Martin Fotta - From Itinerant Trade To Moneylending in The Era of Financial Inclusion-Springer International Publishing - Palgrave Macmillan (2018) PDF

FROM ITINERANT
TRADE TO
MONEYLENDING
IN THE ERA OF
FINANCIAL
INCLUSION
Households, Debts and Masculinity among
Calon Gypsies of Northeast Brazil
Martin Fotta
From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending in the Era
of Financial Inclusion
Martin Fotta
From Itinerant Trade

to Moneylending in
the Era of Financial
Inclusion
Households, Debts and Masculinity
among Calon Gypsies of Northeast
Brazil
Martin Fotta
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Goethe University Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
ISBN 978-3-319-96408-9 ISBN 978-3-319-96409-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952363
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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To Adriana
Acknowledgements
Over the years, the research for this book has been funded by a doctoral
fellowship from the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions programme,
Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, and a research
fellowship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.
My thanks go to the many people who have contributed to this project
and to those who have kept me inspired.
Thanks to my parents, Ján Fotta and Nataša Fottová, for their concerns
about me.
Thanks to Orlando, Viviane, Kiko, Romero, Rogério Maluco, Paula,
Sara, Nelson, Adair, Paulo, Rita, Tiago, and Wiliam for letting me ask so
much about their lives. Thanks to Luciano, Malu, Marly, Ronald,
Ronaldo, and Rogério for the parties.
Thanks to Roger Sansi for his guidance as my thesis supervisor, and to
Frances Pine for having read the final version of the thesis thoroughly.
Thanks to Michael Stewart and Keith Hart for being critical thesis exam-
iners. Thanks to my colleagues at Goldsmiths for listening to my raw
ideas and to our teachers for their encouragement. Thanks to João de
Pina Cabral, Hans Peter Hahn, Annabel Bokern, and Daniel Margócsy
for their support over the years. Thanks to Cecilia McCallum for think-
ing of me as a decent anthropologist, to Edilson Teixeira for making me
take up jogging, to Elena Calvo-González for the laughs, and to Clarice
Costa Teixeira for the delicious food. Thanks to Juliana Campos, Jucelho
vii
viii Acknowledgements
Dantas, Helena Dolabela, Aderino Dourado, Florencia Ferrari, Mirriam

Guerra, Edilma Monteiro, and Márcio Vilar for all the conversations.
Thanks to participants of seminars and conferences at which I pre-
sented various arguments of this book for their suggestions and ques-
tions. Thanks to Susanne Fehlings, Jan Grill, Andreas Streinzer, Mario
Schmidt, Cătălina Tesăr and Márcio Vilar for their invaluable comments
on parts of the manuscript. Thanks to Emma Welter for her assistance
with proofreading. Thanks to the editors from Palgrave Macmillan, Clara
Heathcock and Laura Pacey, for their patience.
Thanks to Adriana Lamačková for being my wife. Thanks to her and
Matilda Fottová for their love.
Contents

Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending
Niche in the Early Twenty-First Century 1
Part I Settlements, Personhood, and the Centrality of

Households 33
Chapter 1 ‘There Are Ciganos in the Town’ 35
Chapter 2 Household Fixity As a Process 65
Chapter 3 Makers of Their Futures 91
Part II Calon Assimilation of the Local Economic

Environment 121
Chapter 4 Deferred Payments and the Expanding Moment

of Caloninity 123
ix
x Contents
Chapter 5 Lending Money to Jurons 151
Chapter 6 Moneylending Niche As Householding 179
Epilogue: The Crisis, the Stranger, and the State 209
Bibliography 225
Index 237
List of Figures
Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche in the

Early Twenty-First Century
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 27
Chapter 1 ‘There Are Ciganos in the Town’
Map 1.1 Schematic map of the region described in this book. Most
of the Calon who I encountered in Santaluz have lived here
for several decades and many were born here. For house-
holds from Orlando’s family this region represents their
home range within which they move 39
Fig. 1.1 Kinship relations in the camp in Santaluz, October 2008.
Numbers correspond to those in the text and Map 1.2.
Black circles represent widow Fé (left) and Germana (right) 43
Map 1.2 Schematic plan of the camp in Santaluz in late October
2008. Although the core of the turma around Djalma’s
household (I) has remained in place for six years, this exact
composition of households lasted only for ten days. Smaller
black rectangles mark locations of tents of two widows
Germana (right) and Fé (left). They depended on others on
much subsistence and on decisions when and where to
move and settle 44
xi
xii List of Figures
Image 1.1 A Calon camp in a small town in a coastal region of Bahia;

like all settlements mentioned in this book it does not exist
anymore. The tarpaulin on the ground belongs to a family
that on the day when this picture was taken decided to
move elsewhere 51
Fig. 1.2 Orlando’s extended family, July 2009. Orlando is marked
black. Widow Germana is top right; widow Fé is top left 52
Image 1.2 After this turma left the town where they lived in a tent
encampment, one man decided to build a house on a new
location (in the foreground). He never finished it, because
the turma moved elsewhere. The man died a few years
later—in a tent 56
Chapter 3 Makers of Their Futures
Image 3.1 In card games among Calon men, which virtually never
involve non-Gypsies, men see their futures unfolding before
their eyes with each draw of cards and each bet. Card games
are one mode through which they intervene in and reshape
their futures 98
Image 3.2 In 2010, an old Calon lived with his wife in a settlement of
his relative. He had singularised himself and his reputation
for valour and preparedness. Nevertheless, he was deemed
‘morto’ as he had very little money in circulation. There were
no beds in the tent: the man slept in a hammock and his
wife on a wooden palette on which a carpet and duvets were
stretched out at night 107
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
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
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
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
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-
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
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
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,
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.
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.
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,
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
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
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
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.
Part I
Settlements, Personhood, and the
Centrality of Households
Chapter 1 ‘There Are Ciganos
in the Town’
Two Decades in the Life of a Calon Family

Manuel Borges da Costa was born in the semi-arid hinterland, sertão, but
in the second half of the 1970s he lived in the area that lay within the
so-called agreste zone, located between the market town of Feira de
Santana and the coast with its zona da mata, coastal forest zone. He was
the leader of a small turma—an aggregate of people that live together—
composed of five households: his own, which he inhabited with his wife
and their eight children; that of his widowed mother, who lived alone;
that of his brother and his family; that of his nephew and his wife; and
that of his friend and his family. These Calon made a living primarily
through buying and selling animals for work in sugar mills.
In 1979, Manuel and his wife arranged the marriage of their oldest
son, Jorge, near Salgado, about 300 kilometres south. They planned to
return to the coast after the wedding, but when the town’s mayor sug-
gested that they settle there, Manuel accepted. He started building two
houses—for his family and for Jorge. Soon, Mariazinha, his second-eldest
child and oldest daughter, also married. She married Claudio, her
cousin—her father’s sister’s son.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_2
36 M. Fotta
The newlyweds lived in a neighbouring town alongside Claudio’s fam-

ily until, about two years later, they suddenly appeared at Manuel’s house.
They explained that Claudio had gotten into an argument with his father,
Eraldo, and pulled a gun on his father. His mother had stepped between
them and was hit by a bullet. Claudio swore that he had not meant to
shoot her. Manuel arranged for the couple to hide at an acquaintance’s
farm for some time. His sister—Claudio’s mother—died the next day.
Manuel’s oldest sons, who had never liked Claudio, were against
Claudio and Mariazinha joining their turma. Manuel also suggested that
Mariazinha leave her husband, as they did not have any children yet, but
she refused.
The couple moved to a town about 200 kilometres away. About a year
later, Manuel learnt that Mariazinha was being abused by Claudio and
that he had beaten her even after she had become pregnant. Manuel and
his second-eldest son, Giovanni, drove to do something about the situa-
tion. When they arrived, they first talked to other Calon in the area, who
confirmed the rumours. Manuel then invited Mariazinha to leave with
them, bringing her baby as well. If she did not come, he warned her, he
would never set foot into her tent again, as he did not want to see her
suffer. She accepted.
A few months later, in June 1984, Claudio was killed in a bar fight.
Eraldo, Claudio’s father, blamed Manuel for his son’s death. The way he
saw it, Manuel was responsible, as Claudio had become uncontrollable
after Mariazinha left him. To avenge his son, Eraldo killed Manuel in
March 1985 at the marketplace in Salguerio. Within a few days, Manuel’s
turma moved from Salgado to neighbouring Brejo Santo, where they
built new houses and tents. A few months later, Manuel’s oldest sons, who
were especially angered by their father’s murder, arranged for Eraldo to be
killed in prison, where he had been incarcerated on unrelated charges.
The turma, now headed by Giovanni, lived in Brejo Santo for the next
12 years. In 1997, during a wedding in their family, a local councillor
started claiming that one of Giovanni’s cousins had bought a gun from
him, but had never paid for it. In the midst of a row that followed, the
non-Gypsy was shot dead. The family of the late Manuel fled immedi-
ately, eventually returning to the humid coast.
* * *
This narrative is reconstructed from several conversations I had with

Manuel’s son 20 years after the events. It vividly illustrates the ways in
which movement and settlement are related to economic opportunities,
households’ lifecycles, and changes in interpersonal relations. The family
first travelled in order for Jorge to marry. As is still usually the case among
Calon, it was the bride’s family that organised the wedding. While today
grooms’ families sometimes raise tents in brides’ settlements or nearby, it
is much more common for them to rent houses in brides’ towns; grooms’
parents often remain there for several weeks. In 1979, it took several
months for Manuel’s turma to arrive to Salgado, since they travelled by
mule and stopped along the way to make a living. At that time, the sight
of such Ciganos tropeiros (drover Gypsies) was not uncommon; indeed,
the interregional trade functioned primarily thanks to various kinds of
itinerant traders. Although Calon travelling caravans were generally
smaller on the coast, in the interior of Bahia some caravans are said to
have been composed of as many as 200 individuals. These large groups
frequently splintered into smaller bands that travelled and settled sepa-
rately, but that would come together again after some time—usually in
specific towns and during particular periods, such as those linked to bean
harvests and regional markets organised around them.
Manuel and his turma never returned to the coast. This change in plans
has to be seen in the context of his children’s marriages and his sons’ new
status as household heads with their own networks and priorities, as well
as in the economic opportunities that the area offered at the time. The
offer from Salgado’s mayor is also important—in the past, a good rela-
tionship with influential non-Gypsies was especially central to the main-
tenance of a Calon mode of life (Medeiros et al. 2013). In the nineteenth
century, as a source of goods, slaves, and animals, Ciganos were tolerated
by elites and sought out their protection. The Scottish naturalist George
Gardner encountered Ciganos between Ceará and Pernambuco who,
according to him, ‘are generally disliked by common people, but are
encouraged by the more wealthy, as was the case on the present occasion
for they were encamped beneath some large trees near the house of a
major in the National Guards, who is the proprietor of a large cane
plantation’ (Gardner 1849: 146). Especially in the 1980s, local politicians
in the Brazilian northeast seem to have encouraged Calon troupes to set-
tle in their localities in exchange for votes and political loyalty, a decision
38 M. Fotta
that was not difficult for Calon to make given that itinerant trade was
becoming unsustainable. Today, although Calon purchase or rent houses
or plots for their encampments, their communal life still depends on the
maintenance of relationships with Jurons. Calon men enter into economic
transactions with Jurons in order to provide for their households, and
settlements emerge around those who have particularly good relation-
ships with local non-Gypsies, especially those of influence.
As this book shows, however, in 30 years things have changed: thanks
to cars and roads, men can strike deals away from their settlements and
towns, but do not have to move with their whole families. Nuclear fami-
lies are smaller, and moneylending, in comparison with transporting ani-
mals, does not require the cooperation of a large number of people.
However, although the speed, mode, and ease of travel have changed,
other things have stayed the same. Today’s reasons for Calon to move and
settle show continuity with those in the past. Thus, behind the façades of
houses that have been gradually replacing tents and which, at first sight,
could be suggestive of sedentarisation, Calon maintain a world structured
according to specific principles.
Settlement in Santaluz
By 2008, Calon had resided in the Graça neighbourhood in Santaluz, in
the vicinity of the street where my wife and I rented a house, for more
than ten years. Graça is the biggest and the poorest neighbourhood in
Santaluz. Many people occupy its land illegally, and most drug-related
violence happens there. Even though Calon constituted only a minority
of the residents on our street, its identification with Ciganos was such
that even our electricity bill, rather than using the official street name,
was addressed to Rua do Cigano—‘Gypsy Street’. Whenever my wife or I
needed to explain to somebody where we lived, we said that it was ‘oppo-
site the house of Orlando Cigano’. Houses belonging to Orlando and
occupied by his family stood just opposite our house, and there was a
Calon encampment about 100 metres down a dirt road from them. Very
early in the morning, it was normal for Calon men to sit in front of our
house, drinking coffee and discussing their plans for the day while watch-
Nazaré da Mata
Bonital
São Bento
SERTÃO
Massagueira
Boa Vista
Barra
São Gabriel
Santaluz
Volta Redonda Bomfim
Parnamirin
Alto de Bela Vista

Palotina ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Map 1.1 Schematic map of the region described in this book. Most of the Calon
who I encountered in Santaluz have lived here for several decades and many were
born here. For households from Orlando’s family this region represents their
home range within which they move
ing fighting cockerels that they had brought to warm up in the sun.
Later, during weekdays, Calon women in colourful dresses passed by our
house on their way to the town’s centre to read palms, returning to the
encampment just before noon carrying groceries. Non-Gypsy clients
came to this part of the town in search of loans. Often, Calon men from
other settlements arrived to Orlando’s house to play cards; I could see
them leaving around two in the morning.
40 M. Fotta
Calon did not always live on the Rua do Cigano. In the 1980s, a tent
camp where some of them lived was in a neighbourhood called São
Lázaro. When the camp first moved to Graça, it stood by the river next
to a metal footbridge. In 1999, in the run-up to municipal elections
when the mayor decided to turn the area into a small football field, most
of the camp moved to what would come to be known as the Rua do
Cigano. The camp first emerged on a plot that Djalma bought at the end
of the street. Around that time, Orlando’s uncle, a rich Calon, bought a
house on the same street. When he died a few years later, Orlando, his
heir, sold the house and built two more on the street. About six years
before my arrival, Djalma sold his plot and the tent camp moved to the
location where I encountered it. For all purposes, then, although all
households were somehow linked and alliances were shifting, one could
speak of two settlements: the first around Djalma, the core of which was
composed of four households, and the second with Orlando at its centre,
consisting of three houses inhabited by three families—his own, that of
his older son, and that of his brother.
Generally speaking, non-Gypsies call settlements that are dominated
by tents acampamentos Ciganos, ‘Gypsy encampments’; I will use ‘camp’
or ‘encampment’ when specifically referring to such places. Settlements,
however, often consist of tents or houses in various combinations. In São
Gabriel, in addition to several houses scattered among Juron houses across
one neighbourhood, a camp composed of 12 tents stood on a hill next to
the entrance of the town; in the centre of the town, another settlement
was composed of one house surrounded by six tents. In Bomfim, a rural
zone occupied by small farmers, there were more than 40 tents in three
camps separated by dirt roads and peasant houses. Although settlements
composed of houses generally tend to be more stable, this is a matter of
degree.
‘Settlement’ is not a Calon concept. Calon do not have a specific word
that signifies ‘a settlement’, nor do they have names for individual settle-
ments—settlements do not exist as abstract and independent entities
beyond the households composing them.1 My use of the concept is aimed
at capturing certain moments in Calon socio-spatial organisation, which
were traditionally realised in the materiality of tent camps. When refer-
ring to settlements from outside, Calon use the names of towns where
settlements are located. When they say they are travelling to Bomfim, São
Gabriel, or Santaluz, one can assume they are visiting other Calon there.
They also use geographical descriptions. In Santaluz, the Calon who lived
in houses talked about the encampment as lá em baixo, ‘down there’,
because it was closer to the river. Most of the time, though, Calon would
refer to specific people: ‘Come with me to the tent of my mother’, ‘I am
going to see Paulo’, and so on. When people answered their mobile
phones and tried to explain that they were in their settlements, they
would invariably say, ‘I am here. In my rancho.’2 In Brazilian Portuguese,
rancho means a modest habitat—be it a small farm or an impromptu
shelter of travellers—but it also refers to a group of people gathered in
order to reach a certain common destination, as well as to the place where
their communal breakfast is served. The resulting equivocation between
one’s own dwelling and the aggregate of those who live together is signifi-
cant. The identities of individual households are not encompassed by the
identities of settlements they co-compose. It is the other way around: it is
relations between households that create settlements, while from the
point of view of individuals, the quality of any settlement depends on
households (i.e. relationships with, and between, those households) of
which the settlement consists. The expression ‘I am in my rancho’ enfolds
into the information referring to one’s tent or house the whole settle-
ment, which one’s household co-creates as one’s own place. It also con-
jures the rest of one’s relational field, such as settlements of one’s inimigos
(enemies) that one avoids, settlements of one’s relatives that one visits
frequently, or settlements of unknown Ciganos that are known to exist.
In other words, settlements do not have fixed identities, nor does a
stable hierarchy develop between households in relation to settlements.
Settlements are not known according to the men around whom they
emerge—nobody spoke of ‘Djalma’s camp’, for instance. Rather, men
like Djalma inspire others to live around them through their prestige
among Jurons, landownership, kinship links, protection, and help.
Reflecting local and historical specificities, such a man has been referred
to as a chefe (Ferrari 2010), a líder (Goldfarb 2004), a barão (Silva 1999),
or a capitão (Wells 1886; China 1936; Thiele 2008). I have suggested
elsewhere (Fotta 2016b) that as a sociological category, their position can
be conceptualised as that of ‘strongmen’, that is, men recognised for their
42 M. Fotta
strength or força, a Calon concept discussed later in the book. As an attri-

bute of a social person that is materialised in settlements or exchanges,
this value speaks of one’s capacity to control interactions and stabilise
one’s (rancho-centric) environment.
The position of a strongman, and thus the degree of political cohesion,
is not given, but varies over time and across settlements. As a rule, how-
ever, although he cannot force anybody to live with him and has to attract
people who in turn might invite others, it is impossible for anybody to
move into the settlement where he lives if he opposes it. Generally, a
strongman has more established claims to the locality of the settlement,
too. In Santaluz, when the encampment moved to Graça, Calon first
lived on Djalma’s plot at the end of the Rua do Cigano. When Djalma
sold the plot, the camp moved down the road, where only Djalma owned
the lot under his tent; others were allowed to stay informally by a care-
taker of the plot, who happened to owe several of them money. In other
settlements near Santaluz, strongmen played a similar role in enabling
their emergence. One rented a plot in the camp and arranged to receive
water and electricity from a Juron neighbour. Another did not own his
plot; rather, it belonged to his youngest son, whose wife had received it,
along with the house in which the newlyweds lived, as part of her dowry
from her parents. This strongman thus lived in a tent on property that
belonged nominally to his son. Yet another owned a walled property on
which his own large house stood along with small houses—and some-
times tents—of his sons, sons-in-law, and other relatives.
Kinship and relatedness are recreated through the inhabiting of, and
movement between, different settlements. People prefer to live and spend
time with those with whom they grew up, or with those who cared for
them when they were children and for whom they have strong affection
(see Gay y Blasco 2004: 167). These are usually members of one’s family
(família) and include parents, siblings, paternal uncles, and often a few
cousins; other consanguineal and affinal relatives are referred to as rela-
tives (parentes). Since Calon usually marry other known Calon, most of
the people have some kind of kin relations in settlements from their
region. Similarly to other Romanies (Gay y Blasco 1999; Okely 1983;
San Román 1975), there is a certain preference for virilocality, but it is
not a rule. One encampment in São Gabriel, for instance, was composed
I II XIII
XII VI
XI VIII X IX
IV VII III XIV
Fig. 1.1 Kinship relations in the camp in Santaluz, October 2008. Numbers cor-
respond to those in the text and Map 1.2. Black circles represent widow Fé (left)
and Germana (right)
of the households of sisters and their married children, although, signifi-

cantly, all of the latter were sons. Although Djalma did not have any
brothers or married sons, the camp in Santaluz (Fig. 1.1, p. 43) included
groups of brothers (households III, V, and IX) and, further down the
genealogical tree, of fathers and their married sons (tents V, IV, and VI
and tents IX, VIII, X, and XI).
Let’s look closer at the camp in Santaluz. Djalma was the main inspira-
tion for people to live there. He lived in his tent (marked “I” on Fig. 1.1
and Map 1.2, p. 44) along with his wife Maria and their son. His tent
stood in the camp’s centre—not in its geographical middle, but in the
centre of social relationships. It was farthest from the river, as well as from
illegally constructed Juron houses. As Djalma had no family in the region,
the camp was inhabited by his wife’s relatives. In front of Djalma’s tent
stood the tent of Paulo (II), his brother-in-law. To the right stood the tent
of Maria’s sister Sonia and her husband Wanderlei (III); to the left, that
of his wife’s niece Sandra (IV) and her husband. With Sandra’s tent,
another kinship circle began: Sandra’s father-in-law, who was also her
father’s brother, lived across a patch of grass from her (V). Next to his tent
stood the tents of Sandra’s brother-in-law (VI) and sister (VII).
To summarise, then, the camp in Santaluz, just like other settlements,
can be visualised as a set of concentric kinship circles: a person is surrounded
by his or her closest relatives who happen to live in the same settlement,
although one’s closest relatives do not need to live in the same settlement.
This principle is combined with that of strength, which is materialised in
44 M. Fotta
XIV
XII
XIII
XI
VII New still uninhabited houses of

