ-
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  13

ment. One of the earliest and most influential of Lula’s financial

interventions, the development of consigned credit—which made low-­
interest credit available to state employees and pensioners—played an
important role in the expansion of consumer credit. The government also
supported targeted productive microcredit through secondary institu-
tions, such as fishermen’s and agricultural cooperatives and syndicates.
Last but not least, there was a project of ‘financial inclusion’ or ‘bankari-
sation’ of those who until that point had stood outside of formal financial
services. This was tied to the expansion of social assistance policies, such
as the creation of the Bolsa Família programme (see also Badue and
Ribeiro 2018). The banking system became a prime means for people to
access their salaries, pensions, and welfare and retirement benefits. New
simplified bank accounts were established for people with low income,
while new bank branches were opened across the country. Bank account
ownership, a benefit, a formal salary, or a university grant in turn allowed
people to open credit lines in chain stores.
The successes of these politics of growth are undeniable. With about
13.6 million families enrolled, Bolsa Família is currently the largest con-
ditional cash programme in the world.4 Between 2003 and 2014, levels
of inequality, as measured by the Gini index, lowered, although there has
been a resurgence of inequality during the current crisis (Lavinas 2017:
21–22). Officially, during the same period the proportion of those living
under the poverty line decreased from 23.4 per cent to 7 per cent.5
Moreover, 35.5 million people joined the middle-income sectors of the
population, especially its lowest rungs—the so-called class C.  In the
northeast, which includes some of the poorest regions in Brazil, classes C
and D increased by 80 per cent between 2003 and 2009.6 Media and
analysts started speaking of the ‘new middle class’, thus announcing
Brazil’s coming of age and its entrance among middle-class nations (Neri
2008). In my discussions with people during these years, there was a pal-
pable sense of confidence and optimism which translated into their con-
sumption and their plans.
Social developmentalism led to the creation of the mass-consumption
society, while growing domestic demand helped the country to buffer
the global economic crisis of 2008. Between 2003 and 2014, household
14  M. Fotta

consumption was one of the main drivers of Brazilian economic growth,

representing, on average, 61 per cent of the GDP (Lavinas 2017: 48). A
central role in these developments was played by the increase and broad-
ening of the credit supply—while the wage bill grew 5 per cent annually,
individual credit expanded 13.8 per cent and consumer credit 11.5 per
cent. Total consumer loans rose sixfold, from 22 per cent of the GDP in
2003 to 60 per cent in 2015 (ibid.: 48–49). In a related move, between
2004 and 2011 ‘bank credit cards have tripled, to 159.5 million, and
retailer cards have nearly quadrupled, to 233.5 million. The average
interest rate on credit cards is 238 per cent annually, while loans from
retailers cost 85 per cent, and personal loans from banks 47 per cent.’7
This has resulted in a growing overindebtedness and a debt-to-income
ratio of 65 per cent in 2014 (ibid.: 49).
Despite all of these developments, the reindustrialisation of the coun-
try did not happen. As Lena Lavinas (2017) argues, a mass-consumption
society was forged without fundamentally altering the country’s produc-
tive and social structure. Quite on the contrary, it was built on, and
reproduced, internal heterogeneity and segmentation. Indeed, whether
the ‘emerging middle classes’ are middle classes at all is debatable (Klein
et al. 2018). Many, like Gilson’s sister, enter the labour market with earn-
ings slightly higher than the minimum wage, which, in combination
with their lack of savings, hinders their effort to keep up their newly
acquired lifestyle. The lower middle sectors are responsible for most
credit, as well as consumer debt defaults in the interior. A large portion of
their salaries is tied up with consigned credit—about a fifth of loans are
paid through direct deduction from paycheques.8

F inancialisation of Daily Life in Small-Town

Bahia
Today in towns like Santaluz various forms of credit exist (as well as of
savings and insurance): official loans from banks and financeiras; lines of
credit available at large stores; credit cards from retail chains and tele-
phone companies; fiado purchases in neighbourhood shops; advanced or
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  15

other credit from patrons, merchants, and agrarian syndicates; loans from
agiotas; cash and loans from communal institutions such as religious
cooperatives; money (cash or credit) from a variety of communal institu-
tions which go by the names of caixinhas, consórcios, bingos, balaidos, cam-
panhas, and so on. Within this universe, Ciganos are one source of credit
among many.
Although forms of credit differ—some involve two parties, others are
communitarian; some have existed for generations and some are new;
some are built on the ideology of personalised trust while others are
impersonal—most rely on, or take into account in one way or another,
the official financial infrastructure. Many credit modalities were created
by the state’s direct intervention in the financial market. Locally, these
stimulated new kinds of debts and specialisations. Official modalities of
credit and novel monetary flows also combined, influencing more cus-
tomary forms of credit and debt. Take, for instance, purchases that are
fiado (on trust), commonly practised with one’s local shop or merchant.
In the mid-twentieth century, American sociologist Donald Pierson
(1948: 98) noticed, in a town in the interior of the state of São Paulo, on
the wall of one bar ‘a piece of paper on which is printed, in pencil, in large
letters, the following verse’. In his translation:

O fiado me da penas Credit brings me worry

As penas me da cuidado My worries cause me pain
Para aliviar-me penas To relieve myself of worry
Não posso vender fiado I cannot sell on credit

Pierson observed that such posters against fiado were common and, as
a witness to the modernisation of the interior, he interpreted them as
‘[recent half-hearted] efforts to limit the amount of credit extended’
(ibid.). Sixty years later, however, shops in Santaluz still have posters
against fiado. Some are creative, while others, like the one in the bar São
Jorge where Gilson is a regular customer, are blunt: ‘Fiado suspended.’
And just like in Pierson’s era, shopkeepers invariably complain about it.
Indeed, these complaints strengthen the ideology of personalism. Similar
to the Haitian pratik (Mintz 1961), Bahian fiado, as an institution of
economic integration—through which, for instance, Ciganos bought
16  M. Fotta

and sold animals in the past—stabilises ties between parties involved,

bringing security to transactions and a certain order to the market (see
also Stecher 1998).
But things have also changed. Gilson, for instance, writes a cheque to
the São Jorge bar on exactly the date when he receives one of his salaries.
Others might set their payments for days when they receive their
­pensions or Bolsa Família money. In other words, while in ideology
personalised relations are still involved and some practise fiado in a
‘traditional way’, so to speak, most fiado purchases today are not based
on trust, at least not solely. Rather, confidence between parties is born
from the regularity of income flows or from transactions’ anchorage by
means of formal financial tools. The bulk of the confidence within a
personalised deal couched in the discourse of trust—between a local
shopkeeper and his neighbour, between a moneylender and his
friend—originates with the state and the flows of money formalised by
it. Undoubtedly, this has had positive consequences for increasing the
autonomy of poor people, as it transformed their access to small credit,
as well as the structure of their incomes and the flow of goods and ser-
vices within their communities (Morton 2019).
Both official sources of credit and unofficial moneylenders thus rely on
official infrastructure. Within the conditional cash transfer programme
Bolsa Família, for instance, money comes directly from the state and
requires registration, documents, and bank accounts. Over time, credit
card and other financial services have been added to the programme’s
infrastructure. The implementation of the programme resulted in poor
people’s inclusion in the official financial system and also required an
expansion of the network of state-run banks, ATMs, lottery houses, and
social services. Initiatives such as agricultural lending schemes that pro-
vide productive credit required the establishment of cooperatives and
expansion of bank services. The state registration of Bolsa Família benefi-
ciaries, retirees, or public employees, and the exchange of this informa-
tion with the private financial sector, eliminated costs for the latter
(Lavinas 2017: 93).
While creating opportunities for the formal sectors, the formalisation
and the creation of this financial infrastructure created new alignments
that have come with their own modalities of diversion. People can have
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  17

their money discounted from their bank accounts, but they can also leave
pre-dated cheques or bankcards with agiotas. They also collaterise their
regular cash from the government informally. A friend of mine living in
Santaluz, a single mother who normally earns money doing odd cleaning
jobs, pawned her Bolsa Família card to agiota Galeguinho for a lump sum
of cash. On the date when she received the money, Galeguinho’s right-­
hand man met her at a bank with her card, debited the whole grant,
discounted the instalment, and handed her the rest. The moneylender
kept the card until the principal was paid off—several months later than
she had originally planned. People who are better off are expected not
only to help their relatives and friends, but also to use their income as
capital in moneylending ventures. Still others can attempt to divert at
least some money from such arrangements, like Gilson’s amigos who were
hoping to get a commission or a cut on his deals: the first for arranging
the loan from a Cigano, the second for finding clients to whom Gilson
could lend money. Gilson had also served as a guarantor in a bank loan
to others. He only learnt that our common friend did not pay such a loan
when he found out that the daily limits on his credit card and cheque
especial9 were lowered. In all of this, his relatively high salary from the
state served as the ultimate collateral.
While navigating their ‘dense financial lives’ (Abramovay 2004),
whether they are searching for opportunities for gain or because they are
paying off non-negotiable debts, Bahians rely on various sources of credit.
Ciganos are an integral part of this distributional regime in which both
official and unofficial credit institutions increasingly tap into people’s
bank accounts or into at least partially formalised flows of money (James
2015). It is the changes of this regime that underpin the rise of a recogni-
sable Cigano niche. It is also here where the ambiguity of the current
popular view of Ciganos rests.