Brasileiros
X
VI V
IX VIII IV
central space of II
I
the camp
III
Rua do Cigano
Map 1.2 Schematic plan of the camp in Santaluz in late October 2008. Although
the core of the turma around Djalma’s household (I) has remained in place for six
years, this exact composition of households lasted only for ten days. Smaller black
rectangles mark locations of tents of two widows Germana (right) and Fé (left).
They depended on others on much subsistence and on decisions when and where
to move and settle
people’s capability to ‘attract’ things (money, people, and objects) towards

their settlement. In Santaluz, only Djalma owned a plot under his tent. He
also helped others through small subsistence loans, had most deals with
Jurons and other Calon, and could provide some protection with his guns.
Most deals were concluded in the central area located in front of Djalma’s
tent, where years back he had planted several fast-growing leafy trees that
provided shade for inhabitants and visitors; in other encampments, such
spaces were often shaded by tarpaulins on wooden poles (Map 1.2).
When one enters a Calon settlement, one only needs to find out where
its central place is located to make an educated guess about which house-
holds are the poorest, the weakest, and the most likely to move. The
density of kinship relations, strength, and spatial stability as a matter of
choice are the highest in the centre of any settlement. This is visible in the
quality of dwellings and their furnishings—which originate in wives’
dowries, but the quality of which is later related to husbands’ moneymak-
ing capacity—that worsen towards the settlement’s outskirts. A house-
hold’s propensity for moving out of the settlement increases in the same
direction, as we will see next. Renato and Sonia (XII) stayed in the camp
in Santaluz for only two weeks, while Pancho and Genilsa (XI) moved
frequently in and out of the camp. Índio (XIII), on the other hand, was
very poor and did not have anywhere to go: he grew up in the sertão and
had only one brother, with whom he refused to communicate; his other
two brothers had been killed. He lived in the camp because he got along
with Djalma, but neither he nor his wife Iracema was related to either
Djalma or Maria, although Iracema’s sister Jacira (V) lived in the camp.
The last tent belonged to Maluco (XIV), who was married to a Jurin and
thus had no affinal ties among Calon. His mother was dead, father in
prison, and he only had cousins in Santaluz. Between the tents of Índio
and Rogério Maluco stood two tents of widows Germana and Fé: they
depended on others for much of their subsistence, and their unfurnished
tents, made of single tarpaulin sheets, were the smallest.
Socio-cosmology of Travel
None of the Calon adults in Santaluz were born in the town, although
many saw themselves praianos (of the beach, praia) and therefore of the
region. Some did not, however. Djalma, around whom the encampment
in Santaluz emerged, considered himself a caatingueiro (of an eco-region
characterised by thorny desert vegetation, caatinga). He came from the
sertão, from the area around the town of Serrinha, and sometimes
expressed his desire to return there. These distinctions do not denote
nations, clans, tribes, or even ‘groups’, but rather speak of personal-
affective biographies: they refer to spaces where one was raised and where
46 M. Fotta
one’s dead are buried. They highlight the ego-, or, rather, rancho-centric
character of Calon spatiality and personal geographies as historical sedi-
mentations of relationships. The mixture of caatingueiros, mateiros (of the
coastal forest, mata), praianos, and recôncavanos (of the maritime region
around Brazil’s largest bay, Recôncavo) in such a small settlement as
Santaluz also demonstrates that Calon have not really become ‘fixed’
(fixos) in the way Jurons imagine.
When asked, Calon often describe places they have inhabited in the
past, marking their trajectories by events such as weddings, violence, and
deaths like those in the story of Manuel’s family above. Such narrations
of events, however, hide other types of movements—those that occur on
a day-to-day basis, but nevertheless impact the lives of those in settle-
ments. Although the consequences of such movements are not the same
as those of dramatic events that punctuate family histories, any change in
one settlement influences the lives of those in other settlements linked to
it. This is because Calon social life is dependent on continuous construc-
tion and maintenance of relations which are demonstrated, among other
ways, in movement, visits, and co-habitation that objectify ‘who is with
whom’ (Brazzabeni 2012: 204, emphasis in the original), and not the
other way around.
Households that habitually form a settlement and change locations
together frequently refer to themselves as a turma. In Santaluz, apart from
Djalma and Maria (marked I on the Map 1.2 and Fig. 1.1) and Índio and
Iracema (XIII), three other households (II, III, and VI) formed the core
of the turma. By the time of my arrival in 2008, these households had
lived together for five years continuously. Turma, however, is not a corpo-
rate group; depending on context, such as economic collaboration or
conflicts, other aggregates are readily considered turmas (Campos 2015:
42–45). Often turmas are patrigroups—households of a group of broth-
ers and their children, or households of a father and his married children.
Other people join or leave such turmas, children marry, and sons com-
monly build their tents next to their parents. In some instances, whole
turmas join together, which requires significant effort in negotiating
power dynamics and daily interactions.
Most Calon in Santaluz had lived in this region—illustrated on the
schematic map of the region on page 39—for more than two decades,
although not always in the town and not with the same people. Indeed,
when one visits a settlement of Bahian Calon after some time, one invari-
ably encounters a different composition. There are many reasons to
change settlement for longer or shorter periods of time without abandon-
ing it, or the area, altogether. Such visits reconfirm and mend relation-
ships. People might spend some time in a new location (passar uns dias,
passar uma temporada) and then return to their previous locales or move
somewhere else altogether. For the sake of illustration, the following
account lists movement into and out of the camp in Santaluz between
September 2008 and February 2009, laying bare the fluidity characteris-
tic of Calon settlements. Unless specified otherwise, male names stand as
shorthand for whole households:
Early September 2008: The camp around Djalma has 24 people and 10

tents. Wanderlei (III) returns from Bonital, 85
kilometres away, where his married daughter
lives and where he has spent three months.
14 September: Renato (XII) moves into the camp from a house
on Rua do Cigano where he had previously lived.
The house is owned by Orlando, his brother,
who is planning for his younger son to move
there after he marries.
15 October: Pancho (XI) arrives from São Gabriel, 40 kilo-
metres away. Business was not going well for
him there, and his wife was eager to live with
her siblings. Pancho’s grandmother Germana
also arrives and has her small tent built at the
edge of the camp.
16 October: The caretaker of the plot gives Ciganos ten days
to move out.
20 October: Gel (IX) and his son José (X) move in from São
Gabriel. Both have siblings already living in the
camp. Mudo (VII) moves his tent to accommo-
date for new arrivals.
30 October: Renato (XII) decides to move to São Gabriel,
where he has two sisters. His oldest son has been
48 M. Fotta
drinking and gambling a lot recently, and a few

days ago he got hurt in a motorcycle accident.
Pancho (XI) moves his tent onto the spot where
Renato’s tent stood.
27 November: Rogério Maluco (XIV) moves out to live with
his Jurin wife’s mother nearby. His wife is going
to give birth soon.
30 November: Rogério’s father is released from prison. He goes
to see him in São Gabriel and sells his tent to
him. He stays in São Gabriel for one month and
misses the birth of his daughter.
11 December: Fé follows her son Renato to São Gabriel.
14 December: The caretaker erects wooden poles around and
across the camp.
6 January 2009: Mudo (VII) leaves for Nazaré da Mata, 75 kilo-
metres away. Faustão (VI) moves his tent beside
Wanderlei’s (III).
9 January: Pancho (XI) moves his tent closer to the camp.
He does not feel safe living far from the camp,
separated by a row of houses.
10 January: Uelson (VIII), who does not get along with his
father Gel, moves to Boa Vista, 58 kilometres
away.
28 January: Jenilson arrives from Bomfim, 18 kilometres
away, where he had got into a fight with another
Calon man. His widowed mother and her two
unmarried children erect a tent next to Jenilson.
She is Djalma’s sister-in-law and has two sisters
and a brother living in the camp already.
Jenilson’s cousin Val and his widowed mother
also come with them.
4 February: Faustão (VI) moves his tent, because a Juron,
who owned the plot, decided to build a house
there.
8 February: Widow Fé returns to Santaluz from São Gabriel
after her son Renato hit her. The landowner
gives the Calon 30 days to vacate the area of the

encampment.
13 February: The encampment has 46 people. José (X) moves
his tent next to his oldest brother Pancho (XI)
and away from his father Gel (IX), who is irri-
tated by the fact that José has a (Juron) male
lover in the town.
22 February: Pancho’s grandmother Germana leaves for São
Gabriel.
23 February: Pancho (XI) moves to São Gabriel. Heavy rains,
which have lasted for over a week now, flooded
several tents a few days ago—this is the immedi-
ate cause for Pancho’s departure. He had been
considering the move for some time, however,
as he has not managed to build up stable clien-
tele in Santaluz.
* * *
Although changes in other nearby settlements were somewhat less fre-

quent during the same period, the flux in Santaluz described above is not
particularly unique. The point is that developments are impossible to
predict. For instance, after Gel and his sons left Santaluz in March 2009,
the composition of the camp in Santaluz was not altered until August
2009, when it was completely abandoned. Nevertheless, a few principles
can be discerned. First, the core turma is relatively stable. Second, house-
holds are readily mobile, which is clearly visible from the variety of rea-
sons that justify their decisions to move. Third, they move into existing
settlements only when they have relatives (or other close individuals) who
already reside there. Fourth, households move within what could be
described as their home range, occupied by relatives and known Calon
and characterised by a dense network of dyadic relationships.
From the point of view of individual households, movement is a way
to change their positioning while simultaneously enacting their readiness
to revise their situation. People move in order to improve their economic
50 M. Fotta
conditions, live closer to their kin, or deal with unforeseen events, such as
fights and evictions. Renato thought that moving out of Santaluz would
help his son overcome his addiction, while his brother-in-law Pancho
moved out when he saw that ‘there is no future’ in the town, by which he
meant that it was difficult to make money there. Later in this book, I will
explore the concept of the future (futuro) and the creation of opportuni-
ties through movement that is associated with life. Here, it suffices to say
that the increased inhabitation of houses and ownership of plots present
a mixed blessing. This is because ‘flux seems to come to a halt when they
start to inhabit [a house]. Although they [Calon] stress practical advan-
tages of living in a house, this mode of life is thought of as “still life” (vida
parada), that is, it calls attention to the lack of flux’ (Ferrari 2010: 266).
In other words, there is a tension between the Calon vision of active lives
that is the basis of (re)production and some aspects of fixed domicile that
threaten to stop life—to bring about ‘velocity zero’ (ibid.: 268). When
Leo’s uncle died in 2007, Leo had sold his house in Barra and moved to
Bomfim, 32 kilometres away. In early 2009, he bought a huge plot in
Bomfim and built the largest tent in the settlement, complete with a
concrete floor and brick bathroom beside it; for all purposes, although its
walls and roof were made of tarpaulin, it was a house. One day in
November 2009, I encountered Leo there around lunchtime just as he
was returning from Santaluz, 18 kilometres away. Leo quickly ate his
lunch, then immediately got into his car with me and two other men. ‘I
cannot stand still (parado)’, he told us while on the phone with a client.
‘I just eat and go again. It’s an agony remaining [still] here’ (ficar [parado]
aqui).
Stillness in the present is problematic because it highlights one’s lack of
both agency and future-making orientation, which are made visible
through movement. It speaks of the world ‘of bad quality, moribund,
sick’ (Ferrari 2010: 267) that is shadowed by death (see also Okely 1983:
86). While a healthy life is associated with the travelling lifestyle of the
past (Goldfarb 2004), there is no simple shift from the ‘nomadism’ of the
yesteryear to the ‘sedentarism’ of today (Fotta 2012). Even today, there is
no shortage of movement: there are various ways to move or to halt, with
a rich conceptual apparatus related to it (Ferrari 2010: 268–73). Moreover,
despite various changes in modes of travel and an increase in property
ownership, movement can still be achieved by changing the place where

one lives. By 2011, Leo had sold his plot in Bomfim and left.
Movement is not solely prompted by a positive pull from elsewhere;
push factors also play a role. People can be forced to move out because of
conflicts, and some might move too much, which in fact reveals their lack
of grounding and strength: if a strongman is the stable centre around
which a settlement emerges, than those who move the most are often
poor and weakly related to others. Frequency of movement, however,
should not be reduced to poverty, as the rich also move.3 Mobility—or,
even more precisely, motility—reflects a forward thrust immanent in
‘Gypsy life’ (a vida do Cigano/ vida Cigana) that requires Ciganos to do
something about their present moment, to open it towards the future
(Image 1.1).
Image 1.1 A Calon camp in a small town in a coastal region of Bahia; like all
settlements mentioned in this book it does not exist anymore. The tarpaulin on
the ground belongs to a family that on the day when this picture was taken
decided to move elsewhere
52 M. Fotta
Social Wayfaring
Decisions to move are based on the composition of settlements and per-
ceived opportunities that lie within a household’s home range—these are
unstable factors, however. A settlement emerges when the interests of
several households and qualities of the place (such as landownership)
converge. As a result, the desirability of a specific location and its arrange-
ment change in relation to other options households might have. These
complex dynamics are illustrated by the following account, which
describes the trajectories of several households that belong to an extended
family (Fig. 1.2).
In March 2009, the households belonging to this family inhabited
three settlements. Orlando and his sons lived in two houses on the Rua
do Cigano in Santaluz. Orlando’s sister Rita lived in the tent camp down
the road from them. Orlando’s and Rita’s sisters, Carla and Sara, and
brother, Renato, lived with their children in the camp in São Gabriel;
Sara’s husband was the strongman of this camp. Their sister Genilsa also
joined them after moving out of the camp in Santaluz.
In July 2009, after Kiko, Orlando’s older son, killed a non-Gypsy man
from Santaluz, all Calon abandoned the town. Most people from
‘Djalma’s camp’ moved to Bomfim, 18 kilometres from Santaluz—it was
nearby, virtually everyone had relatives living there, there was no shortage
of land to rent, and many plots were abandoned in this rural settlement.
But they hoped to return to Santaluz after a time. Upon leaving Santaluz,
Fig. 1.2 Orlando’s extended family, July 2009. Orlando is marked black. Widow
Germana is top right; widow Fé is top left
Orlando joined his siblings in São Gabriel, but a month later, he sold one
of his houses in Santaluz. With his household—which now included that
of his imprisoned son, Kiko—he moved out of the tent in his siblings’
camp to a rented house nearby. Rita was the only one of the family not
living in São Gabriel at the time, since she and her blind husband Paulo
depended on the support of his brother-in-law, Djalma. Moreover, a few
years before, their son had separated from a woman whose family lived in
São Gabriel; because the woman remained unmarried, they avoided the
town so as not to get into a conflict with her family.
In August, Sara’s husband died of a heart attack. Within a few days, 12
households composing the settlement abandoned the locale.4 Sara accom-
panied her daughter’s family, which moved to a rented house on the other
side of São Gabriel. Genilsa joined Rita in Bomfim, 45 kilometres away.
Carla, Renato, and a few other households from their former camp
moved to a plot in São Gabriel that Carla’s husband was renting from a
Juron. A month later, Renato left this muddy camp next to the highway
and also moved to Bomfim; his main reason for doing so was that his
older daughter had recently left her husband and moved into her parents’
tent. As her ex-husband visited them there every day to see his son,
remaining in São Gabriel would have made it impossible to complete the
separation.
Throughout October, Genilsa, Rita, and Renato were living in Bomfim,
but constantly pondered how to return to Santaluz. The plot on the Rua
do Cigano where they used to live had been sold, and they were not able
to find another suitable place. Their brother Orlando and his wife, who
had been spending a great deal on court expenses and had to borrow
money, were having intense discussions about what to do next: they
planned to leave for the sertão as soon as Kiko was released; then, Orlando
was asking another Calon about a plot for sale in São Gabriel; next, he
was talking about selling his second house in Santaluz, but then, to the
horror of his relatives, discussed going back to Santaluz. Finally, in early
November, Orlando bought some terreno (ground) in São Gabriel. He
hired non-Gypsies to construct a brick wall around it and soon started
erecting two houses. His plan was to move there after Kiko’s release,
which they believed was imminent. Orlando also invited a few of his
siblings to join them on the terreno. He hoped that having them around
54 M. Fotta
would provide some protection to Kiko once he moved there, since

everybody still feared that the friends and family of the Juron he killed
would try to enact their revenge. Orlando’s relatives had their own rea-
sons for accepting Orlando’s offer. Sara’s son-in-law, who had talked
Orlando into buying the terreno, did not want to live alone and pay rent
anymore; Carla’s husband was not getting along with his brother, who
was living in their camp. Moreover, the camp was morto, ‘dead’: all the
men were poor, and there was no movimento, ‘movement’. Thus, in
December 2009, Renato, Genilsa, and Rita were living in the encamp-
ment in Bomfim, while Carla, Sara, and Orlando inhabited the new set-
tlement in São Gabriel.
* * *
Behind the temporary alignments realised in settlements lie households’

readiness to move and their search for better emplacement. In their
decision- making, households take into account their surrounding
environment, evaluating various options on the basis of numerous crite-
ria such as the availability and quality of space available, ownership issues,
costs of travel, personal safety, people who live in specific settlements, the
interests of different household members, and economic circumstances
and opportunities—not only for themselves, but also for the households
attached to theirs. When Carla and her husband Beiju accepted Orlando’s
invitation to move to his emerging settlement, they were thinking of
their son’s household’s interests in particular, in light of the fact that their
own camp was ‘dead’. We could therefore speak of social ‘wayfaring’, to
use Ingold’s (2007) term: people do not evaluate each available position
on a continuum with a fixed future point in mind, but on the basis of
feedback reference to changes in relations around them. As we will see
later in the book, Calon men and women imagine themselves as active,
capable of dealing with uncertainties, and adept at gaining advantage in
the process. Ferrari’s (2010: 268) conclusion that within Calon ‘cosmo-
logical nomadism’, ‘[it is] not a Calon that is in movement, but the world
which is around him’ is therefore imprecise. Rather, the world is set into
motion at exactly the point when they know they are moving.
Social wayfaring requires effort, since the environment—the absolute

and relative composition of all settlements—is unstable. It demands that
one stay alert to the present, which is achieved by means of conversations,
rumours, or visits with others (also Brazzabeni 2012). Households make
choices with different people in various camps in mind, who are simulta-
neously also evaluating the positions of their own households. Settlements
emerge as collusions of judgements—a temporary harmonisation rather
than a reflection of a fixed order (MacDonald 2008). This interaction of
kinship obligations, financial deals, emotions, and evaluations of others’
behaviour generates changes in the quality of places, resulting in a form
of overall complexity in which a great number of potential arrangements
are possible, but a long-term prediction of these arrangements is not.
We have seen above how Orlando and his five siblings passed through
several living arrangements within a few months. The account illustrates
that the intensity of movement is the highest following unpredictable
events such as death and violence. Such events render certain places inac-
cessible and force people to reconsider their positions. They are followed
by a period of increased movement and reconfiguration; it is only gradu-
ally, and after much effort, that people are able to regain their footing and
settlements gain some temporal—albeit not necessarily compositional—
stability (Image 1.2). While household members generally have prefer-
ences regarding where and with whom to live, contingencies of life often
disperse relatives geographically. As we will see next, violent events in
particular limit people’s day-to-day interactions, coding spaces, and reori-
enting individuals’ behaviour towards one another.
Revenge and Segmentarity
The preference for virilocality is linked to the Calon view of the world as
dangerous: at the level of ideological representation, at least, it is inhab-
ited by potentially dangerous (perigosos) Jurons, who englobe them, and
valiant (valente) and honourable Calon men, who are protective of their
autonomy and their families. As revealed by the story of Manuel’s family
with which this chapter opened, these aspects enter into the calculus of
Calon spatial arrangement: feuding led to the separation of—and avoid-
56 M. Fotta
Image 1.2 After this turma left the town where they lived in a tent encamp-
ment, one man decided to build a house on a new location (in the foreground).
He never finished it, because the turma moved elsewhere. The man died a few
years later—in a tent
ance between—affinally related families, while later, a violent incident in