Cigano Moneylending Niche

Calon moneylending depends on common Bahian views about money and
intimacy, Ciganos and their moneymaking activities. Calon manipulate a
folk image of ‘Ciganos’ as standing outside of established social relations,
18  M. Fotta

especially those of social debt and reciprocities—defined by dynamics such

as patronage, amizade (friendship), favor (a kindness; service), and consid-
eração (consideration)—that lie at the heart of s­ mall-­town and rural social-
ity. Today, their position emerges from the system itself, in which, through
an ever-increasing field of state intervention and formalisation, wealth
flows and forms are being redefined and traditional regimes of value and
locally sanctioned debts and forms of distribution unsettled. People might
end up giving Ciganos their salaries or pre-dated cheques when faced with
non-negotiable and non-optative obligations backed up by the state or
when they need money to pay back a loan in a financeira. Conversely, they
might also take out a loan from a bank or sell some of their property in
order to pay their debts to Ciganos. Or they might not be combining credit
modalities at all, but only think that the interest rate is unjustified. Either
way, they end up seeing Ciganos as benefiting from their own liability and
as being somehow aligned with the formal financial sector against the inter-
ests of their households.
Generally speaking, interests on loans (empréstimos) that Calon make
to Jurons follow a temporal algorithm that is characteristic of the region.
Smaller loans carry higher monthly interests, while more spectacular
loans are usually calculated in years and for lower interest in relative
terms. Deals are often stabilised by promissory notes (notas promisórias),
a practice common in the region, especially with shopkeepers. And, more
or less explicitly, loans are backed up by a threat of physical violence and
the impossibility of borrowing later if the agreement is violated. All these
aspects—traditional views of Ciganos, customary modes of calculating
interest, social distance, and so on—give Ciganos-as-a-niche its temporary
stability, its ‘objectivity’ of a social form (Simmel 1972).
The term ‘niche’ as I use it here, however, does not primarily refer to
the specificity of a Romani mode of making a living through exploiting
temporary opportunities or those that others refuse or fail to cover (e.g.
Okely 1979; Gmelch and Gmelch 1987; Rao 1987). Rather, the niche
highlights a named specialist production, with specific standards, exper-
tise, and definitions, fully embedded in the commercial economy (Guyer
1997; 2004b). It belongs to an emergent-economy Brazil where life has
become increasingly financialised, but it is stabilised and made meaning-
ful by Calon practices. Calon value autonomous ways of making money,
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  19

often referred to as a negócio (business, deal)—an orientation similar to

that of other Romani communities (for overviews, see Gmelch 1986;
Brazzabeni et al. 2016b). Although the term includes all sorts of b­ uying
and selling, today, consistent with the shift in the core of Calon economic
practices, it refers primarily to lending money on interest. The Calon
meaning of negócio is contiguous to the regionally dominant view, while
their use of notions such as ‘the street’ (rua), ‘movement’ (movimento), or
‘future’ (futuro) that accompany it refract common sensibilities across the
Brazilian northeast. At the same time, however, Calon give these concepts
a different connotation, which belongs to a different form of relating to
and being in the world. In other words, the Calon specialisation as agiotas
is not totally explainable by reference to the broader context. Rather, it
requires an understanding of how their moneymaking activities relate to
their social organisation and socio-cosmology.
At the core of this linking of social and physical space in time, of the
reorienting of individual subjectivities and marking of communal bound-
aries through credit and debt (Peebles 2010), lie households. A Calon
niche, as an interstice maintained in the midst of Jurons, can also be imag-
ined as an archipelago of such household-centric spaces. The capacities of
money, on the one hand, to transgress and negotiate distance and close-
ness and in this way to objectify the external activities of the subject
(Simmel 1990), and, on the other, to function as a ‘memory bank’ (Hart
2000)—that is, to stabilise personal identity in time and space through
linking one’s desires to those of others—are central to these processes.
Households create an imperative for Calon men to go out into ‘the street’
and multiply their transactions. Among Bahian Calon, a husband’s capac-
ity to seize and create such opportunities is sometimes glossed over as
‘making the future’ (fazer futuro). Money in circulation inscribes the space
of a man’s potency, his strength (força): small loans criss-cross settlements,
deferred agonistic payments constantly represent moments in which his
manhood and equality with other Calon can be demonstrated, and loans
to Jurons are a source of subsistence and reflect his skills. The sociological
intention, so to speak, behind his economic activities is to ‘establish’ (esta-
belecer) himself—to be recognised and respected by others and to live in a
grounded manner (viver apoiado). The successful weddings of one’s chil-
dren become the ultimate proof of one’s efficacy as a moneylender.
20  M. Fotta

Mapping the Terminology
One’s positionality in transactions plays a central role. A Calon needs to
demonstrate conhecimento (knowledge), that is, how to relate to others
properly (Vilar 2016). As a consequence, there is a difference between a
Calon man lending money to a Juron and the same man lending to
another Calon. When lending money to the former, the man takes into
account non-Gypsy views of Ciganos. Deals between two Calon are con-
trasted with non-Gypsy sociality and morality as Calon see it and with
the kinds of relations that Calon should maintain with non-Gypsies. This
is not simply a question of ethnic boundary-marking, as if the creation of
such a boundary was the purpose of life, but is the very process through
which Calon remain Calon—through which they continue leading a
vida do Cigano.
The following excerpt illustrates what is at stake:

From a strictly semantic point of view, the distinction Roma/Gaĝe [non-­

Gypsy] does not correspond exactly to that of Gypsies/non-Gypsies. The
area denoted by the term Roma, as it is used by a Rom, and of the term
Gypsies, as it is used by a non-Gypsy, intersect for a large part, but they do
not correspond totally. To this semantic discontinuity corresponds a far
more important gap in perceptions: For a Rom the Roma/Gaĝe distinction
is the fundamental distinction; the Gaĝe are the ‘outside’ by definition. For
a non-Gypsy, the Gypsy is an ‘other’ among many, a ‘marginal man’ among
many, a bit of folklore among many; in our case, a thief among many. The
perceptions are asymmetrical and they reflect the way of life of the Roma
in respect to the Gaĝe. (Zatta and Piasere 1990: 165)

The authors distinguish between the idea of an ethnic group (a non-­

Gypsy view), on the one hand, and adherence to a Roma way of life and
forms of evaluating behaviour where the Gaĝe serve as the ‘outside’ (a
Roma view), on the other. Among Calon, ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ are marked
by different exchange relations and modes of circulation. Moneylending
is thus not only about making a living, but refracts ontological premises
of a Calon lifeworld. To summarise, there exist two main ways of ­marking
a difference, which depend on the context and result in an exploitable
conceptual discontinuity and a gap in perceptions.
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  21

Broadly speaking, for any Calon individual there is a context-related

difference between talking about oneself as Cigano (masc.) or Cigana
(fem.), on the one hand, and as Calon (masc.) or Calin (fem.), on the
other. Although Calon use both sets of terms, I have witnessed their non-­
Gypsy neighbours in Bahia use only the term Ciganos. Therefore,
throughout this book, whenever I speak from a non-Gypsy point of view
or want to describe interactions involving non-Gypsies as if from a dis-
tance, I use the term Cigano(s) or Cigana(s) and their derivatives. While
in many parts of Europe (but not everywhere and not for all communi-
ties), the equivalent term ‘Gypsy’ is rejected as derogatory and the term
‘Roma’ is preferred, in Brazil Cigano(s) is the term of choice of political
recognition. At federal and state levels, ‘Ciganos’ is the term used to rec-
ognise this group, albeit tentatively, among so-called traditional peoples
and communities. While this potentially opens up a space for specific
public policies and interventions (e.g. Lima and Dolabela 2016), it has
not impacted the Calon described in this ethnography. Therefore, when-
ever I use the word ‘Gypsies’ throughout the book, I follow local prefer-
ences; in no way should this be interpreted as an attempt to police the
self-designation of Romanies in general. For this reason, while for com-
parative purposes I use the term ‘Gypsies’ more or less interchangeably
with ‘Romanies’ or ‘Romani people’—that is, those communities who
speak some sort of Romani or para-Romani—whenever possible I try to
use the latter term, which seems to me to be more neutral. On the other
hand, whenever the book discusses the personhood and sociality of the
specific community of Bahian Ciganos among whom I did my research,
I use the term ‘Calon’ and its derivatives. I also use the term as a name for
a specific population of Romanies in Brazil alongside others that might
be encountered in the country, such as the Roma Kalderash or Portugueses
Ciganos.
The Calon in Bahia use various terms to describe non-Gypsies.
Whenever possible, I have reduced them, for the sake of readability, to
two: Juron(s) or Jurin(s), on the one hand, which is used most com-
monly among the Calon, and ‘non-Gypsy’/‘non-Gypsies’, on the other,
which I use for analytic and comparative purposes. This use mirrors the
logic described above. For the sake of completeness, however, let me
note that most non-Gypsies in Bahia know or think that Ciganos call
22  M. Fotta