which an important local Juron was killed forced all Calon—not only the
perpetrators—to abandon the region they inhabited. When, during my
fieldwork, a Calon killed a non-Gypsy man in a settlement about two
hours by car from Santaluz, an angry mob burnt down the camp. According
to police, somebody had manipulated popular sentiments against Cigano
moneylenders. It was not unreasonable, then, for Calon to preventively
leave Santaluz. Calon position in local societies is characterised by ambiva-
lence; moreover, the Juron killed by Kiko was a member of a local criminal
gang and also belonged to a powerful extended family.
If Jurons are dangerous in a somewhat random and amoral manner,
Ciganos are dangerous in a different way. There is a fear that any kind of
conflict would call for revenge (vingança). When a conflict results in
killing, kin, overcome with emotion, resort to revenge and a general

avoidance of enemies, as well as places associated with them. As a con-
sequence, although households move within settlements occupied by
their relatives, conflicts can drive families apart and turn kin into ene-
mies. Manuel’s sons avoided their cousins; Índio, a caatingueiro, lived
on the coast, having fled violence in the sertão that had left all but one
of his four brothers dead. Enemies (inimigos) are often relatives (paren-
tes), especially affinal relatives (‘parentes of the wife’) or potential affinal
relatives. Beiju’s father was killed by a man, who had come to marry
Beiju’s sister. Beiju and his brother Camarão killed him in turn. It seems
that exogamous affinity, which involves the conscious recasting of rela-
tions with people with whom one might not share memories of co-liv-
ing and care, is especially prone to violent breakdown. By definition,
enemies cannot be the unknown nameless Gypsies (Ciganos desconheci-
dos) with whom one has no previous relationship and with whom con-
tact is generally avoided. However, consistent with the Calon view of
themselves, those from elsewhere are generally portrayed as more valente,
valiant—for those in Bahia, this means those in Pernambuco; for those
in São Paulo, those in Bahia.
As I have argued elsewhere (Fotta 2016a), revenge is justified by emo-
tions such as sadness or anger, not by an appeal to any ‘Gypsy law’ as
among other Romani groups (Gay y Blasco 1999; Gronfors 1977). It
involves small agnatic groups that are not formalised in any way; not all
relatives of the same kinship position participate in the same way. Like
emotions, such blood feuds do not travel well across generations, although
for some revenge might never end. When the brother-in-law of Beiju and
Camarão killed their sister in an incident of domestic violence, they killed
him in turn. A decade later, Beiju’s son married a woman from the
brother-in-law’s extended family, but his uncle Camarão refused to attend
the wedding and still does not talk to the família de inimigos.
Such individualisation of events differs subtly from the revenge com-
plex of the Iberian Romanies, where patrigroups often merge into larger
segments, called razas in Spanish and raças in Portuguese, and are
‘descended from a common ancestor through male links’ (San Román
1975: 171). A specific term denotes the feuding of such segments—it is
referred to as ruinas or quimeras in Spanish and desordens in Portuguese
58 M. Fotta
(San Román 1975: 171; Gay y Blasco 1999: 147–51; Seabra Lopes 2008:
158; see also Sama Acedo 2016: 77). Gay y Blasco (1999: 149) observes
that among the Spanish Gitanos, in the case of a murder, ‘any member of
the offending raza are liable of retaliation’ (see also Seabra Lopes 2008:
70). In addition, in the second half of the twentieth century, a more or
less spontaneous strategy of avoidance became untenable. This is because
‘government policies have dictated the growing concentration of Gitanos
in shanty towns, housing estates and even Roma-only, purpose-built
ghettoes’ (Gay y Blasco 2004: 165). This state control over movement
and settlement has made it difficult for people in conflict to scatter and
practise avoidance, a situation that led to the intensification of ruinas in
the 1960s, as well as new modes of dealing with them (ibid.).
Similar shifts are observable in other European countries where decreased
spatial mobility and ‘nationalisation’ of some aspects of Romani lives—
through a fixed domicile, social housing, schooling, or welfare transfers, for
instance—have motivated the formalisation of ways of dividing space, as
well as of avoidance in cases of conflicts (e.g. Berlin 2015). The modern
Brazilian state, however, has not attempted to force Ciganos’ settlement
into designated areas. Although the causality must remain speculative, it is
telling that the Bahian Calon do not conceptualise patrigroups as bounded
units prior to conflicts, have no specific terms to denote larger segments or
long-term feuds between them; nor do they have a formalised system for
dividing territories or a framework in which respected men mediate or
adjudicate in cases of conflict. Families are relatively free to move, and many
avoid tensions through leaving, such as when Jenilson left Bomfim because
of an argument with another Calon and spent several weeks in Santaluz.
Calon vinganca could be compared with ‘family fights’ (brigas de famil-
ias) among non-Gypsies of the Brazilian sertão (Marques 2002), although
there are significant differences. For Calon, conflicts become personalised
in that relationships are made visible through them. Unlike the non-
Gypsy peasants of Pernambuco, Bahian Calon do not recognise the areas
they move within as genealogically associated with their families and pre-
decessors (Marques 2013). People who do not belong to the immediate
family are not implicated as belonging to one of the ‘sides’ (lados) involved,
and the conflict is not passed down from generation to generation. The
long-term durability of peasant ‘family fights’ is linked to their implica-
tion within the world of local politics, which allows for a variety of events
to be interpreted as caused by the fight between factions, even though the
real motivations and actors remain indiscernible (Marques 2011). Related
to the non-institutionalisation of group or settlement identities, this dif-
ference also speaks importantly of the marginality of Calon in the world
of local politics. Principles of Calon social organisation differ from the
sedentarist principles of Jurons, for whom identity is linked to descent
and notions of landownership.
As an organisational principle, then, violence, especially in its most
culturally salient idiom of revenge, delimits the use of space. As a hori-
zon, it divides one’s world between the home range of one’s household—
where might exist locales occupied by one’s enemies (often relatives),
which are avoided—and spaces occupied by unknown Ciganos. It not
only influences family dynamics and composition, but adds to overall
complexity of Calon social organisation, since violent events impact all
denizens of interconnected settlements whether they participate in them
or not. Flight from any one settlement leads to altered compositions and
reconfigured alliances in other settlements linked to it. Events reorient
people who are not directly related and might not observe loyalty in the
same way or even refuse to participate. Violence is a form of sociality—a
denial of commonality with Jurons and a focal point orienting sociability
among the Calon. In giving shape to interactions between individuals,
vingança, and the fear of it, becomes a site for foregrounding one’s
Gypsyness (Gay y Blasco 1999). It also limits the size of settlements and
prevents the development of hierarchical order.
Temporary Assemblages
Settlements, such as those I found in Santaluz in mid-2008—the tent
camp with Djalma at its centre and a group of Orlando’s houses on the
Rua do Cigano—depend on and are stabilised by myriad flows, circula-
tions, and relationships, including kin, affective, and exchange relation-
ships; by investments in property and construction of houses; through
the school attendance of children, the reception of retirement benefits by
the elderly, and other state formalisations. This list is not exhaustive; spa-
60 M. Fotta
tial characteristics relate to ways in which stability is fabricated through a

multiplication of exchanges that at the same time represent the mascu-
line embracing of movement. In attempts to earn money, men leave
camps almost daily, going to neighbouring or even distant towns. One
characteristic of strongmen is that they have the most deals within and
outside settlements. Every settlement is criss-crossed with small subsis-
tence loans, especially from strongmen. One helps those who stand up
for him, and one never lends money to unknown Ciganos. People move
to improve their capacity to strike deals—physical movement creates
opportunities for monetary flow. Thanks to dislocation, over the course
of their lives, men generate long-term customers in many towns across
the region.
In this context, any settlement is an event—a temporary assemblage,
to use this worn-out Deleuzian term. Assemblages are composed of ele-
ments brought together through relations of exteriority, where parts can
be detached and form other assemblages with different interactions
between elements, but where the characteristics of an assemblage cannot
be reduced to properties of any of its parts—for example, the tent camp
in Santaluz emerged around Djalma, but never became ‘Djalma’s camp’.
Assemblages need to be studied through an examination of the interac-
tion between their parts (see, e.g., De Landa 2006): the roles of compo-
nent parts on a material-expressive axis; the stability of elements on a
territorialisation-deterritorialisation axis; and according to expressive
media that consolidate identity of assemblages on a coding-decoding
axis. Seen from this perspective, on the material-expressive axis there are
no fixed social roles and no political authority in settlements. Settlements
are weakly coded, as they do not have specific names on their own; there
exists no way to represent them as totalities; they are not parts of large
assemblages, such as state zoning, local politics, or some Calon territorial
structure, that would fix their identities; and they are constantly deterri-
torialised through violence and movement. Moreover, individual subjec-
tivity—one’s knowledge and feelings that relate primarily to the places
one leaves because of mourning and violence—is crucial, but is impossi-
ble to represent collectively.
Settlements make the continuation of this form of life possible. But
they do not evolve with regularity—the unpredictability of settlements’
development and their lack of transcendent identity are connected to the

practice of social wayfaring through which settlements emerge as objecti-
fications of a temporary harmony of several households’ interests. In the
Calon case, one’s behaviour and acts either demonstrate one’s commit-
ment to a specific ethos and make relations between people (‘who is with
whom’) visible, or they do not. One cannot be ‘a little bit Calon’, since
the meaning and truthfulness of acts are demonstrated in the way in
which one relates to others—a form of accountability. Through changing
their emplacement and orientation, in forming turmas or ‘spending a
period’ (passar uma temporada) elsewhere, people recognise and
continually affirm the importance of relations. The forms that relation-
ships take, according to which morality is evaluated, are relatively few:
interpersonal violence, exchange relations with Calon and Jurons, familial
relations of care, respect towards the dead, and so on. Many discussions
among Calon revolve around weighing and contrasting such relation-
ships, a process which performatively enacts a world where moving one’s
household elsewhere just makes sense. For instance, when a married son,
accompanied by his father’s cousin and the son’s godfather, came to con-
vince his father not to live ‘alone’ (sozinho) among Jurons, the visitors
conceded that it might be financially advantageous for the father to
remain in the town, since he was the only Cigano there. However, they
argued, as a man ‘over 40’, he should just ‘eat quietly’, as there is no
greater pleasure than being surrounded by grandchildren or drinking cof-
fee and chatting with other men. Moreover, they added, if something
happened, the father would only need to yell out; all Calon who lived on
the same street would come to his assistance.
Although the relationships guiding a good life appear to Calon—at
least in theory—enumerable, it is impossible to make predictions about
the outcomes to which they may lead. Nevertheless, although this social
organisation allows for a variety of outcomes, the overall system persists.
Paradoxically the stability of the Calon social world surfaces in, and
through, movement. Although there have been changes in mode and ease
of travel, and although many Calon now live in houses, there are still
many reasons to travel; neither physical houses nor tents serve as fixed
points of reference.
62 M. Fotta
Intensive Presence, Abrupt Absence

A year into my fieldwork, all Ciganos from Santaluz were gone. Calon
houses on the Rua do Cigano were bought by Jurons, and the space that had
once been the camp was divided into plots that were subsequently sold. At
the time of writing this book, a decade later, there are still no Calon fami-
lies who live in the town. This is not atypical. All over Brazil there are
places with names that recall a Cigano presence: for instance, in 2010 a
protest against the construction of the Belo Monte dam complex took
place on a section of the Trans-Amazonian Highway known as Descida dos
Ciganos, ‘Gypsies Descent’, since at some point in the past there had been
a car accident there in which ten Ciganos had died. Other places used to
carry such names in the past, but once Ciganos had left, any identification
with them gradually disappeared: one memoirist reminisces that some-
where in Salvador there used to be a Beco dos Ciganos, ‘Gypsies Cul-de-sac’,
but ‘our generation forgot where it stood’ (Leal 2000: 172), while only
those interested in history would know that what is today Praça Tiradentes
in Rio de Janeiro used to be called Campo dos Ciganos, ‘Gypsy Field’, as this
is where Ciganos lived in the nineteenth century (Green 2006). In a twist
of historical irony, Tiradentes, a republican revolutionary, prided himself
with having ordered his men to persecute Ciganos, imprisoning and kill-
ing them ‘by dozens’ (Dornas Filho 1948: 151), while D. Pedro I—the
first emperor of Brazil, whose equestrian statue dominates the square—
enjoyed visiting this bohemian district and is rumoured to have been
enchanted by one Cigana, beautiful Ludovina (Donovan 1992: 41).
Such popular—and seldom formalised—names for streets, squares,
and other places are a testimony to the intensity of Cigano presence in
these locales and to images of the Cigano singularity that are conjured up
by them. First, generally speaking, neither the presence nor absence of
Ciganos is out of the ordinary—after all, Ciganos have been a part of this
social universe for centuries. In fact, many inhabitants of Santaluz were
unaware that there was a tent encampment in a neighbourhood where
they never went, although they had encountered Calon women in the
marketplace reading palms. In turn, most had probably never noticed that
all Ciganos had abandoned their town. Second, Cigano residence in spe-
cific locales is discontinuous. Such dematerialisations of Calon settlements
confirm Juron suspicions that Ciganos were never really like them and
that, even when they inhabit houses, Ciganos are nomads. Disappearances
also strengthen the Juron sense that there is something opaque about
Cigano behaviour and intentions.
Juron sedentarist suspicions are reconfirmed whenever Calon leave
places where they have settled and established all kinds of relationships—
when their intensive co-living and enmeshment in localised neighbourly,
amorous, or exchange relationships give way to their absence. From the
point of view of Juron neighbours, this often happens as if overnight. I
want to argue that the dynamics of closeness and obliteration in one loca-
tion—which becomes, to adapt Simmel’s (1950: 402) statement on social
form of the Stranger, a matter of coming today and staying elsewhere
tomorrow—characterise Calon insertion into Bahian society. In this
book, I focus primarily on one form such lived proximity takes, namely,
the kinds of exchange relationships Calon cultivate with Jurons and how,
in this manner, Calon partake in the dense financial lives of other inhab-
itants of the Bahian interior. I describe how the Cigano economic niche
depends on a careful management of distance and closeness—on stress-
ing neighbourliness and commonalities at one moment and ethnic differ-
ence and impersonality of business at another. Settlements such as the
Rua do Cigano in Santaluz highlight the importance of cultivating par-
ticular relationships with Jurons on which settlements’ existence, and thus
the Calon world, depends—exchange relationships as well as those of
amity, patronage, or trust with local Jurons. At the same time, settlements
are also disturbances created within the Juron world—this is where
‘Ciganos can be found’, for instance, by potential clients. Settlements
thus foreground certain sovereignty and distanciation from Jurons at the
same time as they objectify relations with them (apud Williams 2003).
The moneylending niche is stabilised through the constant fabrication
of what I have called here ‘intensive presence’—of creating and main-
taining particular relations with clients and important non-Gypsies.
Without affecting others in this way, Jurons would not realise, as Orlando
once put it, that there were ‘Ciganos in the town’ and thus would not
‘come and borrow money’. This was 2011 and he had recently moved to
a town that had no Calon presence at the moment. He did not settle
there alone, but with his family—his own household and the households
64 M. Fotta
of his two sons. The households of a few other relatives arrived soon
afterwards. The intensive presence of Calon among Jurons, then, is not
an individual affair; rather, it depends on the continuation of specific
forms of relatedness with other Calon, which it simultaneously enables.
This is the main aspect of the niche that this book explores: institutions
and relations through which Calon assimilate Bahian society, which are
reflected in the character of Calon spatiality and motility. Households and
the relationships between them are central to this form of economic integra-
tion. Objectified in tents or houses, and occupied by couples with unmar-
ried children, households are, of course, basic components of settlements,
and their multiplicity demarcates settlements as Calon spaces. However, as
we will see next, without appreciating the centrality of households, it is
impossible to understand the moneymaking activities of Calon men.
Notes
1. This has represented a writing challenge for me. While I need to recognise
that specific relations and ties bind people to the localities where they
reside, geographical emplacement does not confer fixed identity upon
these individuals. When I talk of Calon from, in, or of Santaluz, I refer to
those who happened to live in Santaluz at the moment to which my nar-
rative refers.
2. Barraca, ‘tent’, is also used, albeit less commonly.
3. Comparatively speaking, there is no consistent pattern across different
Romani populations. Similarly to the Bahian Calon, among the
Californian Rom some households are more mobile than others within
single extended families and the more powerful ones tend to move less.
Unlike the Calon, however, the Californian Rom explicitly divide and
control territories between and within families (Nemeth 2002). Among
the English Gypsies, in contrast to both the Californian Rom and the
Bahian Calon, richer families travel more often and for longer distances
than poorer ones (Okely 1983: 149).
4. This shows that settlements are relational entities, not concentrations of
relatives anchored primarily through relations of property. Among the
Californian Rom, who lived scattered among Gadze within a five-mile
perimeter, ‘a death at home in any Rom family in the Los Angeles settle-
ment precipitated an immediate change of residence’ (Nemeth 2002: 178).
Chapter 2 Household Fixity As a Process
To Lead a Supported Life

Every afternoon Viviane washed her hair and put on a clean dress and
jewellery. When her husband Orlando came home, they would sit in
front of their house on Rua do Cigano observing the street and talking to
passers-by, often accompanied by their sons. These Ciganos were visible
and seemed self-confident, and the contentment of these moments con-
trasted sharply with the activity and movement earlier in the day. In some
ways, the proof that the day—its deals, card games, cooking, cleaning,
and overall business—had gone well was in their composure.
Orlando, a short balding man in his mid-40s, with a cigarette stuck
between his golden teeth in the corner of his mouth, was always ready for
another deal. Viviane, a pretty woman in her 30s, with a new dress almost
every month and custom-made jewellery of thick gold, ran the household
with a help of a Juron cleaner while keeping a close eye on her daughter-
in-law. She also had detailed oversight of Orlando’s deals. Although
Viviane was illiterate, whenever a customer came, she never failed to find
the correct promissory note from within the stack stored in the bedroom.
She was also a lender of small sums herself, in addition to the money she
lent in the name of their younger unmarried son Romero.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_3
66 M. Fotta
Orlando avoided sitting down for an interview with me, and I never
managed to ask him more than two consecutive questions. He seemed to
have few explicit theories and very little taste for explaining the obvious
or revealing what he knew about a topic at hand. Mostly, he listened to
others with a superior air. Not that he minded my presence: I spent a
good portion of my days with his family, and whenever I was too lazy to
cook (i.e. almost every day), I ate at their house or their son’s. It was
through Orlando and Viviane’s family that I got to know other Calon; we
were there for the birth of their first grandchild and the death of Orlando’s
mother Fé. We followed the marriage negotiations of their younger son,
Romero, and the unfolding of the marriages of their two other children,
Kiko and Josiene.
The images I recall of dusks spent in front of their house during the
first year of my fieldwork contrast with the low points I witnessed later:
Kiko in prison; Romero’s unsuccessful marriage negotiations and failed
marriages; the family’s life in provisional arrangements, changing loca-
tion frequently. It is in this way that I came to understand the constant
effort that is required even of a rich man like Orlando in order for him to
maintain a place in the world. At the core of Calon social organisation lie
conjugal households that together might form settlements and on which
‘Gypsy life’ (vida do Cigano) depends. But it requires constant work to
attain the sociological motivation built into this setup—what Calon men
refer to as becoming ‘established’ (estabelecido) or living in a grounded or
supported (apoiado) manner, by which they mean having their house-
holds surrounded by households who would variously (physically, finan-
cially, morally, etc.) back them up and show concern for their interests
(apoiar).
Any adult man, building on his connections and reputation, aspires to
become the centre of households, preferably living surrounded by his
married sons. Even in the case of Djalma, who had no adult sons, the
encampment in Santaluz consisted of several father-son clusters. If there
is therefore any predictability in Calon spatial arrangements, it is this: a
man and his married son live in the same settlement. This does not mean
that none of the sons live elsewhere, especially when he has married sons
himself, only that at least one son lives alongside the father. As the father
grows old, his strength is surpassed by that of his son, whose interests and
concerns become central in evaluating whether (and where) the cluster

should stay or move. The preference to live with one’s father, at least par-
tially, reflects issues of personal safety in the world perceived as danger-
ous; it is an enactment of care and the memory of it (see Fotta 2016a). A
father and his sons also cooperate in economic activities; the father ‘helps’
(ajudar) his sons by drawing them into further deals or borrowing money
from them; he prefers travelling accompanied by them. The successful
marriages of his children; his daughter’s wedding and the dowry he pays
for his her; the dowry his daughter-in-law brings to the new household—
all are signs of his efficacy and reputation.
Establishing and maintaining one’s place in the world, to live in a sup-
ported manner (viver apoiado), is not a straightforward matter. Some
acts, which are otherwise deemed morally correct and that should aid this
effort, end up undermining it. It was in this way that over a short period
of time Kiko ended up in prison, his father Orlando lost his place in
Santaluz and faced the prospect of becoming indebted, and Romero had
difficulties in marrying well. I will describe these events in more detail,
without which the full scope of the negotiated quality of Calon social-
ity—and thus the context for the argument that follows in the rest of this
book—would be difficult to appreciate. The narrative is organised chron-
ologically, unfolding the ways in which different relationships, opportu-
nities, considerations, and so on influenced—enabled and inspired, but
also blocked—people’s actions and potential plans.
Romero’s trato
In 2008, Orlando and Viviane were the richest Calon couple in Santaluz.
Of all Calon in the town, they were the only ones who lived in a house;
they also owned a house where their son Kiko lived with his wife Paula.
Furthermore, Orlando was the only Calon in Santaluz who owned a car.
He played cards with other rich Calon, sometimes for weeks on end, and
he was also the town’s best-known Cigano moneylender. Other Calon in
Santaluz commented on the couple’s wealth, complaining of their
stinginess and evasiveness. Unlike their relatives, Orlando and Viviane did
not live in a tent encampment with others, which would invariably bring
68 M. Fotta
about certain closeness with others and intimacy with their concerns. As a
consequence, they were not involved in the small subsistence transactions
that criss-cross these sites, but never seemed to lack money.
The family had not always been rich, however. A decade earlier, they
were living in a tent in a camp in Santaluz, and sometimes Viviane had to
go begging. Orlando had obtained their wealth through his association
with his paternal uncle, who helped him with his deals. Since the uncle
was childless, when he died in 2002 his property was divided between his
Jurin lover and Orlando. Orlando also inherited his uncle’s clients and
the middleman.
People were not totally incorrect in suggesting that the couple were
avoiding others. Orlando often claimed that he preferred to live alone,
although he visited his relatives—or was visited by them—almost daily.
Unless he went to play cards or needed to intimidate somebody, in which
case he would ask his son Kiko, nephew Rogério Maluco, or another
close man to accompany him, he always would invariably go about his
daily business alone, and like all Calon men he readily lied about the
details of his deals. He discussed bigger deals only with Viviane. The bank
account was in her name, and whenever he needed to cash a check or
withdraw money, she went with him.
The couple’s major preoccupation lay in marrying their younger son
Romero, who was 17 at the time. One Sunday in August 2008, I learnt
that they had travelled to Palotina, a town about 70 kilometres away, to
‘arrange a bride [arrumar a noiva] for Romero’. To me—as well as to
other Calon in Santaluz—this was news, but it was not surprising given
how Orlando and Viviane preferred to sort out their concerns without
discussing them with their relatives. Romero, who had stayed home,
was also taken by surprise: he had met the girl, Luiza, only twice before.
The first time was at his brother’s wedding where Orlando and Viviane
had noticed her; Luiza’s mother had been a maid of honour to Paula,
Kiko’s bride. A few days after the wedding, they had asked the girl’s
mother if she would be interested in marrying her 14-year-old daughter
to Romero.
Calon in Santaluz commented on the respective wealth of the bride
and groom, as well as on the potential dowry. ‘She is rich’, Romero’s
cousin opined, ‘but not richer than Romero.’ Non-Gypsy neighbours
also soon learnt about the upcoming wedding and commented on the
strangeness of the Cigano custom. Everyone knew that Romero was not
happy.
A week later, Romero’s brother Kiko delivered a message from Palotina:
‘The Cigana [Luiza’s mother] will come next week. This week she has no
money.’
‘But I do not want to get married’, pleaded Romero. In response, Kiko
only murmured something while attending to a fighting cockerel he just
bought. Romero repeated, ‘But I do not want to get married.’
In early September, Romero, dressed in his best clothes and accompa-
nied by his parents, visited Palotina for the first time. Over the following
months, Luiza and her mother (who had separated from her husband)
visited Santaluz almost every fortnight along with one or two people
from their family, so that Luiza could get used to the people with whom
she was to live after the wedding. Sometimes they brought along presents
for Kiko’s baby, and they never failed to visit Romero’s relatives living in
the encampment. In October, the wedding date was finally set for mid-
January. Romero quit high school, and Orlando started refurbishing his
son’s future house.
The biggest challenge turned out to be making Romero and Luiza like
each other. She was happy to marry him, but he did not want to marry
her. Their parents encouraged them as best they could to spend time
together. During one wedding, for instance, Romero’s parents started
dancing with Luiza and then made Romero dance with her too. But as
soon as the song finished, he left without so much as looking at her.
When Orlando bought Romero a car and then sent him to visit his future
in-laws, he went only grudgingly. And whenever his father was not
around, he repeated that he did not want to marry Luiza and that he
loved his Jurin girlfriend.
At the end of December 2008, two weeks before the wedding, Orlando
had to postpone the wedding, since a Calon in a neighbouring town, a
good friend, died in a car accident. This also suited Luiza’s mother, who
still had no money for the wedding. At the beginning of February 2009,
the second date was cancelled after Luiza’s mother called, saying that a
debtor had not paid her and she did not have enough to pay for the w
edding.
They agreed to fix a new date soon, which happened at the beginning of
70 M. Fotta
April 2009 when the date was set for 10 May. The final step needed was for
Luiza’s mother to arrange for a priest to perform the ceremony.
One day, shortly after the date was agreed upon, Viviane told Orlando
that their son still did not want to marry Luiza. That afternoon, as they
were sitting in front of their house, Orlando looked at his son—sitting to
one side not far from them, thoughtful and focused on eating popcorn—
and felt sorry (sentir pena) for him. ‘He is such a child’, Orlando com-
mented. He then suggested to Viviane that they cancel the wedding.
Viviane was horrified. ‘How could we, when she already bought the
dresses?’ Viviane, Paula, Luiza, and her mother had three dresses apiece
made by a seamstress in Salvador, each costing hundreds of reals. ‘She will
return them, then’, answered Orlando tersely. By Good Friday, Viviane
and Orlando were engaged in a silent domestic conflict and did not talk
to each other beyond the necessary.
Most Calon in Santaluz did not think the wedding would be can-
celled. ‘It would ruin him’, suggested some. Others pointed out, however,
that Luiza would never get accustomed to living in Orlando’s family. She
loved festas; every week she was on a beach with her friends, but the men
in Orlando’s family did not take their wives out.
Orlando was scheming to cancel the marriage and was already frus-
trated with the way the marriage negotiations had been dragging on. So
when Luiza’s mother, who was Evangelical, called to say that she had not
arranged for a Catholic priest, but the wedding would instead take place
in the mayor’s office, he gave her an ultimatum: either the wedding would
take place in a Catholic church, or it would be cancelled. They agreed to
meet the following day. That evening, Viviane, who liked Luiza, tried to
persuade her husband not to cancel the wedding, while Romero, sensing
his opportunity, kept repeating that he did not want to marry.
When I entered Orlando’s house the next day, on Saturday morning,
Viviane, Orlando, Romero, Luiza and her mother were sitting in a semi-
circle in the quintal, the backyard. Orlando, tapping Luiza’s back affec-
tionately, asked, ‘How much did you spend?’
‘10,000, and will still spend 12’, answered Luiza’s mother.
‘And what is still missing?’
‘The furniture is still missing’, responded Luiza, adding that they were
going to buy it soon. Her mother was shaking with tension: ‘I do not
understand what the problem is... what the problem with the priest is …
and now Romero is saying that he does not want to get married.’
‘The most important thing is how they get along [convivencia]’, inter-
rupted Viviane.
‘And not whether there is a priest or not’, Luiza’s mother concluded.
At the end of the morning, and contrary to Romero’s hopes, Orlando
accepted the women’s arguments. Before lunch, the women visited the
couple’s future house to see how the dowry furniture would fit.
On the morning of Easter Sunday, Orlando received a text message
from Luiza, saying that Saturday was the worst day of her life. After
Romero had gone with the men to a town festa in Santaluz, while she
lingered in his parents’ house for awhile, she had explored Romero’s
phone, where she found a text message to his Jurin girlfriend. In it, he
called her his ‘only love’ and stated that the wedding was ‘forced’. To add
insult to injury, when Luiza arrived at the festa, Romero kept ignoring
her; despite the best efforts of Luiza’s brother and Kiko, he spent time
with the Jurin. Orlando called Luiza back immediately and asked her not
to tell her mother, because she would cancel the wedding. Viviane, eager
to salvage the arrangement, wanted to go to talk to the Jurin immediately,
but Orlando stopped her and went instead, worried that Viviane would
curse and yell at her, and cause a scandal.
The following week, Romero and his parents drove to Palotina, bring-
ing along presents from the Easter Fair. The wedding was set for 16 May,
with a Catholic priest and a party in a private club.
But two weeks before the wedding, Luiza’s mother called to say that
she did not want the priest after all. Orlando told her that because she
insisted on the wedding being in a mayor’s office, he was cancelling it
altogether. One hour later she called again, telling Orlando to forget their
previous conversation, but he insisted that the wedding was over. Luiza’s
brother called next, but Orlando remained adamant. A few days later,
Luiza’s mother called Orlando and told him that he should reimburse her
for the furniture she had bought. He told her to bring it over along with
the receipts, and she never called again.
The Calon in Santaluz blamed Luiza’s mother for the breakdown of the
trato, the agreement to marry. According to them, she had only been
interested in money; this is why she had insisted on the marriage being in
72 M. Fotta
the mayor’s office. If the couple separated, by appealing to the court Luiza
would be able to receive more money (the church wedding—especially as
it would be of minors—would not have such legal effects). Romero was
beaming; the following week he returned to high school. Orlando was
glad too. He had started to feel sorry for his son, but had been afraid that
he would have to bear all the costs. The incident, through placing the
responsibility on Luiza’s mother, provided a way out. At the end, even
Viviane was satisfied: Luiza’s mother proved to be ‘complicated’ (atrapal-
hada) and would have interfered too much after the wedding. A rumour
had circulated among Calon in Santaluz that Viviane had initially
opposed cancelling the wedding because she feared that Luiza would kill
Romero. Luiza had apparently told one of his aunts that ‘if she could not
have him, nobody would’. Upon hearing this, Orlando exclaimed that if
Luiza killed Romero, he would kill her and her family.
Kiko’s Imprisonment
One Saturday morning less than three months later, while Orlando was
playing with his grandson, Kiko stood up, tucked a gun inside his shorts,
and walked outside. Neither Orlando nor Kiko’s wife Paula noticed any-
thing. A few hours later, near the neighbouring town of Parnamirim,
Kiko shot a Juron who he was convinced had been planning to kill his
father and brother. That very same day, Kiko and Paula fled to her rela-
tives in Alto de Bela Vista. On Sunday evening, Orlando called Kiko and
told him that nobody suspected anything and that he should come back.
But on Monday morning, just a few minutes after Kiko had walked in,
the police stormed Orlando’s house and arrested Kiko. In the house they
found bullets that matched those Kiko had used, as well as two old guns
that had belonged to Orlando’s father. They did not find the gun used by
Kiko, which Viviane had hastily tucked under her skirt. Sobbing, she
swore that there were no other guns in the house, and the police left it at
that.
I was not in Santaluz when these events took place, but our non-Gypsy
neighbours later told me that there had been a strange commotion on the
street a few days before them—too many motorcycles passing and speeding
in front of Orlando’s house. Generally speaking, Santaluz is a violent town:

funerals following violent deaths (mostly related to drug trafficking and
domestic conflicts) happened almost every month and during my stay in
the town three people were killed on our street alone. The man Kiko killed
‘was a bandido, but a son of Santaluz’, as a woman working in the town hall
put it. He came from a large family and was generally liked, although
people knew about his criminal activities, especially armed robberies. Since
over the last few years, several Calon settlements had been burnt out across
Bahia following such events, it was not unreasonable for Calon in Santaluz
to fear repercussions and flee.
Orlando’s household, which now included Paula and the baby, first
joined a camp in São Gabriel where Zezinho, Orlando’s brother-in-law,
was a strongman. A few weeks later, they rented a house nearby. In con-
trast to just a few months earlier, Orlando and Viviane would not live far
from their relatives, depending on them for emotional comfort as well as
physical support, as we will see below. Similarly, over the following
months, whenever Orlando travelled anywhere he took somebody along.
In August, Zezinho died and the camp dissolved. Some families left for
other towns; others formed a camp next to a busy interstate highway.
Within this extended family, then, uncertainty over Kiko in prison
became combined with grief over Zezinho. October found Orlando
weighing up various possibilities to leave the rented house, and he even-
tually bought a piece of land in São Gabriel. Soon he started building two
houses and a wall around them, and planned to move there with his sons.
In November, he invited Nelson, Nelson’s mother-in-law (and Zezinho’s
widow), Sara, and his brother-in-law Beiju and his son, all of whom used
to live in Zezinho’s camp, to build their tents on his plot and live along-
side him.
Orlando had hired Dr Henrique to represent his son. He had been a
lawyer to various Calon in the past, including Orlando’s relative who had
recommended him. Initially, Orlando paid the lawyer R$7000 and gave
him his new car. To everybody’s dismay, however, Kiko was still in prison
four months later and had yet to face trial. Orlando was frustrated and
accused Dr Henrique of not doing enough. He also felt that the judge
had let him down, although he had ‘done so much’ for the judge in the
past. Orlando had been certain that the judge would willingly sign Kiko’s
74 M. Fotta
habeas corpus, maybe for money. Unfortunately for Kiko, the judge was
being investigated for corruption and was not going to release the Cigano,
especially since the popular opinion in Santaluz was overwhelmingly
against Kiko.
Agoniado (anxious), as others described him, in early November
Orlando visited Castilhomar, the richest Calon in São Gabriel, looking
for ideas. Castilhomar suggested hiring another lawyer. Orlando was will-
ing to pay more and have two lawyers, but when he called Dr Henrique
that evening to ask him why he had not shown up for a few weeks, the
lawyer told him that a hearing would be held the following Wednesday
and that there was a good chance that Kiko would be released on a pro-
cedural mistake. It did not happen: the judge only questioned the wit-
nesses testifying to Kiko’s reputation, and those speaking in Kiko’s favour
were arranged by Orlando’s non-Gypsy middleman. That day the judge
only deferred his decision. Two weeks he rejected the habeas corpus. The
decision was now to be signed by a tribunal of high court judges (desem-
bargadores). Dr Henrique was certain that he could bribe some of them
and asked Orlando for another R$30,000.
Every Thursday, Paula, Viviane, and Romero visited Kiko in the
municipal prison in São Gabriel. Like other visitors, they could see him
for ten minutes, handing over a plastic bag with his official name written
on it that contained a few permitted items, but then had to move out to
make room for the visitors of other inmates. Paula’s brothers and her
mother also came almost every week. Sometimes others would come: his
sister Josiene and her husband, a cousin, one or two Calon from the
region. Orlando never entered the prison, but stayed outside and asked
others about his son afterwards.
In mid-November 2009, a new couple came to visit. From then on,
they appeared every week, sometimes accompanied by either their son or
their daughter. The daughter, Taani, was going to marry Romero. The
family was well off, and Taani’s brother was the husband of Romero’s
cousin. However, although Romero and Taani liked each other and
wanted to get married, the trato lasted only until January. As soon as the
trato was cancelled, Taani’s family stopped visiting Kiko.
According to Viviane, Taani’s mother was also atrapalhada (complicated)
and nobody was good enough for her, while her father was tight-fisted with
the dowry. To me her assessment sounds about correct. For instance, when
Taani’s mother once paid an old Cigana to bless Taani so that the latter
would marry well, she commented somewhat accusingly to her husband—
who had given the Cigana R$50—that a man they knew had paid R$500
for his daughter. On another occasion, I met them at Romero’s cousin’s
house. This was around the time when Orlando had asked for R$20,000 in
dowry, which was not an exaggerated sum to ask of the rich family. But the
family were unwilling to pay it and, clearly trying to convince both
Orlando’s relatives and me, they complained about how they were unable
to reach an agreement with Orlando: ‘He [Romero] is not getting married
to money, but to my daughter, isn’t he?’
People visited Kiko ‘to give him strength’, to tell him to ‘stay calm’, and
to ‘keep his head low’. Equally importantly, in some cases—such as
Taani’s family and Orlando’s peers—doing so showed support for
Orlando and his family, their mutual investment in each other’s lives. As
Kiko’s case dragged on, Orlando’s relatives became convinced that Dr
Henrique was useless and only wanted to ‘eat money’. He eventually gave
up representing Kiko, claiming ‘health reasons’, and was replaced by
other lawyers. Orlando never became passive and continued to do what
he could: he constantly called the lawyers, sought advice from others, and
incessantly worried. This was not unusual. In fact, some lawyers recog-
nised this anxiety and impatience, deeming it characteristic of Ciganos.
One lawyer told me that whenever he agreed to take a Cigano case,
Ciganos had to agree that they would not call him and that he would
always call them instead. ‘Otherwise, when I tell them that I have an
appointment with a judge in the afternoon tomorrow, they call me at six
in the morning [that day] to see what is new.’ Other relatives also tried to
contribute. For instance, a cousin offered to collect payments from Kiko’s
clients and Viviane gave a photograph of the judge to her mother, in
order to influence the judge’s decision through magic.
Hiring lawyers, bribing officials, and buying witnesses cost Orlando a
lot of money. He also bought the plot in São Gabriel and paid for con-
struction there. To amass sufficient cash, he sold one of his large houses
in Santaluz, tried to collect money from the Calon who owed him, and
borrowed a large sum from a Calon living in the sertão. Viviane was espe-
cially upset. ‘Children do not know how much the parents suffer’, she
76 M. Fotta
often sighed heavily. Five people were living in a small rented apartment
in provisional conditions. On top of that, the lawyer whom Castilhomar
had recommended requested R$100,000. Viviane was worried that they
would have to sell their remaining property; that they would be poor
again; that her own son Romero would have to marry a poorer bride.
These circumstances strained relations between Paula, Kiko’s wife, and
her parents-in-law, and they increasingly held grudges against each other.
One day after a meeting with Kiko, Dr Henrique brought a letter for
Paula, but gave it to Orlando, who opened it, before giving it to her. In
it, Kiko, who had never before showed much affection for his wife, wrote
that he loved her more than anybody else. Orlando got offended: ‘Now
he does not think of his brother and father anymore.’ The conflict peaked
after Paula’s visit to her family over Christmas. Orlando and Viviane
thought that Paula had changed her behaviour and become distant, and
they accused her of planning to leave Kiko. She was not speaking to them
beyond what was necessary, and they learnt that some of her relatives had
encouraged her to leave their son. When Paula complained to Orlando’s
sisters about how her parents-in-law were treating her, they told her that
Orlando had gone mad (endoidar) from worrying, but the whole thing
was really Viviane’s fault: she had never liked her stepson Kiko and now
everything was about him.
Both relatives and non-related Calon criticised Orlando for the way he
handled the situation. They disapproved of him for telling Kiko, who had
hidden with his in-laws in Alto de Bela Vista, to come back to Santaluz.
Some thought that Orlando had called his son back because he had mis-
judged his own position in the town. Being a ‘friend’ of the judge, he did
not think Kiko would be imprisoned. Others hypothesised that he had
done so either to punish Kiko or because he feared that he himself would
be imprisoned. Over time, the Calon from the region began to grow
sceptical about Kiko’s release. They criticised the lawyers for not doing
enough and compared his case to those of other Calon they had heard
about. ‘Only ten days ago a Cigano was caught and he is already out. He
[Kiko] should not have let himself be imprisoned’, Camarão argued, for
instance. Most became convinced that Orlando did not want to spend
money (saltar dinheiro).
Uncertainty and accusations overlapped with the fear of Jurons. In one

telling incident, during a public hearing in early November 2009, I
arrived at the courtroom in Santaluz with Kiko’s uncle, aunt, and a
cousin. While we waited, they became increasingly worried until the
uncle and aunt suddenly stood up to leave, explaining that Orlando had
told them to do so. This was untrue; they had not spoken to Orlando,
who himself had been advised by the lawyer not to come. The relatives
especially worried about Kiko, who was alone among Jurons. When some
inmates tried unsuccessfully to break out of the prison, Kiko told his
family that he was suspected of having informed the guards. Distressingly,
after such periods of unrest, visits were temporarily suspended and some
prisoners transferred to other municipal prisons.
The biggest panic occurred during the first days of January 2010. One
afternoon, I was sitting with Orlando’s family in their rented apartment
in São Gabriel when a Calon called Orlando to say that he had just seen
Kiko taken somewhere in a police van. We immediately left the apart-
ment and went to see their relatives who lived on the plot where Orlando
was constructing the houses. There was a great deal of discussion about
what could have happened. In the prison in São Gabriel, nobody was
picking up the phone; in Santaluz a policeman confirmed that Kiko was
not there; and the lawyer was not answering his phone, either. After sev-
eral phone calls, Orlando discovered that Kiko had been taken to a
municipal prison in Parnamirim. This prison was in the town hall and at
night there were no guards. Fearing that somebody could break into it
and try to kill Kiko, Orlando paid for a few non-Gypsy men to guard it
at night.
The Family Together