them Gajão (also written as Gajon) and its derivations (such as the femi-
nine Gajona, Gajin, Gajinha). It can be used by Calon  as a form of
address marking ethnic separation, as in ‘Do me a favour, Gajão.’ Non-
Gypsies in Bahia have appropriated this expression and inverted its use,
sometimes addressing Ciganos as Gajons. But the Calon I know hardly
ever use this term. Instead, they use Brasileiro(s) and Juron(s). The terms
are generally interchangeable, although there are slight differences: first,
the terms Juron/Jurin (especially in the singular), and their equivalents
Huron/Hurin or Burnon/Burnin, are the most frequent. Alongside the
word ‘Calon’, these are among the first words that a Calon child learns.
Second, Calon never use this term when addressing, or in the presence
of, non-Gypsies, and most Bahians are ignorant of the fact that they are
Jurons. I was always struck by how policed the use of the term was: talk-
ing among themselves, Calon would refer to a specific non-Gypsy as a
Juron, but a moment later, talking to this very Juron, all non-Gypsies
would become Brasileiros. Third, and related to this, the term Brasileiro(s)
is often used by Calon in the plural in a contrastive way—‘Ciganos are
like this, Brasileiros are like that.’ Fourth, Juron is almost exclusively
used to denote a specific person (or Jurons for a specific group of
non-Gypsies).
Although I have remained a Juronzinho (diminutive) as a foreigner, I
have never been a Brasileiro. All of this speaks to the tension that ani-
mates this book—and Romani studies in general (Williams 2011b)—
between contextualisation and comparison; a tension between seeing
Calon as a community of Brazilian Romanies and seeing them as a
community of Romanies (that happen to live) in Brazil. While
Brasileiro-­
Cigano distinction resonates directly with local circum-
stances and specific national histories, Juron-Calon difference is pre-
mised on a different ontology, where a relation to the Juron as the
Other, the ‘outside’ in Piasere’s terms above or ‘the given’ in Ferrari’s
Wagnerian terms (Ferrari 2010; Wagner 1981), is central to the Calon
relating to the world and thus to the creation of the ‘inside’, to their
dwelling in the world. How this is achieved in practice depends on
specific historical circumstances, such as that of financialisation in the
emergent-economy Brazil.
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  23

 apping the Network, or Chronicles

M
of a Calon Family
Over the last decade and ten fieldwork trips to Bahia, which ranged from
6 weeks to 15 months in duration, I spent time with Calon like Orlando
as well as with non-Gypsies like Gilson. From the very beginning, I was
made aware of the distrust and ambivalence  that connected and  sepa-
rated the two, even if they greeted each other warmly in the town square.
My Portuguese teacher in Salvador could not understand why I was inter-
ested in Ciganos. She told me about her friend whose household disinte-
grated after the family was threatened by Cigano moneylenders, but
refused to give me any more details.
Santaluz was the starting point for my research. This is where both
Orlando and Gilson lived in 2008 and 2009, although, for reasons
explained later in the book, Orlando has since left the town; however, he
has maintained many clients there. Two hours from Salvador, Santaluz is
a small municipality with a total population of about 25,000, out of
which about 10,000 live in the rural area (zona rural). Santaluz, like the
names of all other small towns mentioned in this book, is a pseudonym;
there is no Santaluz on the Bahian coast. All proper names (as well as ages
and other details) have also been changed to protect people’s anonymity;
composite characters and attribution of statements to different characters
are also used throughout. However, inspired by Ann Sutherland (1986:
ix), I drew from names used by Calon throughout Brazil—so although
one can definitely find Orlando, Paulo, or Renato Cigano, say, online, let
me assure you they are not the characters of this ethnography.
The first time I talked to him in July 2008, as I was explaining to him
the purpose of my research, one of the things Orlando told me was that
if I wanted to live with Ciganos, I had to move to a house near them,
spend time with Ciganos, and my wife should wear Cigana dresses. He
was right in a sense. Although Adriana would not exchange her shorts
and a tank top for too-warm dresses, and kept her hair short to the horror
of her Calin friends, renting a house just opposite Orlando’s and close to
a Calon tent camp, and spending virtually every day with the Calon from
Santaluz, turned out to be crucial for my fieldwork. The street was locally
24  M. Fotta

known as Rua do Cigano (‘Gypsy Street’), as Calon had lived there for
decades. It is the Calon who happened to live on the Rua do Cigano in
2008 or in 2009, and their relatives living in nearby towns, whose lives
are primarily characterised in this book.
One important thing must also be said from the outset. Given my
research focus—male moneymaking activities—and the fact that I spent
most the time with Calon men, the book reflects primarily on male expe-
riences and concerns. It represents my situated and partial understanding
of the way certain Calon men see their world and the place of Calon
within it; this is also how anything that sounds like a generalisation about
‘the’ Calon should be understood. But a reader will not fail to notice the
centrality of wives and households, as well as wives’ involvement in,
influence on, and knowledge of what is presented as husbands’ money-
making activities.
I got to know the extended families of Orlando and his wife Viviane
the best. Throughout 2008, Orlando’s older brother Renato and his old-
est sister Rita lived with their families in the tent camp in Santaluz. Other
members of this extended family were residents of settlements located in
other towns, none of them more than 70 kilometres away (Viviane’s fam-
ily lived in a different region). I spent a great deal of time accompanying
someone or other from this family. Today, in 2018, however, none of the
settlements described in this book exist, although some people continue
to live in the same towns. This is an important point to bear in mind:
although Santaluz was the geographical starting point of my research, as
I got to know Calon, individual towns receded and a different spatial-
ity—one which is much more fluid, but nevertheless lasting and
recognisable—emerged.
Naturally, my understanding of the Calon in Bahia is influenced pri-
marily by what I learnt from Orlando’s family and from other Calon that
I got to know in Santaluz. On the one hand, I am convinced that an
ethnographer cannot enter a Calon social world by other means than
through a particular family, with all the affordances and limits this brings,
unless one goes through a non-Gypsy institution, such as a school, or one
that also  involves  or targets non-Gypsies, such as a public policy for
Ciganos. The book can therefore also be read as one family’s chronicles.
It is through this family that I learnt about the dilemmas and a­ mbivalences,
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  25

aspirations and values that accompany Calon lives and sociality. There
were Orlando, a rich Calon and a tight-fisted moneylender, and his
imposing wife Viviane, who came from a valiant family, married Orlando
at the age of 13, and whom his siblings blamed for standing between him
and themselves. There was Renato, a gambler who lost his house in cards,
with his rather invisible wife—his third—Joanna. There was the very
poor elderly couple of Paulo, good at giving advice on what is just and
right, and his refined wife Rita. There was the honourable Pancho, who
never had much ‘luck’ in deals, with his shrewd wife Genilsa, the only
one who still owes me money. There were the quiet Beiju, who was said
to have five revenge killings to his name, and his tough but kind wife
Carla, who knew how to recognise a good weapon. There was a man who
enjoyed deals more than anybody else I knew, Zezinho, and his wife Sara,
who was known for her magical skills. There was a grandma Germana,
said to be a hundred years old, who remembered Lampião, a famous
sertão bandit killed in 1938, and who continued to make money through
begging and palmistry. There was another grandma, Fé, whom people
thought mad and who was dependent on others. This is before mention-
ing the generation of Orlando and Viviane’s children; much of the eth-
nography that follows deals with their entry into Calon adulthood.
But maybe that is precisely the point: in a sociality that is not based on
transcendent rules and offices and which relies on individual perfor-
mances, people themselves become indexes of archetypal behaviour and
moral exemplars (Robbins 2015; see also Gay y Blasco 2011). While
none of these people can be said to be the Calon, through their lives and
trajectories, while individualising themselves and gaining recognition
from others, they have realised specific Calon values with their contradic-
tions and appeal, such as unconditional care for one’s relatives, adroit-
ness, or valour. It is these dynamics that give the Calon world its character.
Indeed, the book describes how people’s behaviour is fraught with ten-
sion and the possibilities of multiple interpretations, particularly in the
context of deferred payments. It explores thresholds when behaviour
threatens to slip into something else: When does an unpaid loan become
an abuse of trust? When does it become theft? When does a man’s word
go against the interests of his household and children? When is money-
lending among kin a recognition of autonomy and equality, and when
26  M. Fotta

does it denote dependency, hierarchy, or abuse? When does a man fail to

treat another with respect? Is it an affront to one’s honour, and what
should one do in return?
Since 2008, many people described in this book have passed away.
Although I did not know it then, 2017, my last stay in Bahia, would be
the last time I talked to Orlando’s sisters Sara and Rita, two women whom
Adriana and I were particularly fond of. In 2017, Rita lived in São Bento
not far from her brother Orlando. Her tent was made of an old tarpaulin
that had been torn in many places. Rita and Paulo were one of the poor-
est Calon couples in Santaluz. Apart from an old stove, a bed, two plastic
chairs, and a trunk with some clothes, there was no furniture in the tent.
Paulo lent money only rarely, always in small sums, and sometimes with-
out any gain. The couple depended on Rita’s retirement benefits, since in
2009 Paulo had sold his own to Orlando in order to pay for their son’s
gambling debts. As I sat down with Paulo on that last visit and we
enquired about each other’s families and health, Rita murmured in Calon
Romani to Paulo that he should ask me for some money (manguelar
caden). The proud Paulo dismissed her with a grunt.
The couple had nowhere else to go and were pretty much stuck on this
small lot at the end of the street, ceded by a friendly non-Gypsy: they had
no money, and neither Paulo’s nor Rita’s families wanted their only son,
on whom the couple depended, to live next to them. That agouro aza-
rento, a bad luck omen, as Paulo referred to him then, was again playing
cards or drinking somewhere. When I left after half an hour, Paulo was
still sitting in front of his tent without anybody to talk to; virtually every
day throughout the decade I knew him he had spent sitting on a plastic
chair, but there used to be times when his spot had been in the middle of
a busy settlement with other people around, and often somebody would
sit with him. Rita—and this is my last image of her—was trying to come
up with something for lunch; I gave her R$100 without Paulo knowing
it (Image 1).
Meanwhile, at the other end of the street in front of about a dozen
Calon men, Orlando was negotiating in his house with Castilhomar, a
rich Calon who also lived in São Bento. Orlando was ready to leave the
town and wanted to buy Castilhomar’s house in Volta Redonda. His own
house, which was one of the biggest in this part of São Bento, was all
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  27