In mid-January 2010, my wife and I had to leave São Gabriel. On the
morning of our departure, Orlando, Viviane, Romero, Paula, and her son
drove to Palotina. Some said it was because Romero wanted to show Taani
and her parents that he could do better, that he had decided to marry
Luiza after all. Luiza also agreed, and the trato was resumed. The wedding
was preliminarily scheduled to occur as soon as Kiko was released.
78 M. Fotta
When I returned in June of the same year, Kiko was out. He and Paula
had not moved in with Orlando, but instead had left for Alto de Bela
Vista to live alongside her family. The tensions between Paula and her
in-laws and the general exhaustion within the family had all contributed
to their decision. Nor had Orlando and Viviane moved to the plot in São
Gabriel where they had started constructing two houses eight months
before and where some of their relatives were already living in tents.
Instead, Orlando exchanged his second house in Santaluz for a house in
Massagueira. Eventually, at the end of June, Kiko moved to Massagueira
after getting into a conflict with a brother-in-law. The family constructed
a large tent with a concrete floor on his father’s property, next to a house
that was being constructed for Romero and Luiza.
Unfortunately, I missed Romero’s wedding in July 2010, but later I
learnt that during the festivities the night before the wedding, Kiko got
into an argument with Luiza’s cousin. When Luiza’s uncle went to his car
for a gun, he was spotted by a policeman arranged by Luiza’s mother to
watch over the wedding. Soon reinforcements arrived, stormed the party,
and imprisoned the uncle. Some tried to convince Luiza’s mother to can-
cel the wedding, which she did at six in the morning the day of the wed-
ding. An hour later, after Luiza had begged her to reconsider, she called
Orlando again and asked for the wedding to take place after all. Orlando
agreed to come back, and people who were already driving away also
returned to Palotina.
The wedding took place in a Catholic church and the party was a
sumptuous event. In the middle of the festa, Luiza’s mother stood up,
took a microphone, and announced that she was giving a dowry of
R$30,000 and a car worth R$12,000.
A week later, Orlando’s mother Fé died.
The newlyweds came to Massagueira two weeks after the wedding—
and two years after the two families had started negotiating. But when I
saw her in August 2010, Luiza was bored, Romero ignored her, and she
was often left home alone. ‘I am used to being with people’, Luiza com-
plained. ‘She cries all the time’, commented Paula. The house was small;
the furniture given to Luiza by her mother and relatives as her dowry did
not all fit inside. She hated her married life, while her parents-in-law
thought her spoilt.
Negotiating the Relational Grid

The above narrative spans two years and shows how Orlando and Viviane’s
project to live ‘established’ surrounded by their sons’ households was
interrupted and difficult to resume. Certainly the fragility of these
arrangements did not diminish in August 2010. Not long after the death
of Orlando’s mother, the settlement where his daughter lived dissolved.
By May 2011, Luiza was married to a different man, Romero’s parents
were in search of a new bride, and the family had moved from Massagueira
to Bomfim.
Although the details of the story told above are unique, the family’s
concerns and underlying dynamics are not. Rather than analysing these
as particular flows and developments, they are better approached in a
grid-like fashion wherein different paths are taken depending on bottle-
necks, accidents, and opportunities—what I described in the previous
chapter as social wayfaring within a cluster. Thus, Romero’s wedding was
postponed because a Juron debtor failed to return money to his prospec-
tive mother-in-law; because his family wanted to wait until his brother’s
release; because a friend of his father died; and so on.
This story also brings into relief tensions that can arise from person-
alised relationships—tensions between the interests of siblings, children,
and parents; between step-relations and one’s own children; between affi-
nal relatives. One’s trajectory therefore has to be placed within the con-
text of other relations, which change shape almost every day. There are
many reasons for this, but I will highlight only two: first, violence, as we
saw in the previous chapter, is always on the horizon, even as it is not
realised. Within the two years captured in the previously described narra-
tive, in addition to Orlando’s older son ending up in jail, there were still
more occasions when Orlando felt obliged to help out—or at least visit—
relatives of imprisoned men. These occasions included the instance when
a car with his brother and two brothers-in-law was searched by police,
who found a gun; when his older son’s brother-in-law was imprisoned
after shooting into the air while drunk; when a man living in his daugh-
ter’s settlement was imprisoned for selling drugs. This is all in addition to
the day-to-day conflicts within settlements within Orlando’s home range.
80 M. Fotta
Second, from the point of view of any Calon, there is always a wedding
being organised or a marriage crisis being resolved within his or her net-
work. If nobody in one’s own settlement is currently negotiating a mar-
riage, either a relative or a known Calon somewhere else is doing so, or
there is a wedding to attend soon. The dynamics related to the house-
holds that composed a settlement in Santaluz over two years beginning in
2008 show this clearly: Two boys got married, and one girl went through
a failed negotiation (all were first cousins); one couple separated after six
years of cohabitation, only to get back together two weeks later; two
young women who were living in different settlements left their hus-
bands and, along with their small children, moved to their parents’ tents;
one of these women returned to her husband a few months later, but only
after a short marriage negotiation with another’s family. Since most part-
ners come from surrounding settlements and influence life there, this
picture can be replicated for the whole region. It also becomes apparent
when one looks at an individual family (família) over time. Take Romero:
all but one of his 11 cousins lived in four settlements comprising about
60 kilometres in diameter, an area that his father Orlando frequented
daily. Due to age differences between the cousins, by the time the young-
est got married in 2017, the oldest was negotiating marriage for her older
daughter. Romero was also not unique in having troubles establishing a
lasting conjugal relationship. His brother Kiko’s first marriage was com-
promised by a fight during the véspera, the evening before the wedding;
Kiko married Paula a few months later. His sister Josiene married at the
age of 12, separated a year later, and remarried. One male cousin divorced
after three years, returned to live with his parents in 2008, and remarried
only in 2010. During the same period, another male cousin entered a
domestic partnership (juntar), separated, and remarried (casar), while a
female cousin left her husband after two years and returned to him after
a half-hearted effort to marry her cousin. Another cousin was having a
problem finding a suitable husband, with at least one trato broken off,
until she eventually married in a relatively distant settlement. This
enumeration moreover excludes all of the failed negotiations and stalled
attempts that we followed in Romero’s case.
It is clear, then, as Cătălina Tesăr (2016) convincingly argues for the
Cortorari of Romania, that Calon households have to be seen as processual
entities. Households-as-projects structure people’s social lives and orientate

their actions, not least because their success demands much attention
from others, especially parents. When Junior did not come home from
a wedding one night, his pregnant wife Celma fainted and an ambu-
lance was called. The next day, Celma’s family arrived to give her sup-
port. Her mother stayed for a few weeks, which put pressure on Junior’s
own parents. Junior’s father made him sell his motorcycle, which made
it more difficult for him to leave the house. In other situations, dissatis-
fied young wives move back to their parents’ houses and negotiations
between families sometimes have to start again. In addition, interper-
sonal violence is always a threat. Celma passed out due to anxiety: she
worried that something bad had happened to Junior at the wedding
from which he had failed to return with other men and me. When
Faustão ‘sent’ (mandar) his wife Daiane and her furniture back to her
father, he borrowed a gun in expectation of her family’s reaction.
Indeed, a car with five men from Daiane’s family arrived the same night.
His father-in-law variously threatened Faustão, asked him to take
Daiane back, and demanded R$100,000. Over the next few days, other
Daiane’s relatives called or visited either Faustão or his relatives. In the
end, he agreed to take her back; his father-in-law bought a whole new
set of furniture for their tent and invited them to live in their settle-
ment so he could ‘help them’.
In addition to the potentiality of violence and the ubiquitous preoc-
cupation with new households, people continuously negotiate their rela-
tionship to the dead (Vilar 2016). Recall that Romero’s wedding was
postponed because of a death. Although he was not directly related to
either groom or bride, the deceased man lived in a neighbouring settle-
ment, and Orlando felt close enough to him to stop shaving his beard
and cutting his hair in mourning. Demands of respect for the deceased
and his relatives made it impossible to celebrate the wedding, imposing
their own temporality (of mourning) on the trato. Acts of ‘deep mourn-
ing’ (Williams 2003: 7) and demonstrations of respect for another in
mourning are influenced by the amount of time that passes and the dis-
tance in kinship. The closer a man feels to the deceased, the longer he
keeps a beard or observes a self-imposed taboo, for instance. When Luiza’s
family visited Santaluz shortly after Orlando’s friend had died, Kiko
82 M. Fotta
asked me to accompany him and Luiza’s brother to a pub—he did not

want to drink, because this would upset Orlando, but at the same time
he was trying to be generous to his brother’s future affine. He paid for the
drinks Luiza’s brother and I had that night. Such expressions of respect
make visible relations among the living—and their limits. The three
times that Orlando stopped shaving during my fieldwork, most other
men I knew had also grown beards. Individually, people keep objects that
remind them of their dead, while places where Calon live are directly
related to the places from which they ‘abstain’ (Williams 2003: 47).
When a turma to which Josiene belonged moved to Bomfim in late
August 2010, they did so because a young woman’s death and a man’s
imprisonment had made their previous settlement location in São Gabriel
azarento (unlucky). This turma had moved to São Gabriel several years
prior following a death in Barra, and although some households have
separated from it over the years and lived in various other towns, until the
time of writing this book in 2018 they all avoided settling in those two
towns.
In other words, because relationships are personalised and there is no
fixed impersonal order, establishing and maintaining one’s household
place in the Calon world require constant effort. This work cannot be
viewed in isolation from the relational context within which it is com-
bined with the actions of other people. Romero’s marriage saga revealed
how the formation of new households depends on parental actions, while
Orlando’s negotiation of Romero’s wedding or attempts to get Kiko out
of prison illustrated how success or failure, particularly as materialised in
the weddings and households of a man’s children, depends on the breadth
of his relations with others—both Calon and Jurons. If settlements, along
with the material quality of households and their positioning within a
settlement, semiotically embody these changing relationships, a settle-
ment’s destruction following a death objectifies the end of relationships
that linked people to the deceased and his household in a singular
and unsubstitutable way and that—in a rancho-centric dynamic described
in Chap. 1—had enabled and underpinned the settlement’s existence.
These processes are accompanied by specific movements of money and
wealth, to which I will turn next.
Fixity of Households
A groom comes to his new house or a tent ‘only with his clothes in a bag’,
Paula once commented. Everything else—including furniture—is
brought by the bride and paid for by the bride’s parents and other mem-
bers of her family. These items are assembled prior to the wedding, and
after the wedding they remain associated with the wife. As a consequence,
when Faustão sent his wife away with their tent’s furniture after six years
of marriage, he moved back to his parents’ tent bringing only his clothes.
Calon dowry (dote) consists roughly of two elements: furniture and
money. While the furniture is associated with the wife, money is given
explicitly to the husband to ‘make the future’ (fazer futuro) for the family.
Tellingly, among the Calon in São Paulo, the bride’s family brings pots
and pans to the tent of the newlyweds, and the groom’s mother fills them
with meat and other foods.1 In Bahia, the husband’s capacity to provide
for his household is also sometimes talked about as ‘bringing food’: when
reflecting on her life with Zezinho, Sara pointed out that she was never
lacking in anything with him, while Rogêrio Maluco maintained that
Zezinho ‘always came from the market with the bags loaded’, and ‘that
there was never a shortage of meat in his house’. In other words, although
a man’s activity in the wider world is what gets assessed, this assessment is
indexed to one’s household and, in turn, the man’s business interests
stand for the totality of his household’s interests. Without the money he
earns (at least in ideology) and the food his activity brings into the house-
hold, it is impossible for the household to host guests, enter into exchange
relationships with others, and, finally, marry off their children; meat is
also most commonly abstained from when ‘showing respect’ for one
recently deceased. Furniture remains associated with the wife, but she
cannot sell it without her husband’s consent. And if her husband needs to
use furniture in deals, they need to be replaced within a reasonable
timeframe.
The household is the nexus of a relationship between husband and
wife, and the propriety of their behaviour is evaluated in relation to it.
Married men and women are expected to behave differently from unmar-
ried ones (see Ferrari 2010: 234–45). For the husband, the dowry money
84 M. Fotta
is loaded with purpose and orientates his behaviour. Crucially, the money
in a dowry is talked about more extensively throughout settlements than
the furniture—it is as if the latter were a taken-for-granted premise of
social existence, while the former were a way to make a unique imprint
on the world. Money is a mechanism through which the man interacts
with others outside of the household, explicitly given to gain a living, and
to establish himself. Some women read palms or go begging, but the
money earned this way only complements their families’ daily subsis-
tence. Financing households—buying new furniture, paying for the
major weekly shopping, providing dowries for daughters, and being able
to arrange suitable wives for sons—is thus directly related to men’s eco-
nomic activities outside of the community. Only a necessary portion of
this money is spent on food. Most is entered into deals again, and a big-
ger house, new car, better fridge, or the wedding of one’s child becomes a
visible sign of the man’s efficacy.
A man’s deals depend not only on his initial capital, but on his reputa-
tion and relationships with others. His capacity to make money is assessed
even prior to the wedding. Potential parents-in-law enquire about a
groom’s reputation and evaluate the strength (força) of his father and fam-
ily, since a couple first moves in with the husband’s family, who will ‘help’
them. Although the young husband is responsible for sustaining his wife,
in reality his parents might sometimes take care of them after the wed-
ding (see also Silva 2014). In addition to his clothes, then, a husband also
enters a new household with his prior deals, relations, reputation, and
money. For this reason, Orlando, a rich man, could try to marry Romero
to the unrelated Luiza with a sizeable dowry. On the other hand, Babaloo,
who had a reputation for drinking, gambling, and partying and whose
father was an impoverished gambler, did not find anyone to marry prop-
erly and only managed to create a domestic partnership (se juntar, ‘join’).
The woman Babaloo took as his partner had trouble finding a partner
herself, as she was seen as problematic. She had been married twice
already, leaving her husbands both times, and once ran off with a Juron
who refused to marry her in the end despite her father’s insistence.
One way for a man to establish his reputation is to keep the dowry
money separate and live off his own skills and money. The dowry money
is invested by the husband, but as ‘his wife’s’ or ‘his son’s’ money. In doing
so, he demonstrates that he does not rely on ‘wife’s money,’ but instead
keeps it in circulation for his children. Such earmarking, however, requires
wealth or thrift and is not feasible in poorer households.
For parents of brides, who pay for the festivities and the dowry, wed-
dings are financially costly and even ruinous; some become indebted and
others have to sell their property. How to amass sufficient dowries was the
only long-term plan I heard people discussing: Envisioning how she
would marry her three-year-old daughter in the future, a woman sug-
gested that she would sell a retirement benefit card (in somebody else’s
name) which currently brought her stable monthly income. When his
daughter was born, Pinto applied for the family stipend (Bolsa Familia)
and was planning to open a bank account in his wife’s name, where funds
would accumulate for his daughter’s dowry. Given the instability and
unpredictability of Calon lives, however, these plans—just like many
others—failed.
Among Calon, the dowry emphasises the importance of negotiations
and the centrality of the conjugal couple, as well as highlighting the ele-
ment of alliance. The dowry money is a commodity transformed into a
gift, to be transformed into commodities, to be transformed into house-
hold stability—a household’s place in the world, which also actualises a
man’s ‘strength’ by objectifying his ‘establishment’. Dowry is also thought
of as a kind of initial (and conditional) credit for a new household proj-
ect. Sometimes there is an explicit promise that the bride’s family will
transfer more money if the young husband proves himself worthy. Miriam
Guerra (2007) tells the story of a poor young man married to a slightly
older wife for whom it was her second marriage. The man received weekly
payments from his father-in-law which he was expected to reinvest in
deals. This pedagogical strategy was successful, and the family is one of
the richest in the area now. Besides basic furniture for their tent, Babaloo’s
wife brought R$5000 in cash; her father promised another R$5000 if
Babaloo proved himself worthy. Within three months, Babaloo lost all of
his ‘wife’s money’ to bad deals and cards. His father-in-law refused to give
them the other R$5000; as he put it, Babaloo would only ‘eat’ it up. In
the same vein, when a couple separates there is an attempt to undo the
marriage as a deal through establishing a specific financial equivalence.
When Faustão left Daiane, his father-in-law demanded R$100,000 (later
86 M. Fotta
lowered to R$25,000). Although the original value of Daiane’s dowry

was much lower, as they were married for six years, the demanded sum
included the increased costs of remarrying Daiane (and the probability of
her not remarrying), as well as an assessment of how much money Faustão
could have earned during this period using the dowry money that origi-
nated with his father-in-law. Agreeing on such equivalence prevents a
man from living on the other man’s money—from ‘eating’ another man’s
money.
With a conjugal household as a stable referent and children’s house-
holds as the long-term aim, a man generates a variety of debt-creating
deals throughout his life. The totality of these transactions constitutes his
place in the world, as well as that of his household—it is the man’s con-
tribution of fixity of his and his children’s households. Money helps not
only to create, but above all to preserve households and their continua-
tion. Proper relatedness, however, is not only effected by means of singu-
lar exchanges of different modalities that would reflect differentiated
morality. Rather, Calon conversations are dominated by a different con-
cern: namely, how money in expenditures—always concrete sums—are
linked to composites of all the money an individual man is thought to
have in circulation, his dinheiro na rua, ‘money on the street’ (Fotta
2017). This composite, which is always imagined as an enumerable, albeit
vague whole, comes into being in the process of sustaining his house-
holds. It forms his inalienable personal hoard, which allows him to act
within and upon his community of Calon. Simultaneously, his commu-
nity—as people whose opinion matters to him—becomes solidified
through constant recognition of the hoard’s existence by others through
their demands, gossip, and other evaluations.
This distinction between these two aspects—furniture associated with
the wife, which can be seen as the premise of ‘establishment’ in life, on
the one hand, and money associated with the husband, which is a tool of
expanding this spatiotemporal control, or of attaining a level of ‘estab-
lishment’, on the other—are preserved until death within a conjugal
couple. When the man dies, others normally leave the settlement, which
Calon see as composed in a singular manner by unique households. As
we have seen in the previous chapter, the spatial configuration of the
settlement and that of other settlements in the area become altered. The
deceased’s household disintegrates, and in her grief, his widow burns the
furniture that came with her dowry and which stood for the household’s
fixity. Other objects are sold to Jurons, and the money earned from this
goes, along with the money and deals of the deceased, to the sons of the
deceased or other male descendants (see Okely 1983: 222; Williams
2003: 4). The widow, who often ends up living on her own in a simply
furnished tent, becomes dependent on her children’s households and the
circulation (of food, for instance) that centres on them.2
The dynamics revealed by this and the previous chapters, then, are
these: through their households, living Calon create stability by being
unattached to any place qua place, while the dead, whose households are
destroyed, remain attached to the places where they died, which the liv-
ing abandon and avoid (cf. Williams 2003). The movement of people
and of money, as an attribute and orientation of ‘Gypsy life’ and espe-
cially of masculinity (Manrique 2009), depends on its being engendered
and aligned by conjugal households and a mode of anchoring they enable.
Calon, then, are not the carefree ‘nomads’ akin to Espiritos Ciganos (Gypsy
Spirits) of Afro-Brazilian religions. Rather, they are the opposite: a per-
son’s autonomy and attributes are not reducible to individual freedom.
Calon autonomy depends on the work of parents—themselves house-
hold members—and demands that people work, via their households,
towards marriages of their children.
Households Against Proletarianisation

In a fascinating ethnography on how peasant families use money that
they receive from the Bolsa Família, Duff Morton (2013, 2016) observes
that whenever possible, this money is invested in furniture and appli-
ances. These objects are associated with women and can be seen as their
claim to permanence, as well as demonstrations of their capacity to con-
vert objects of short-term circulation into those of the long term. Morton
suggests that these accumulated objects take the symbolic place of the
older Bahian institution of enxoval (trousseau). These objects demon-
strate houses’ prosperity and place in the world (as well as being objects
of future inheritance) and remain individually owned by women. Cattle,
88 M. Fotta
which are also acquired through conversions on the market, fulfil the
same function for the men. Men are responsible for providing food for
the household and guests, thus maintaining independence from other
households. A household is a ‘center-point of circulations’ (Morton 2016:
163; italics removed), a point echoed by other ethnographies from across
the Brazilian northeast: as an institution, the house (a casa), premised on
a conjugal bond, is the key moral domain and a relay point through
which people gain a level of autonomy, authority and safety (e.g.
McCallum and Bustamante 2012; Pina-Cabral and Silva 2013; Robben
1989; L’Estoile 2014).
In this sense, the Calon are norderstinos (northeasterners): material
objects associated with wives create households’ fixity from which indi-
viduals expand and perpetuate their position in time and space, and from
which they ‘help’ their children to attain their own autonomy. Money
associated with husbands, especially in the form of ‘money on the street’,
is a tool. Since brides historically brought animals to their households as
part of their dowries, one can consider this as a transformation of animals
that Calon moved across the hinterland or had in circulation; after all,
the term ‘capital’ derives from a Latin expression for ‘heads’ (of cattle).
However, there are slight but significant differences with Brazilian
peasants which make Calon unique: while among Calon furniture con-
tinues to be associated with women, women themselves do not carry out
the conversions that secure it for their household. Instead, this is done by
their fathers—and later, their husbands. For their part, the activities of
Calon men are not aimed at any definitive conversion of money into
other durable objects (cattle, land, or houses) that would be associated
with their moral status—that is, unless we expand to thinking of chil-
dren’s future households as aims of such conversions. Rather, Calon posit
the process of creating new transactions as never-ending; as something
that constitutes Calon life and which distinguishes it from death. There
will be more on this point in the next chapter. Here, I want to highlight
other significant differences between Calon and other denizens of the
northeast which are tied to this first difference. Canoe owners of south-
east Bahia, who at times sell their labour to boat owners (Robben 1989),
or peasants of southwest Bahia, who ‘leave labour’ in large cities and
return to their fields (Morton 2016), are semi-proletarians—they sell a
limited quantity of labour at some point during their lives. Although

options do not ‘snap shut like a trap’ (2016: 36) for these Bahians, labour
and the market are conceptually opposed to the moral space of the house
to which one belongs, where an individual returns, or which one hopes
to establish in the future; moreover, as this is where child and elderly care
(social reproduction) occurs, wages can be kept low. This is also true of
for people from coastal Bahia, for whom casa is commonly established
after a period of searching for economic opportunities and varied forms
of employment during which individuals try to make their fortune (Pina-
Cabral and Silva 2013: 95). As a consequence, among the Bahians of
modest means, fertility and domesticity are desynchronised; while the
casa assumes childcare, children need not be the result of the union of its
conjugal couple, but can precede its creation.
This is very different from the Calon case in which there is a strong
attempt to synchronise fertility, economic improvement, and domestic-
ity. This is highlighted when a new generation creates households, which
depend on the work done in the preceding one. Each household—at least
ideally—starts with a sumptuous wedding, including a church ceremony,
while the couple is still young; the conjugal bond, which is the basis of a
household, is expected to last for life. Women are expected to marry as
virgins, and only unmarried children live in their parents’ house or tent.
While movement and settlement are often motivated by a search for bet-
ter economic opportunities, Calon households—and not individuals—
move within a network of settlements occupied by bilateral relatives. And
although the variety of transactions that mark differential relationships
between people, and the gossip that these transactions motivate, give rise
to and stabilise a moral space unique to each household, Calon do not see
household interests as opposed to the market. Quite the contrary: A
household’s positionality, including the quality of the settlement which it
co-constitutes, all depends on transactions that the place affords.
Significantly, unlike the Juron casa, the household is weakly marked in
Calon discourse—as if it were a taken-for-granted premise of (the Cigano)
life itself. It does not transcend the lives of either husband or wife and is
not an institution separate from the physical space.
In short, for Calon one’s rancho is not an abstract ideal, a moral
domain, a plan, or a long-termist and transcending goal for which one
90 M. Fotta
might, if necessary, submit oneself to the capitalist labour market, which

must therefore remain external to it (Morton 2016). It is as if among
Calon, who otherwise live fully embedded in the local commercial econ-
omy mediated by money, the centrality of their households and the ori-
entation of the whole of their social life by their establishment and
maintenance have stymied rather than reinforced semi-proletarianisation.
Autonomy within one’s Calon community in the world dominated by
Jurons is premised on households, but has to be constantly confirmed
through creation of new opportunities and destabilisation of existing
arrangements if necessary. Calon men refuse to ‘wait while hoping’ (espe-
rar) in order to achieve a certain measure of a household-based autonomy
in uncertain and exploitative world (L’Estoile 2014), but adopt a highly
proactive stance—they ‘make’ their futures.
Notes
1. Florencia Ferrari, personal communication.
2. I have not observed what happens to household wealth when a wife dies
and leaves her children and husband behind. Sometimes a widow inherits
her husband’s money if she does not remarry and subsequently assumes
the responsibility for the household. In such a case, she moves her house-
hold to her father’s or brother’s settlement. More frequently, however,
when the widow is young and her children small, she remarries; fre-
quently, the children will be raised by her parents.
Chapter 3 Makers of Their Futures
Old Abelardo
Throughout a relatively uneventful morning, Romero and his cousin,
Sirley, amused themselves by calling Nelson, their cousin’s husband,
‘Abelardo’. Abelardo was the name of an old Calon from another settle-
ment in the same town. He was listened to because of his age but ignored
in day-to-day dealings.
At first, Nelson played along and called Romero and Sirley names too.
Gradually, however, he became annoyed and asked them to stop. As they
continued using names for him over the course of the morning, he
exclaimed in exasperation, ‘I already have no luck, and you call me these
names!’
In the early afternoon, Romero and Nelson were at the house of
Orlando, Romero’s father. Orlando and Beiju were smoking on a bal-
cony, not talking much. Both were preoccupied with their own thoughts.
Orlando in particular was worried that his lawyer was not doing enough
for his other son, Kiko, who was in the municipal prison.
‘Come here to see, Apolinário’, called out Romero to Nelson, wanting
to show him a text message he had just received. Orlando turned around
at once. ‘Do you know who Apolinário is?’ he snapped, his face red.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_4
92 M. Fotta
‘He didn’t know’, the bearded Beiju said quietly.

‘Do you know who Apolinário is?’ repeated Romero’s father. Pointing
at Beiju, he continued, ‘Apolinário is his deceased father.’
‘He did not know. He did not know’, Beiju repeated, somewhat embar-
rassed. Nelson only murmured apologetically, ‘I was telling him [Romero]
to stop.’
* * *
Throughout my stay with Calon, I spent most of my days accompanying

men from this extended family. Sometimes women were present; some-
times there were only men. The morning incident in the settlement—on
a plot owned by Orlando, on which his relatives were already living and
on which he was constructing two houses—is an example of the former.
Since Orlando’s wife Viviane and his daughter-in-law Paula stayed with
other women, the afternoon incident that took place in his house is an
example of the second. I spent only a few incidental moments with only
women, and this book relies primarily on the experiences and statements
of Calon men. As a consequence, it has a masculine bias.
This, then, is how this world as experienced by Calon men came to
appear to me over the years: it is inhabited by people who worry about
how others—whose opinion matters—view them. This is why Nelson
was upset that Romero and Sirley were calling him Abelardo. They
seemed to be suggesting that, like Abelardo, he was a nice man, but rather
useless in practical terms. And although he might have been respectfully
listened to, he was not expected to have much impact on the lives of oth-
ers. In this world, maintaining one’s position requires constant effort;
men try to avoid being seen as passive, or, as Calon say, as being ‘without
future’ (sem futuro) or ‘dead’ (morto in Portuguese or mulon in Calon
Romani). To guarantee subsistence and improve their economic situa-
tions, men have to go after their debtors and simultaneously cultivate
good long-term clients. Violence is always on the horizon, threatening to
unsettle their lives. Changes are also brought about by more subtle devel-
opments, such as when a new household moves into one’s settlement,
which alters interpersonal relations and power dynamics within it.
In this world, one needs to know how to relate to others, but young
and foolish men can get it wrong. Thus, Romero underestimated his
capacity to impact others; by using the name of Beiju’s father, he embar-
rassed his uncle. Indeed, Beiju could have taken it as an insult. Romero
also angered his father, a shrewd moneylender, not only by showing dis-
respect for his father’s brother-in-law, but also by not being empathetic to
his father’s anxiety and distress, making frivolous jokes throughout the
day. There was still much for Romero to learn, but people close to him
provided guidance in this process.
Six months later, Romero was in Palotina. He had married Luiza a few
days previously, and although his family had already returned to
Massagueira, he would stay for at least another two weeks with Luiza’s
family before the couple would return to their new house next to his
father’s. I was in Massagueira sitting with Orlando, Viviane, Kiko, and
Paula, watching the workers finishing the house for the newlyweds, when
Romero called. He told his father that he had just bought a sound system
for R$1500, to be paid in one year, for the car that had come with Luiza’s
dowry. Orlando was upset. It seemed to him that Romero had been
tricked by his new affinal relatives, and he told Romero to renege on the
deal. Both Orlando and Kiko thought that the sound system was not
worth the money—they had seen it before. Moreover, Orlando grum-
bled, the man whom Romero made the deal with had tried a few years
ago to prevent Kiko from marrying Paula and, more recently, while Kiko
was in prison, suggested to Paula that she should leave him; this man,
Paula’s paternal uncle, wanted her to marry his own son. Insinuating
where the loyalties lay, Orlando and Kiko also agreed that Romero’s own
brother-in-law, cunning as he was, knew about the value of the sound
system, but had not warned Romero. Nevertheless, after a short discus-
sion, Viviane and Orlando told Kiko to call Romero again and tell him
not to cancel the deal, but to accept it. Otherwise, as Orlando dictated,
Romero would ‘become shamed in front of the men’ (cair na vergonha na
frente dos homens).
It is relatively easy to see what is happening here: Romero was spend-
ing most of his time with the men in Palotina, especially his brother-in-
law. Orlando and Viviane were worried about the impression he would
94 M. Fotta
make among his in-laws and their community. They also knew that
everybody was aware that Romero was ‘full of cash’ (cheio de dinheiro)
that came with the dowry and would try to involve him in transactions.
Honestly, I shared their concern. It always seemed that Romero found it
difficult to behave according to their expectations. Unlike his father or
his older brother, Romero did not play cards, did not care about fighting
cockerels, and did not seem to enjoy negotiations. Often, his mother
Viviane lent his money, although Romero carried the cash in his pockets.
And in the previous chapter we saw the effort that was put into separating
him from his Juron girlfriend to make him marry Luiza.
The chapter also suggested that one’s wedding—as a process that starts
with marriage negotiations and ends sometime after the wedding cere-
mony—can be seen as a process of shifting the focus, an introversion of
moral orientation. With the wedding, a more purposeful engagement
with the wider world begins, and men have to carve out their own places
within it. After his wedding, a man’s behaviour is evaluated more thor-
oughly by others. Success in presenting oneself as a proper man, homem,
is assessed with respect to Calon morality. Each self-fashioning of a
homem happens, as Orlando suggested above, ‘in front of ’ others and
demands that one enters into relationships with them.
Among Calon, there are no abstract rules for either behaviour or stable
or authoritative morality, and I never heard a Calon talk about ‘good’ or
‘bad’ Calon individuals without referring to specific acts. What’s more,
the same people changed their assessments of the same events over time
or in the presence of different individuals. Rather than a fixed corpus of
injunctions and rules, there is a system of reasoning and a manner of
problematising, a chain of questions about the meaning and sincerity of
other people’s actions, a form of making accountable. Florencia Ferrari
(2010) has argued that at the core of this Calon questioning lies vergonha
(Port.) or laje (Rom.), which can be translated as ‘shame’. Kiko called
Romero to warn him not to reverse the deal because he would ‘fall into
vergonha in front of the men’. Used in a variety of expressions, in ways
that are not easily recognisable by non-Gypsies, Ferrari argues that ver-
gonha is both a value and an emotion that people feel. It orients practices,
and through it Calon create themselves as moral persons. A woman’s
dress is the sign that she has (ter) vergonha, and a man’s refusal to go after
his Calon debtor, and thus show his dependence on the latter, is justified
by being ashamed (estar com vergonha). According to Ferrari (2010: 157),
vergonha becomes a Cigano way of doing things itself (jeito Cigano).
Through knowledge, conhecimento, of this morally superior way of being
and behaving, Calon differentiate themselves from Jurons (see also Gay y
Blasco 1999); it is the Calon theory of the relationship between the Calon
and Jurons. More broadly, vergonha is a dimension of an embodied ethical
practice, and, as Marcio Vilar (2016) argues with respect to Calon view
of conhecimento, one needs to ‘know’, to possess ‘knowledge’, that is, a
self-understanding within a nexus of relationships. Calon need to know
how to relate to others (Vilar 2016), and vergonha is one vector of this
knowledge.
It is through concrete internalised strategies that Calon produce them-
selves as moral persons and participate in a highly dense Calon sociality.
Demonstrations of knowledge make relationships visible and presuppose
third parties as witnesses to one’s actions. They also presuppose that one
knows the impact one has on others and controls it appropriately. Romero
underestimated this capacity and embarrassed his uncle and father.
Shame did not stop him from disrespecting Beiju’s father’s memory,
which would require him to avoid uttering the deceased name in vain,
because, as Beiju put it, he did not ‘know’. It is not surprising that
Romero did not ‘know’ that Apolinário was Beiju’s deceased father,
because he was too young—he had not learnt enough about others. He
was still childlike in his ignorance and unaware of the risks that his actions
came with.
This chapter explores how Calon man’s actions affect his spatiotempo-
ral control (Munn 1992). This becomes visible through the money a man
has in deferred payments among other Calon, which, together with loans
to Jurons, comprise the total sum of his ‘money on the street’. The pub-
licly known acts of repayment and renegotiation that occur at different
moments literally oblige another to come and talk to the man, to recog-
nise his agency, authority and autonomy. People also decide to move to a
place where their relatives’ reputation promises an improvement in their
own position through allowing them to intensify their own relationships.
People’s reputations for their ability to behave appropriately determine
their ‘ability to influence the course of their own lives and the lives of
96 M. Fotta
others’ (Gay y Blasco 1999: 4). This leads to a specific recurrent ranking
within an otherwise egalitarian context and a reordering of social space.
As this chapter will show, one’s capacity to control and divert the flow of
people, money, words, and so on, which is constitutive of one’s environ-
ment, becomes reflected in settlements’ organisation.
‘Making the Future’
For Calon, many decisions, such as those involved in moneylending, are
not part of a conscious shaping of the world based on middle-run tempo-
rality with a fixed reference point in mind. Such temporal planning
would presuppose an existence of transcendental and impersonal social
structures and institutions which are absent among Calon. Rather, deci-
sions are immanent to people’s environments. The choices they make
represent acts of chance that need to be uncovered and seized upon and
which follow a ‘judicious opportunism’ (Johnson-Hanks 2005). Choices
are not independent; rather, each choice changes other options and calls
for recursive evaluation. Nor are one’s choices provided all at once, since
not all of them are readily apparent, and they require that people’s actions
bring opportunities and constraints into focus. Thus, what I referred to as
‘social wayfaring’ in the context of Calon spatiality requires constant
attention to the changing composition and quality of settlements. As
relationships on which the maintenance of settlements depends might
change, contingency makes it impossible to commit oneself to a specific
goal. Plans can ‘only be imagined provisionally pending whatever dra-
matic upheaval will inevitably come’ (Johnson-Hanks 2005: 376).
Dissolutions of settlements constantly remind one of this fact.
It is within this uncertainty that Calon masculine personhood is cre-
ated. The successful bending of unpredictable opportunities allows men
to make names for themselves. The expression that Calon of Bahia some-
times used, fazer futuro, ‘to make the future’, captures such a stance. We
have seen some instances when the term futuro was used: When a man
multiplies his exchanges after his wedding, he is making the future for his
household; when there is no future in his current locality, he moves else-
where. Movement and transgression open up opportunities. Conversely,
when a man is seen as lazy, addicted to gambling, or somewhat thick-witted

and incapable of creating profit, people talk about him as being ‘without
future’, sem futuro.
Creating new possibilities through unsettling and keeping one’s
options open is crucial for seizing chances where uncertainty is the rule.
Michael Herzfeld has observed that among the Glendiot shepherds, ‘each
successful demonstration of eghoismos’—an attribute of Glendiot mascu-
linity that represents positive individualism as well as disruptive atom-
ism—‘especially when manifested in the bending of fickle chance to the
actor’s own ends and the comfort of his guests, suggests an infinite swathe
of possibilities’ (1985: 136). Among the Calon, such a ‘swathe of possi-
bilities’ is opened through adding to existing velocities—diverting or
speeding up existing flows. When a Hungarian Rom horse-dealer is not
able to sell an animal for months, he will at least try to swap it ‘in the
hope that one increase in the velocity of his dealings will lead to two’
(Stewart 1987: 230). Similarly, among Calon, on days where everything
seemed to have stopped, men at least played cards for small change or
swapped like-objects as if destabilisation were able to bring about more
opportunities. In card games, one sees one’s future literally unfolding
before one’s eyes with each draw of cards and each bet. In acts of money-
lending, multiple opportunities open up, and new relationships emerge
when one divides cash at hand and co-creates new future events—new
dates of repayment and renegotiation when he will come face to face with
others. This sense is also conveyed by the expression used for a deal, o rolo,
which implies a rotation, a tumult, a disturbance of order, and which
among Calon refers primarily to swaps of objects against deferred pay-
ments among themselves (see Stewart 1997: 162). Here, any next move
should alter the situation completely by bringing about the opportunities
that lie in its wake.
A disturbance of the status quo, especially if unexpected, also opens
space for people to perform. Maybe that is why, to my surprise, even
though Calon had to leave Santaluz, where some of them had lived for
two decades, they did not hold Kiko responsible for their lot, even if they
commented on his foolishness. Similarly, although—or because—they
come with risk, moneylending and deferred payments are similarly pro-
ductive: exchanges create performative contexts within which men can
98 M. Fotta
Image 3.1 In card games among Calon men, which virtually never involve non-
Gypsies, men see their futures unfolding before their eyes with each draw of
cards and each bet. Card games are one mode through which they intervene in
and reshape their futures
reconstruct relationships between one another, demonstrate their a bilities,

and show that they are not passive and thick-witted like beasts of burden
(Image 3.1).
As Bestas
While Calon men value their autonomy and agency and downplay the
role of others, they often utilise the language of luck, sorte. Such a stance
requires constant alertness and absorption in their environment. When
driving around, men tried to remember the number plates of cars that
appealed to them. The reasons for this varied: the number plate could be
‘nice’, or one had made a good deal with the car’s owner. Later, they
played these numbers in a lottery.
Dreams, too, could be used to this effect. One day Nelson was visited
by four Calon from different towns. As they were sitting in front of
Nelson’s house, drinking coffee, they started talking about people who
won at a raffle (rifa), and what numbers were drawn. ‘Tell them about
Paulo’s bet’, Adair urged Nelson, ‘and how 4423 was drawn’. Nelson then
told a story about how the other night, Paulo had dreamt about guns.
The following morning, he had asked Nelson what his biggest calibre
was. As it was 0.44, Nelson explained, ‘Paulo put down 44 and then half
[of it]. 4422. And 4423 was drawn.’
‘But he should have put 23’, Adair elucidated, ‘because he dreamt of
three people.’
Many things can be interpreted in this way and, although I never saw
it succeeding, it is accepted by the Calon to work as a general principle.
But there is a sense that one needs to be disciplined and never relax.
‘Making the future’ as a demonstration of masculine efficacy is not auto-
matic. It depends on one’s relationships with others and on knowledge
acquired with age. Among the Hungarian Roma, baxt—luck, efficacy,
prosperity, and happiness—is associated with success at the marketplace
and is a rightful ‘consequence of righteous behaviour’ (Stewart 1997:
165). Baxt is a sign of personal efficacy, but a man needs to prepare for it
to materialise prior to visiting the market by, for instance, avoiding con-
tact with objects, people, or acts that Rom consider polluting. There are
thus two types of knowledge, or awareness, at play here: on the one hand,
there is a wit that enables one to recognise an opportunity in a space
which is essentially beyond one’s control, to persuade a transaction part-
ner, to get a good price, and so on. But a man’s efficacy also depends on
his knowledge of proper behaviour, a sort of ethical discipline (see also
Gay y Blasco 1999: 157). For Calon, too, being esperto/a (or sabido/a)
refers to a person’s acumen. In connection with economic practices, it
points to personal skills in recognising opportunities and distinguishing
bad deals from good ones. While some people seem naturally more suited
to this, it is nevertheless a capacity that for its realisation requires other
types of knowledge which is gained with age. This conhecimento of how
to relate to others is, as Vilar (2016) shows, the major source of difference
from Jurons.
The link between these two types of awareness is not rigid, but depends
on context. The easiest way to see how it works is through looking at
negative categories related to this conceptual system. People can be
judged as sem futuro, ‘without future’, when they are seen as passive; sig-
nificantly, there is not a state of being ‘with future’—this would not only
imply not caring about others, but suggest a form of social death, which
comes with one’s isolation from others, due to one’s capacity to live with-
out entering into relationships with others. People need to know how to
100 M. Fotta
recognise situations, places, or people that give bad luck (azar) so that,
for instance, they can leave a place in order to interrupt a series of bad
events; in some Calon communities parents do not accompany their chil-
dren’s wedding ceremony in church, because it ‘gives bad luck’ (Campos
2015: 45).
Jurons and children lack proper knowledge of this kind, and as a con-
sequence they might misjudge the impact of their actions on others and
behave in an inappropriate manner. For this reason, children as well as
Jurons are often seen as bestas, thick-witted beasts of burden. Their sharp-
ness is more or less accidental, and bad deals do not harm their reputa-
tion. Not surprisingly, Calon terms for non-Gypsies—Juron and
Burlon—originate from Portuguese words for a mule (jumento) and an
ass (burro); in other regions, the term Juron is a word for a mule (Ferrari
2010: 162). Symmetrically, when an adult Calon calls another a burro,
others might remind him that ‘he is talking to a Cigano’. Being recog-
nised as a Cigano presupposes one’s capacity to demand recognition from
others and thus to shape social interactions.
This is why young boys cannot be trusted with money and parents
often manage their deals, just as Viviane was doing for Romero.
Nevertheless, through co-living with Ciganos, and through guidance and
help from important others, children and youth can learn how to avoid
besta-like states and gradually become full social persons. In this process,
they differentiate themselves from Jurons and learn about the dangers of
Juron-like behaviour. Those who fail as Ciganos in many ways are referred
to as ‘crazy’—dililo in Calon Romani, or doido and maluco in Portuguese.
This was the case for a young man in Santaluz who did not have any close
family, was poor, and was married to a Jurin. Some called him Rogério
Maluco. And sometimes, during periods when he was forced to leave a
Calon settlement and live alone (sozinho) among Jurons, his aunts and
uncles sighed with visible sadness that he really was mulon, dead.
The Dead
The future does not simply happen; it needs to be made or created.
‘Making the future’ is associated with movement and increasing velocities
in the present moment. Taking advantage of fickle chances requires an
alertness which cannot be achieved through passivity. Within Calon ‘cos-