Image 1  Old Paulo sitting in front of his poor tent. In 2017 it stood at the end of
a street in the neighbourhood in São Bento where most of the Calon from this
town lived

packed up, as was that of his younger son—a small construction within
the same walled yard. Orlando had sold the property for R$130,000 a
few days earlier.
In other words, on the day when Rita told Paulo to ask the visiting
anthropologist for some money, her brother Orlando was given the keys
to a house in Volta Redonda for R$170,000, payable in one year. Whereas
Paulo or his son were not creditable, Castilhomar trusted Orlando’s word,
his moneymaking capabilities, and had a certain idea of how much
money Orlando had in loans, in property, or how much he could make.
While Paulo had no choice but to rely on his son despite the fact that the
latter was unreliable, Orlando was planning his life in Volta Redonda.
Later that day as we drove there, Orlando described how he and his son
would live in a ‘grounded’ or ‘supported’ manner (viver apoiado) there,
which is a Calon idea of a good life: on his own big property, on friendly
28  M. Fotta

terms with the mayor and the neighbours, with most of his big clients in
nearby Santaluz, and, especially, surrounded by people he trusted. Indeed,
immediately after Castilhomar had left, Orlando had called his widowed
sister Sara and asked her to move to the property; this is where I would
encounter her a few weeks later for the last time—on Orlando’s property
living in a tent beside the tent of her daughter. The households of Carla,
another of Orlando’s sisters, and Carla’s son joined them a few months
later.

Organisation of the Book
As Paulo nostalgically explained to me in 2010, in the past Ciganos
were all poor and led itinerant lives, but they shared and helped each
other. The Plano Real, however, ‘started this thing of buying cars and
fridges’. The Plano Real, or the Real Plan, refers to the introduction of
the new currency in 1994 that stabilised prices and put an end to the
hyperinflation that had dominated the previous decades. Eventually, it
laid the ground for the expansion of consumption, economic growth,
and increased monetarisation of daily life in Bahia, which saw Calon
moving into moneylending as their prime moneymaking activity. Some,
like Orlando, succeeded, while others, like Paulo, did not. Their reputa-
tions and opportunities are tied up with the management of monetary
debts, while changes in the mode of living brought with them their own
tensions. Still today, like in the past, to live in a grounded manner—
which denotes a level of autonomy and security but not a geographic
fixity or separateness from one’s relatives—presupposes relationships
with Jurons.
In order to illustrate this connection between Calon sociality and per-
sonhood, on the one hand, and the loans they make and their economic
integration, on the other, this book is divided into two parts, each con-
sisting of three chapters. Chapter 1 gives an account of Calon spatiality
and their non-sedentary relationship to places. It argues that Calon settle-
ments—which emerge around influential men—are unstable assemblages
of conjugal households. Settlements do not possess identities separate
from their denizens and cannot be understood without taking into
   Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  29