mological nomadism’ (Ferrari 2010: 267) not only mobility, but motility,
a readiness to move, is also valued. The world moves in an organic fash-
ion—in a manner not segmented into fixed linear units of time and
space—when people are in movement (see Ferrari 2010: 263) and when,
through movement, they create a link between the present and the future.
When there is no movement (não tem movimento) in one town, people
attempt to move elsewhere. A location with bad business is still (parado)
or dead (morto) and ideally abandoned, as it no longer promises any-
thing. In the same vein, inadequate men can be seen as sem futuro, but
also dead, mortos. Indeed, death is a ‘shadow concept’ (Strathern 2011)
behind any stillness in life, and a lack of movement is its prime
characteristic.
The expressions futuro and parado are not exclusively Calon but belong
to a broader conceptual register of the Brazilian northeast, although in
some instances an inverted orientation towards the future, one marked
by waiting while hoping, might be valorised (e.g. L’Estoile 2014). One
can hear non-Gypsy Bahians talk about ‘resolving the future’ (resolver o
futuro). Writing about sources of frustration that give rise to face-to-face
confrontations in São Luiz, Ceará, Daniel Linger describes being parado
as ‘a culturally recognized condition’ of ‘the disturbing state of motion-
lessness’ (1992: 124ft11); ‘[t]o be stopped is to rot or fester spiritually
and emotionally, and to be incapable of resolving personal or other prob-
lems’ (ibid.). In these cases, too, expressions reflect concerns about auton-
omy and self-worth, and motionlessness is associated with a man’s
incapacity to improve his situation. The productiveness of these terms for
Calon relates to their meaning for Jurons. In the process of detachment—
by means of various procedures (e.g. recontextualisation)—these shared
concepts are assimilated into Calon social reproduction and serve to pro-
duce difference (Ferrari 2010: 165; Williams 2011a). In other words, the
use of futuro and parado, Portuguese words, belongs to a unique Calon
lifeworld and mode of relating which is not that of their Juron
neighbours.
For Calon, stillness shows man’s incapacity to move things and reveals
limits to his agency. It ultimately leads to a loss of his social standing,
an absence of others’ recognition. This logic can be seen in common
joking insults: sem futuro, morto, mulon, pai do meu avô (father of my
102 M. Fotta
grandfather), urubú (a vulture), a carniça (a carrion), o defunto (a

deceased one), agouro (an omen; a shadow), and so on. This is why, dur-
ing the incident at the beginning of this chapter, Nelson became dis-
turbed at being called Abelardo. As an old man, Abelardo’s decisions
were not seen as having much influence on others and he was no longer
expected to gain much notoriety. He depended on retirement benefits
for a living and followed his sons whenever they decided to move to a
new settlement. Generally speaking, old men see their creditability
decline, and experience limited contact with Jurons and increasing social
dependence on others (see also Vilar 2016: 149). Their agency—seen,
for instance, in the size and scope of their deals—becomes overshad-
owed by that of their sons.
What worried Nelson is that the nickname might have contained a
kernel of truth: that others might have seen in him an old Abelardo and
that this would somehow stick to him, since he felt he already ‘had no
luck’, which itself needs to be materialised in future-making. Parado,
morto, or mulon are not figurative expressions, then, but real concerns.
They threaten to make apparent what was already there (da Col 2012:
6)—namely, the loss of momentum. Since people are reluctant to lend
money to a man who is considered dead, his further possibilities become
negatively impacted. Men who lose all their money and are not expected
to make more are said to be mortos. Although they might be respected for
their knowledge, their economic efficacy is low. Following the same logic,
living among Jurons, which presents the threat of assimilation and the
failure to distinguish oneself from them through proper relations with
other Calon, is also associated with death (see also Okely 1983: 228). The
real dead become tied to places where they died, their tents—on which
justification of their interaction with the world was based—burnt, and
their settlements—which their actions co-constituted—abandoned.
They do not move anywhere, and they do not create new opportunities
by creating connections with the future (through deferred payments, for
instance); ‘they don’t make the future’, as Viviane once put it.
Making the future, as an idiom of relational movement, is thus dou-
bly productive. A man creates himself as homem while relating to others.
In so doing, he fabricates an environment where his prowess can be
made visible and within which others can evaluate him. His name, nome,
matters to others, and the existence of these others—his community—

materialises his strength, força. I will return to these concepts below.
Here, I only want to restate what I have suggested already: that men
stitch together their own worlds by recomposing relationships through,
for instance, changing settlements, creating new marriage alliances,
avoiding certain people, entering into exchanges that multiply future
dated obligations, and so on. In so doing, they string the future to the
present constantly enchaining others and their behaviour. By demon-
strating that relationships are made visible through relational practices,
such recompositions of relationships give rise to expectations that
Ciganos will continue to share an ethical commitment and relate to
their world in a particular way (cf. Strathern 1995). The Calon world
can be thus imagined as emerging through actions of gendered persons
who constantly fabricate and give shape to their own environments and
between which there is varied connectivity.
Respect
A Calon man has to possess the capacity to reorient people’s behaviour
and restring relationships as a way of engaging with his future and ‘taking
care of [his] life’. Success comes through others’ recognition of his will
and intentions; this authoritative recognition that they are ‘talking to a
Cigano’ and ‘talking to a homem’ is expressed verbally and in behaviour.
Calon men call this form of recognition respect (respeito) or being taken
seriously (tratar sério). Men are keen to show that whatever they are doing
is due to their own will, and an infringement of their autonomy can trig-
ger a violent response—even to the point of financial loss.
Consider a conversation I had with Orlando and Kiko a few months
before Kiko killed the Juron. One late afternoon, Orlando and I were
sitting in front of his house observing the Rua do Cigano in Santaluz
when Kiko joined us. He started talking about his brother-in-law, Wiliam,
who he had visited that day. Wiliam lived on one of the side streets of
Alto de Bela Vista in a house spatially distant from his relatives’ camp.
According to Kiko, a week or so before, a Juron had tried to force his way
into Wiliam’s house. The house was a former shop with a roller door. As
104 M. Fotta
the man pushed the door up, asking Wiliam’s wife whether Wiliam was
at home, she spotted a gun in the man’s hand. Behind her back, she
directed her husband to escape and tried to prevent the man from enter-
ing. By the time he managed to open the door, Wiliam was gone.
Kiko finished the story, but neither Orlando nor I said anything, so he
continued his monologue by telling his father how close he was to betting
successfully in the jogo do bicho1: ‘The whole night I was dreaming of 32
na cabeça [one mode of betting]. And today in the jogo do bicho, 35 was
drawn.’ He had deduced the number from Orlando’s 0.32-calibre
revolver: ‘It was a Cigano mineiro. Beiju and Pancho were walking down
the street and the Cigano gunned them down. Then he wanted to shoot
you, but I … Pau! Pau! ... and he dropped dead.’
Orlando remained silent; instead, they started discussing Darcy, a
young Calon man who lived in a nearby town, and money he owed Kiko.
Kiko was convinced that Darcy would pay him soon and spoke approv-
ingly of Darcy’s qualities, especially the fact that Darcy was not medroso
(fearful). ‘There is not one Cigano who is medroso. I don’t know any
Cigano like that’, concluded Kiko.
‘And what about Pinto?’ I challenged him. I knew he thought Pinto a
coward and sem futuro.
‘Yeah, what about Pinto?’ repeated Orlando, turning to his son.
‘Pinto, José, the son of Gel, Faustão, Valdeli, Índio would cross the
road if I so much as yelled at them’, responded Kiko boastfully. ‘From
that family, only Gel is not medroso.’
Kiko’s stories reveal how violence is constitutive of Calon personhood
and sociality (Fotta 2016a). We have already seen in Chap. 1 how it
underpins the Calon segmentary social organisation and their separation
from Jurons. Kiko’s narrative is a reminder that Jurons, like the one who
forced himself into Wiliam’s house, are dangerous, perigosos. At the same
time, Ciganos are not fainthearted, but valentes, bold or valiant, or cora-
josos, brave. Although Kiko admits that there are individual men who do
not live up to this, in his talk he does not compare individual Calon and
individual Jurons. Rather, he is speaking of a qualitative difference,
between two classes—raças (races) as Calon sometimes put it—of people:
Ciganos and Brasileiros. For this reason, there was nothing unmanly
about Wiliam escaping—indeed, Kiko thought it was funny, as it dis-
played the wit and resourcefulness that Ciganos should possess.
But there exists another level within which interactions between Calon
occur. In this encounter, the family of men living in the camp in Santaluz
were deemed cowards by Kiko. Jurons are not part of this Calon social
space within which it is necessary to evaluate men as more or less brave.
In contrast to Jurons, however, all Ciganos are expected to behave accord-
ing to the ideal of Calon manhood. This is why a Cigano mineiro, a
Gypsy from the state of Minas Gerais, presents a danger: by definition he
is unknown and his behaviour cannot be fully anticipated. Nevertheless,
as a Cigano, he is expected to be valiant.
Calon recognise a difficulty in living up to the ideal, and in their dis-
course proper valour is often associated with unknown Ciganos or those
of the past who led a life of hardship (uma vida sofrida). Men who singu-
larise themselves in this way often jeopardise their own material wellbeing
as well as their lives. Thus, Beiju, who was killed in Kiko’s dream above,
once explained to me that the five men he killed as an act of revenge had
caused him only an economic loss (prejuízo), but, he added, at least ‘oth-
ers respect me’ (me respeitam). Unsurprisingly, only a few really earn their
reputation for valour; in fact, most conflicts within a settlement do not
end in physical violence, but in one of the parties leaving the settlement
for some period. ‘You kill and you will go to jail’ or ‘I have two sons to
take care of ’ were some arguments I heard voiced against using guns.
When Calon use the word ‘violence’—violência—it is in always in a
sense reflecting common Brazilian discourse, and it always refers to
Jurons. Just like their non-Gypsy neighbours, Calon talk about vagabun-
dos (ragamuffins), traficantes (drug dealers), and bandidos (gangsters). But
no abstract term is used to encompass Calon violent acts. Rather, the
focus is on particular events and specific persons involved. This was a case
when a few men in Santaluz were talking about how Apolinário, Beiju’s
father, had been killed by a Calon called Lúcio. Almost 20 years later, the
events were described in vivid detail, recapturing statements made by the
main protagonists. The men recounted how Lúcio, coming to marry Ira,
got into an argument and killed her father.
‘Lúcio was very valente. Índio [his brother] is medroso’, commented
someone.
The speaker described how tents in the settlement in Bomfim were laid
out at that time, which way Lúcio ran, and how, passing around a tent
pole, Beiju slit his throat.
106 M. Fotta
‘He was a good-looking man, wasn’t he? I saw a picture’, asked Kiko.
‘They both were very good-looking’, Paulo confirmed.
Calon men enjoy telling such stories and often recalled such deeds
involving themselves or others—fights and acts of revenge, but also flights
and bizarre, ridiculous situations, especially those involving Jurons. Such
narratives are not only forms of entertainment, but carry moral messages.
For a violent act to be meaningful, to be successfully presented as justified
and credible, it has to be judged as appropriate by others. Only then does
it lead to respect. Kiko’s monologue above, therefore, has to be under-
stood as revealing not only his personal craving for recognition, but the
legitimate reasons for violence: to defend one’s family and to avenge a
member of one’s patrigroup. In his dream, Kiko imagined himself saving
his father after two uncles, who in real life were known for their acts of
boldness and loyalty, were killed. When Kiko killed the Juron a few
months later, he did so because he feared that the man, a known criminal,
wanted to kill his father and brother.
Revenge (vingança) in particular, and violent events in general, not
only create performative contexts for those directly involved, but allow a
large number of people to act according to morally sanctioned ways and
confirm their difference from non-Gypsies (Gay y Blasco 1999: 152;
Fotta 2016a). In the dream, Kiko configured his manhood and realigned
the world through foregrounding paternal and familial relationships and
highlighting the fact that interactions between Calon are fraught with
their own dangers. Violent events summon and recode the whole social
field and orient people in time and space. In so doing, they become a
mode through which people’s positionality in the world is created.
Kiko’s dream also reminded him to stay attentive, since high stakes
might be misrecognised as such: he could gain money in the jogo do bicho
any time if he only knew how to interpret dreams, but also, he and his
family could be killed. A man’s preparedness needs to be expressed in
aesthetic terms; above, Paulo confirmed that Lúcio and Beiju, both val-
iant men, were handsome. There is an intimate relationship between
respect and the physical person. Proper bodily postures are encouraged
from an early age: ‘Father was angry with you’, one young man told his
unmarried brother and continued: ‘You cannot stand there with your
eyes down. You should stay straight, so the Cigano knows he is talking to
men [homens].’ A gun is another way to demonstrate such attitudes. In an
Image 3.2 In 2010, an old Calon lived with his wife in a settlement of his relative.
He had singularised himself and his reputation for valour and preparedness.
Nevertheless, he was deemed ‘morto’ as he had very little money in circulation.
There were no beds in the tent: the man slept in a hammock and his wife on a
wooden palette on which a carpet and duvets were stretched out at night
aesthetic that Calon share with non-Gypsies of the sertão more generally,
owning a gun—and especially walking around with it—serves to demon-
strate one’s status as a ‘man of courage’ (homem de coragem) and confirm
his ‘quick-wittedness’ (rapidez de pensamento) (Sulpino 1999: 97–100).
Other less tangible expressions of the individual body are also important:
talking and protesting loudly and quickly reacting to insults (Image 3.2).
Signs of Prestige
Wealth is another visible sign—and a prerequisite—of people’s auton-
omy and their capacity to engage with the world. Like other attributes, it
shapes the character of their communities. As we have seen in the previous
108 M. Fotta
chapter, within a man’s community people talk about how much money
he has and in what kind of loans. It is this unalienable ‘hoard’, hidden in
circulation among his Juron clients and Calon peers, tied up in property,
or stored in his bank accounts, that gives rise to his community: it serves
as a background for others to evaluate his behaviour by indexing indi-
vidual exchanges to itself (Fotta 2017). Although non-Gypsies in Santaluz
often stated that Ciganos were rich, the Calon differed greatly in the
amounts they controlled. While Orlando played card games with 50-real-
notes, often losing and winning thousands in a single game, the men in
the tent camp played mostly with two-real-notes; the stakes in one round
did not exceed R$20. Several households, such as those of Paulo or Índio,
found it difficult to meet their daily expenses and relied on others in the
camp for help or on women’s begging and palm-reading.
Índio’s tent was of a standard size, 4 × 6 metres, and stood on the outer
edge of the camp (number XIII on Map 1.2 on page 44). Its side tarpau-
lin had holes in it and the tent was rather empty. The kitchen section
contained only a gas stove and a rack with a few aluminium pots hanging
from it; the sleeping section consisted of two old beds alongside both
sidewalls of the tent and a wooden chest. A TV set with a DVD player
stood alongside the rear wall on a makeshift wooden construction. There
were no decorations. Two plastic chairs stood in the middle of the tent
turned towards the TV, and they would be brought outside to sit on if
necessary. The central pole and back sides of the bedsteads separated the
kitchen section at the entrance from the sleeping section in the back. All
furniture was placed on bricks to protect it from earth and water.
Orlando was approximately the same age as Índio and also lived with
his wife and an unmarried son, but was on the other side of wealth distri-
bution among Calon in Santaluz. He owned two large houses on Rua do
Cigano; he had had to buy and tear down several smaller houses in order
to build them. The house in which he lived was divided into two apart-
ments, one above and one below. Orlando’s family lived on the bottom
floor; the apartment above was unfinished. Their apartment had four
rooms: a master bedroom, Romero’s bedroom, a living room, and a
kitchen opening into a back yard, quintal. The kitchen equipment was of
better quality than that in any of the tents, and there were also more pots
than in any other Calon household. A large table with about ten plastic
chairs stood in the quintal; another, with six ornamental chairs around it,
stood in the kitchen. The living room was delimited by a sofa facing a
cabinet with a TV set in its centre and shelves with crystal glasses, bottles,
plastic flowers, and family photos all placed on doilies. The master bed-
room contained a double bed with wooden chests and a TV set on one of
them. Romero’s room had one bed, a fan, and a mosquito net.
We have already seen that among Calon, houses or tents are occupied
by nuclear families. The dowry lies at the core of a physical household
from which a husband sets out to engage with the world. Among Calon
of Bahia, a wife brings interior furniture with her to her new household,
as well as a lump sum of money that will allow her husband to intensify
his deals and in this way provide for her and their children. A wedding is
a founding moment of their household, as well as a moment when differ-
ent expectations will be placed on the comportment of herself and her
husband. He is expected not to be a besta anymore and must make others
recognise his agency and capacities. The changing quality of their dwell-
ing, as well as their position in relation to others in the settlement,
becomes a mode of demonstrating the husband’s skills as a moneylender
and his care for his family. Houses or tents become signs of prestige and
they are evaluated in comparison with those of other people, who are also
trying to acquire such signs (e.g. Tesăr 2016).
As physical structures, houses and tents do not serve as fixed long-term
references. Ultimately, even Orlando’s house turned out to be temporary,
and it struck me how little decoration there was in its rooms—as if
Orlando, Viviane, and Romero had ‘little interest in establishing practical
or symbolic holds over places where they are made to live’ (Gay y Blasco
1999: 16). The aesthetic aspects (or lack thereof ), such as the use of
trunks instead of wardrobes, also seem to suggest flexibility and continu-
ity between houses and tents. Nor was there an attempt to incrementally
improve the house, which is commonly seen among Bahians. This aes-
thetics acknowledges the fact that people’s fortunes are temporary:
Orlando almost got ‘ruined’ following Kiko’s arrest; Beiju suffered prejuízo
as a consequence of his concern with honour; Pancho used to be well off,
but behaved ‘like a rich man’ and wasted everything in bad deals; Renato
lost his house in a card game. One not only needs to stay attuned to the
possibilities for gain, but also be prepared to compromise everything.
110 M. Fotta
In its pragmatic consequences, this instability prevents development