account links to other settlements. People readily (and sometimes fre-

quently) move between settlements within the region where their rela-
tives and known Calon live.
Calon non-sedentarist ideology and a lack of fixity cannot be under-
stood without understanding its apparent opposite: people’s continuous
efforts to forge a unique place in the world. Chapter 2, based primarily
on the story of Orlando’s family over two years, reveals the constant effort
that goes into the stabilisation of households, demonstrating how the ties
that make Calon families strong also make them vulnerable. The analysis
focuses on how durable household wealth, associated with wives, and
money, associated with husbands, are implicated in this process. The
amount of money a man has in loans to Jurons registers his relations with
others and condenses his reputation. It is related to lifecycle, in which the
man’s efficacy becomes most visible in the creation of his children’s
households.
Chapter 3 discusses how Calon men gain the attributes of gendered
social persons. It argues that an adult man is expected to be able to dem-
onstrate his valour and back up his claims with physical force whenever
appropriate. He has to be attuned to his environment, ready to seize
opportunities and thereby ‘make the future’ (fazer futuro), which becomes
mapped onto his moneylending activities. Taking care of one’s family and
gaining status within a community requires a proactive stance as well as
interactions with Jurons. At the same time, however, in so doing a Calon
man differentiates himself from those, such as children and Jurons, who
do not ‘know’ how to behave or what leading a (re-)productive life entails,
and from those Ciganos who do not ‘make the future’ anymore because
they are dead (mulon, in Calon Romani).
The second part of the book starts with Chap. 4, which examines how
deferred payments among Calon men co-constitute Calon sociality.
Among Calon, any sale or loan highlights the autonomy and equality of
parties involved, and always results in an agreement for one party to pay
a sum of money in the future. In so doing, it co-constitutes an ever-­
changing network of dyadic obligations witnessed by others. Various
types of deferred exchanges create distinct egocentric spaces of interac-
tion: small subsistence loans characterise relations within settlements,
loans defined as ‘help’ (ajuda, apoio) mark relationships between r­ elatives,
30  M. Fotta

while agonistic ‘deals’ (rolos) are carried out with people from one’s
broader region. At the limit of this network stand one’s enemies and
unknown Ciganos with whom one cannot enter into exchange relation-
ships by definition.
Chapter 5 argues that Calon physical sustenance and societal repro-
duction are premised on the continuation of relationships with Jurons.
Although clients come from all social backgrounds, the majority are
members of the lower middle class. Calon aim to establish one-way flows
of money from long-term non-Gypsy clients to their households and
make use of their reputation as cold-hearted and money-driven in order
to ensure that their loans do not turn into personalised forms of reciproc-
ity. Throughout a household’s lifetime characterised by spatial mobility,
Calon build up a network of clients scattered across a broader geographi-
cal area. Yet loans are often unsuccessful, with the most potentially lucra-
tive able to cause equally spectacular failures.
Chapter 6 synthesises the findings from previous chapters and pro-
poses a comparative framework. The chapter argues that the analysis of
Calon integration into the Bahian economy occurs not through individ-
uals, but through households. It therefore suggests that while the Calon
have been enmeshed in a commercial economy characterised by money
and debt for centuries, their involvement is not best approached through
the prism of the market. Rather, it should be seen as a form of non-­
autarkic householding, a concept that Chris Gregory (2009) develops on
the basis of the work of Karl Polanyi. This is a form of economic insertion
of communities that depend on exchange relations with majority societ-
ies, which see them as ‘outsiders’ and from which, at the same time, these
communities differentiate themselves.

Notes
1. All translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine.
2. Billi, Marcelo. No sertão da Bahia, cigano é ‘banqueiro’, Caderno Dinheiro,
Folha de São Paulo, 12.06.2005.
3. http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2017/07/1897897-dividas-
poem-61-milhoes-com-nome-sujo-na-praca-recorde-desde-2012.shtml
  Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche…  31

4. http://www.brasil.gov.br/cidadania-e-justica/2017/03/beneficiarios-
recebem-r-2-4-bilhoes-do-bolsa-familia
5. http://politica.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,combate-a-pobreza-foi-o-
maior-feito-do-pt,10000050641
6. ‘Classe média no Nordeste aumentou 80% em sete anos’, n.d., http://
www.sae.gov.br/novaclassemedia/?p=236
7. Maurer, Harry, and Alexander Ragir, ‘Brazil’s New Middle Class Goes on a
Spree’, Bloomberg Business, 12.5.2011, http://www.businessweek.com/maga-
zine/content/11_21/b4229010792956.htm, last accessed 30 April 2012. See
also Leahy, Joe, ‘Brazil’s tale of two middle classes’, Financial Times, 20.7.2011,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6745ef9a-b1e9-11e0-a06c-00144feabdc0.
html#ixzz1qUd3orss, last accessed 30 April 2012.
8. Maurer, Harry, and Alexander Ragir, ‘Brazil’s New Middle Class Goes on a
Spree’, Bloomberg Business, 12.5.2011, http://www.businessweek.com/maga-
zine/content/11_21/b4229010792956.htm, last accessed 30 April 2012. See
also Leahy, Joe, ‘Brazil’s tale of two middle classes’, Financial Times, 20.7.2011,
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6745ef9a-b1e9-11e0-a06c-00144feabdc0.
html#ixzz1qUd3orss, last accessed 30 April 2012.
9. These cheques allow him to go into R$3000 overdraft without any inter-
est if he pays the debt within one week.