of a fixed structure that could lead to hierarchy. In other ways, too, Calon
attempt to prevent that wealth conveys moral qualities and translates
into a superior status. While they recognise failure and success, poverty
and affluence, at the same time men constantly attempt to reclaim equal-
ity. For instance, to describe their lack of money, Calon normally say that
they are puros (literally, plain, clear). A man could have money at home
earmarked for a different purpose and still be puro and unable to go to a
bar; he might even borrow money from others to play cards. When refer-
ring to themselves in front of others—but not necessarily in private—
Calon avoid words such as pobre, poor, which they use to describe Jurons
and their lives in the past. Rico, rich, is also made to appear an expression
of a momentary state, such as winning in a card game or a successful
deal. In sum, puro and rico—having or not having the means to do things
(ter condições; ter como)—refer to capacities for action. To be puro signi-
fies that one’s current intentions are stymied, or, as Índio put it, ‘a man
wants but cannot’. These expressions acknowledge that wealth and
money enable one’s engagement with the world, but suggest that eco-
nomic status is not fixed. After all, this would mean that one might give
up on possessing skills to change anything, on future-making—a loss of
autonomy.
Asking for money from somebody illustrates this morality. When
Calon women in Santaluz asked for change from their relatives, they did
so as if testing people’s loyalty and generosity and avoided any sugges-
tions of dependency or that their husbands could not provide for them.
Requests came abruptly and were not repeated. On the other hand, when
asking money on the street from a Juron, women stressed their own pov-
erty and hunger, calling a non-Gypsy their ‘patron’ (patrão/patroa).
Meanwhile, their husbands would often stand beside them as if they had
not been aware of the exchange.
It is as if through constructing their own world of dyadic exchanges,
Calon opt out of the Juron logic of class hierarchy. Of course people
were aware that having money significantly influenced their options,
but in their interactions refocused on their momentary standing among
others. The logic behind puro and rico, or behind asking for money,
belonged to the same world in which, after men die, their tents are
burnt and settlements where they lived and died abandoned. While the
money of the deceased is inherited by their sons, the destruction and
abandonment of those aspects of their personhood that became objecti-
fied in space or in material possessions works, in combination with the
customary silence regarding names of the deceased, to prevent the inheri-
tance of fathers’ reputations and authority—their names—by their sons
(also Manrique 2016). Certainly, it is an uphill battle, since wealth is
transmitted on to another generation through dowry or inheritance of
money (and of social relations). It also tends to be stabilised in time
through houses, loans to others, or bank accounts. In the context of pres-
ent-day financialisation, this can be seen as one form of the transfer from
production to property that generates rights and brings increases through
renter income. As a consequence, being rico is relatively durable.
Força
We have seen so far that being ready to seize upon and create opportuni-
ties and back up claims with violence is an embodied practice on which
men base their claims to moral personhood. Their actions lie at a bound-
ary between social failure and success, reconfiguring relationships between
people and ordering spatial arrangements within and between settle-
ments. People use engagement with their uncertain surroundings to
manoeuvre their social and physical position—good knowledge of Jurons
enables the creation of new opportunities, marriages create new alliances,
and established relatives inspire changes of settlements. In an environ-
ment where many events can alter people’s positions and people depend
on the behaviour of others, some men are more successful than others in
stabilising odds and constituting spaces of their immediate actions so as
to live in a grounded manner, viver apoiado.
This level of potency, a man’s value that co-ordinately gives rise to spa-
tiotemporal control (Munn 1992), can be summarised as a força, strength.
Like futuro, parado, or aesthetics of masculinity, Calon share the concept
of the força with Jurons. Especially in the Brazilian sertão, força refers to a
(patriarchal) capacity to project one’s name over one’s family or one’s fam-
ily name over a territory, and to, for instance, control voting behaviour of
112 M. Fotta
others (e.g. Marques 2002; Ansell 2010). Calon use of força varies with
context. A groom’s father can proclaim that he is still strong and that he
can help the newlyweds after the wedding. His capacity to engage with the
world will enhance the capacities of his own newly married son. Força can
thus be ‘given’ (dar força) to others through supporting them financially,
in conflict or otherwise. A patrigroup that dominates a region is a strong
family, família forte.
Neither one’s reputation for valour or acumen nor one’s wealth trans-
lates directly into one’s força (Fotta 2016b). A man who is respected for
valour but lacks money for deals with Jurons and Calon will not inspire
others to join him. A rich man who prefers to live alone and avoid actively
supporting his relatives is also not strong. Strongmen around whom settle-
ments emerge are usually men with married sons, who have good relation-
ships with important Jurons and show their care for others. Their position
varies: Some present themselves readily as líders or chefes, while others
would never admit to be one although nobody would believe them.
Individual households, including those of strongmen’s married children
and brothers, leave or join their settlements following their own evalua-
tions, as no respectable homem would accept orders, show dependency, or
forgo better opportunities.2 Strength is a generic value based on one’s
name and represents a capacity to impose a sign of one’s força on all dem-
onstrations of manhood—one is not only courageous or sharp, but his
acts show, and thus extend, his strength. Força captures a man’s efficacy to
behave properly in eyes of others, his appeal and personal authority, and,
in this way, his social standing. A man who lacks strength, whose value is
low and whose name does not extend far in time and space is fraco, weak.
Activities of men in general, and strongmen in particular, are impor-
tant for bringing about spaces for Calon sociability. I mean this quite
literally. Strongmen enable the emergence of settlements. In the past,
strongmen negotiated municipal permits and camping spaces for a group
of households they headed with landowners. Today, they often have the
most solid claim on land on which settlements stand, have the most deals
outside the settlement, and know local policemen. Fathers pay for wed-
dings, and the stronger they are, more Calon from the region gather
there. An individual’s força, then, can be seen as a man’s liquidity, reputa-
tion, and ability for stabilising odds and forcing luck to go his way; it is a
value. As an attribute of a man, força demarcates his space of action. It is

visible in his space for strategising, which, like the shade created by a tree,
it simultaneously brings into being. As a resource for transformation
required for the project of Caloninity, it recreates distinctiveness from
Jurons.
As a consequence of such material transformations, força is realised
concretely in space and its distribution is objectified in the geography of
a settlement. In any settlement, the most powerful man, who is usually
also the richest, lives in the most expensive tent or a house, located in the
centre of the settlement. He is surrounded by those who he supports
financially; his strength in turn is increased by being surrounded by peo-
ple, especially sons and brothers, who are willing to stand up for him. For
them, living close to this strongman improves their capacity to meet
social expectations: to strike deals, organise weddings, resolve conflicts,
negotiate with authorities and so on. Fracos live towards the outskirts of
settlements, which are also the spaces of widows.
The strategies of manhood that this chapter describes, therefore, are not
mere personal quirks and performances. Rather, they give rise to, and
order, Calon social space. To illustrate this, let us again consider the camp
in Santaluz that emerged around Djalma, described in Chap. 1. In this
camp the two extreme points in the distribution of força were represented
by Djalma, the strongman, on the one hand, and Índio and Maluco, on
the other (tents I, XIII, and XIV, respectively, on Map 1.2, p. 44). Djalma’s
tent stood in the centre of the settlement. The tents of his, or, to be more
precise, his wife’s, closest relatives formed a semicircle around their tent.
In front of Djalma’s tent was the central space of the settlement—the most
public area, where deals were struck and games played; where people
argued. A few years earlier, Djalma had planted a fast-growing tree in
front of his tent to provide shade. Djalma was the only one who owned
the lot underneath his tent; he ‘helped’ his relatives through subsistence
loans; he borrowed money from other people living in the camp and had
more deals with Jurons than any of them. Many clients came directly to
the camp to borrow money from him. He was known among Calon for
paying his dues even before their due dates (often as a way to get a dis-
count). Calon men from the region, even when they came to visit some-
body else in the camp, always stopped to exchange a few words with
114 M. Fotta
Djalma. Often they would say to him, ‘Djalma, make a rolo with me’, and
he never failed to at least feign interest.
The ground in front of Djalma’s tent was barren and grassless, but
there was only a well-trodden track through tall grass leading to Índio’s
tent. It was separated from other tents by about 15 metres, and behind it
stood only the tents of Rogério and widow Fé. Índio and Rogério did not
make money easily: Índio mostly collected debts for Santaluz shopkeep-
ers, had very few deals with Calon, and was also considered fainthearted;
behind his back, some called him a ‘dog’. Rogério ‘Maluco’ lived with a
Jurin; his family relied primarily on his wife’s Bolsa Família. He ran
errands for Orlando and Kiko, in whose houses he generally ate.
Wealth visibly changes along this continuum. In 2008, the more cen-
tral tents of the settlement had a table, a fridge, and a TV with DVD
player; those around them lacked tables, and Índio’s and Rogério’s tents
lacked both fridges and tables. Households without fridges and tables
were the poorest and had the least cash in circulation. To put it otherwise,
the non-existence of much ‘money on the street’ is visible in households’
low level of establishment, their sparse furnishings, and their peripheral
position within settlements. Such men do not have a solid network of
colegas outside the camp to make business with, and not many other
places to go. Nobody comes randomly to their tent to make deals or chat
with them, and they never have an opportunity to share their food. This
distribution also reflects uncertainties that permeate Calon life. Rogério
Maluco did not have any close family: His mother was dead and did not
get along much with his father who lived with his second wife and their
children elsewhere. His household was never established through a trato
and did not profit from a dowry. Índio fled the sertão after three of his
four brothers were killed. Any position of strength, no matter how care-
fully crafted, is frail, however: a year later, the settlement around Djalma
was gone.
The space of the settlement reflected ranking among men. Old widows
like Fé, who often lived on the outskirts of encampments, are traces of
the men who have died—who do not construct new relationships or
enhance their reputations anymore. Names of these men are not fre-
quently uttered and they are slowly subsumed into anonymous Ciganos
of the past. In some ways, widows mark the natural ends of households
from which, when alive, their husbands initiated their masculine engage-
ment with the world. If being a Calon man with força means having one’s
own household and encountering the world from this base through creat-
ing new relationships and, in this way, co-fabricating a space for
Caloninity, then widows highlight the presence of absence of such
strength. They are non-wives; they have burnt the possessions that served
as the basis of their households; they depend on their relatives for subsis-
tence. In Santaluz, Fé’s tent not only constructed a visible physical limit
of the camp, it also reminded everybody why settlements disappear:
Calon commonly leave settlements where somebody has died. But even
if other households do not leave, or at least not all, each death destroys
the settlement as a unique assemblage. This is true of deaths of both men
and women, although due to specificity of male engagement with the
world, and the generally outward orientation and forward thrust of their
activities, reorganisations are more abrupt and more thorough in case of
deaths of men, especially the strong ones.
A man’s strength, then, lies in fabricating and maintaining two
domains—the world of outside, dominated by Jurons, and the Calon
world of inside. The biggest Cigano wedding should not only bring
together all known Calon from the area, but it should also be commented
on by Jurons, to whose questions Calon respond that weddings are a
‘Gypsy tradition’. Small wonder that virtually all ethnographers of Calon
were always invited to attend—and to film and photograph—these
events. Such weddings are paid for by money that originates with Jurons.
This money is shared in consumption with Calon guests, given as a long-
term prestation in the dowry, turned into a new tent or house, or circu-
lated in new deals. All of this stabilises Calon society in space and time.
Força thus represents a capacity to rip things—for example, money, a
plot of land, retirement benefits, a grave in a local cemetery—from the
Juron world, so to speak, and turn them into an element of Calon soci-
ality. Or, to be more precise, as an attribute of masculine personhood,
it is a masculine realisation of the capacity to enforce introversion
(Seabra Lopes 2008: 115–94) or cultural closure (Gay y Blasco 2011)—
to reorient people, divert flows of objects, resignify their meaning, and
make them circulate in such a manner that they create autonomous
Calon space, however fuzzy, within which vida do Cigano unfolds and
116 M. Fotta
which it simultaneously demonstrates. Certainly, such need for ‘detach-

ment’ (Williams 2003, 2011a) is not solely masculine, although this
book focuses specifically on the economic activities of Calon men.
Women, too, in their ways and through even the most seemingly mun-
dane tasks such as washing clothes or sweeping tents produce such a
difference (Ferrari 2010). These capabilities depend on gaining relevant
knowledge and practising a form of self-discipline informed by Calon
values.
Detachment from Jurons
In the previous chapter, we saw the crisis that arose when Luiza found
text messages from Romero’s Jurin girlfriend, which put their planned
wedding in jeopardy. The day following the incident Kiko was trying to
reason with his younger brother. ‘There is no future in hanging out with
the Jurons. You have to think ahead. If you want to be with Jurons [andar
com], you have to marry a Jurin’, he told Romero as we were leaving the
bar. Like their parents, he was trying to talk sense into Romero, who
insisted that he loved the Jurin and preferred to spend time with his
Juron schoolmates rather than with other Calon men. While reasoning
with Romero, Kiko suggested that that Romero should install large
speakers in his new car; the car was given to Romero by their parents,
which raised Romero’s desirability in the context of the marriage trato
with Luisa and demonstrated his parents’ commitment to the future
couple’s wellbeing. Kiko tried to make his brother visualise the likely size
of the dowry that Luiza would bring and that, a few months after the
wedding, he could even ask Luiza’s mother for more money. His reason-
ing belongs to the same social world where, as we have seen, marriages
shift the ways in which people relate to others and how they are judged,
and how, after establishing households, new husbands are expected to
intensify their economic activity. They need to increase their deal-mak-
ing and carve out their space among Calon; they need to stop being
bestas and become espertos.
Kiko’s argument should not be seen as a sort of reduction to materialist

calculation. True, economic exchanges are necessary for leading a good
life. More money means more loans and deferred payments, and hence a
more stable, unique, and recognisable place in the world. We have seen
that Calon speak of the creation of such new opportunities as ‘making the
future’. From Kiko’s arguments, it also becomes clear that the notion of
futuro enacts a distanciation from Jurons—Romero should limit his inter-
actions with his Juron friends because with them there was no future. This
seems like a contradiction: although young Calon men (and, to a lesser
extent, women) have the most intimate knowledge of, and the most
intensive interactions with, Jurons (through school, courtship, socialising,
etc.), their interest in Jurons decreases when they establish Calon house-
holds, simultaneously as they are intensifying and expanding their eco-
nomic exchanges with Jurons.
It would be a mistake to see Jurons as a homogeneous Other. Since the
Juron world is assimilated into Calon socius through individual persons,
who are always gendered and distinguished by their generational position
and social relationships, people’s relationship to Jurons changes. Jurons are
not the same for old widowed Calins as they are for young recently mar-
ried Calon, although they might share the same preconceptions about
elementary differences between Ciganos and Brasileiros. The discussion of
the state of bestas has already revealed a great deal about this.
There is more, however. In this chapter, we saw that concepts such as
futuro or parado, or objects such as money or lots, have to be, to draw on
Patrick Williams’ (2011a), detached from Jurons. In this process, the
distanciation between Jurons and Calon becomes recreated: Jurons
become Jurons and Calon Calon (see Williams 2003: 29). This detach-
ment presupposes transformation—that is, an achievement of difference
out of a material that links Calon to material’s Juron source (Williams
2011a: 51; also Ferrari 2010; Olivera 2012). One implication of my
argument here is that such appropriation is true not only of idioms,
concepts, objects, money, and so on, but also of Jurons themselves. To
become established (and also just to live), Calon men foster relationships
with Jurons—clients, politicians, neighbours, and so on. But as they con-
tinue to ‘create their futures’, as cultivate good clients, for instance, they also
118 M. Fotta
create Jurons as morally distinct—as we will see in the next chapter, good
clients cannot by definition be Ciganos. Through the same process, they
fabricate Calon spaces—households and settlements—which are demar-
cated by their força. These spaces are dependent on, but not determined
by, Jurons.
One caveat is necessary here. The processes I describe are premised on
gendered personhood and, related to this, different expectations on com-
portment are placed on men and women. This book focuses on monetary
exchanges as sites where values realised in attributes of masculine social
persons become demonstrated. In other contexts, however, gender is
downplayed and equivalent concerns are highlighted. These relate to situ-
ations in which people’s resilience, resourcefulness, or centrality of care
for their family, and the moral discourses surrounding them, become an
issue. Just as is the case for many non-Gypsies of the Brazilian northeast,
these premises of moral sameness and equivalence arise from the knowl-
edge that leading a productive life requires a certain loss of innocence
(Mayblin 2010). Such knowledge needs to be acquired by both men and
women as they gain knowledge of proper behaviour—as Calon men,
they stop being bestas and Juron-like, and become homens. As with
Brazilian peasants, marriage marks a real turning point. This sense of a
fall from grace, however, does not stem from the popular Catholic recog-
nition of the sinfulness of the world, but reflects the fact that Calon
adults have to deal with amoral Jurons from whom they also need to
detach themselves.
This is how I understand the Calon quip that a term ‘Ciganos’ comes
from siga-nos, ‘follow us’—an imperative, to lead the vida do Cigano, if
Calon are to remain Calon. The concept of futuro, which the Calon men
I knew sometimes used, also invites such ruminations despite its ambiva-
lences. It stands not only for temporal unfolding, connecting the present
with the future through demonstration and reorganisation of relations
and through the creation of new opportunities which will be discussed in
next two chapters. It also denotes one’s fate, the endpoint of which is
one’s death; indeed, one meaning of futuro in Portuguese is ‘destiny’. In
future-making, then, Calon men not only engage with risk and their
reputations, but also continuously gesture towards their fates. Only the
dead are freed from this imperative—there is no chance that they will
come to be seen as bestas, and they are remembered as having suffered for
others; they became a paragon of morality. But they do not move and do
not (re-)produce—neither money nor themselves as Calon persons in
relations. Their names, which used to give the character to Calon spaces
of the living when they were alive, are gradually forgotten. In sum, they
don’t make the future.
Notes
1. Jogo do bicho is a type of popular lottery illegal in Brazil.
2. Regarding the position of chiefs or kings that lead vitsas of the American
Kalderaš, Rena Gropper writes that ‘the men of a vitsa are always ready to
listen to anyone who promises efficient leadership’ (Cotten 1951: 19).
Part II
Calon Assimilation of the Local
Economic Environment
Chapter 4 Deferred Payments
and the Expanding Moment
of Caloninity
Making Money with Money

One morning, Gelson received a message that Salvador, a Calon man liv-
ing in Bonital, was waiting for him. Gelson, his wife, son, and I then
drove for about 30 minutes until we arrived at a walled property. Inside
it stood a large green house; beside it, a smaller one was being built. The
hosts invited us to sit on the front veranda, and Gelson took a chair
beside Salvador. A plastic table separated Salvador and me; Beiju, Gelson’s
brother-in-law who lived in the same town, sat next to me. On the other
side of Beiju was a Calon man who had already been at the house.
Salvador’s son, Gelson’s son, Gelson’s wife, and Salvador’s wife holding a
grandchild completed the oval. A red car stood between Salvador’s wife
and Gelson. In this way, all but a gringo anthropologist became paired up:
transaction partners, their confidantes, their sons, and their wives. Such
segregation according to positions and relationships central to transac-
tion situations is common; it reflects, necessarily, gender and kinship
and, not so necessarily, age.
Salvador’s daughter-in-law and his younger son were serving coffee.
After some initial small talk, Salvador took out money from his pocket:

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_5
124 M. Fotta
hundred- and fifty-Real banknotes were folded in half and stacked into

wads of R$1000 held together by rubber bands. Salvador handed Gelson
the first wad and then another: ‘Take it, cumpadre.’ ‘Okay, okay’,
responded Gelson, who sounded as if he were refusing more food he was
being served.
Salvador passed a third wad. ‘Count them’, he encouraged Gelson, who
up until that point had been taking the money casually and showing no
concern. ‘Count them’, Salvador’s older son echoed. ‘They are counterfeit.’
The rest of us observed the transaction quietly.
Gelson counted the bills of the three wads he had received. ‘One, two,
three, four, five...’ Reaching ten, he bound them up again. From that
moment on, he checked every wad he received. There were seven in total.
‘And here is something on top for you’, said Salvador, handing Gelson
two more wads.
‘This is too much, take something’, answered Gelson.
‘No, this is for you.’
‘Don’t you want to take anything? I had told you to give me some
interest [juros], but I did not say how much.’
Salvador responded magnanimously that he was doing well today (se
dar bem), thanks also to credit from Gelson that he was now repaying.
‘But you know that you only paid because you wanted’, Gelson
concluded.
‘I know. Thank you. And God protect you’, Salvador responded and
added jokingly, ‘And here is an extra rubber band for you.’
Gelson took the rubber band and the small talk resumed. It revolved
around the raffles, currently circulating among the Calon. Gelson com-
mented that he had sworn so many times not to buy another raffle. ‘But
then an acquaintance comes’, added Salvador’s wife, ‘and how could you
not buy?’ The conversation continued for a few minutes until we left;
Salvador and Gelson sat next to each other the whole time.
* * *
This chapter concerns itself with the idea that Calon debts are produc-
tive: they represent moments ‘when social relations are revealed’ (Roitman
2005: 75). Time and space are intrinsic to this: a credit given or debt
Chapter 4 Deferred Payments and the Expanding Moment… 125
incurred reorients actors and reorganises social relations. In this way, they
multiply possibilities, enabling further deferred exchanges and the cre-
ation of new in-between time intervals, but with other people somewhere
else. In the time period defined by the deal, Salvador succeeded with the
money he had borrowed from Gelson by injecting it into circuits and
relationships elsewhere—with Jurons or different sets of Calon, and with
temporalities of their own. As this chapter argues, it is not only the rela-
tionships between the original acts of loan-making and their repayment
which are of interest, but also those that emerge within, or are otherwise
enabled by, these intervals. Individual exchanges allow for other relation-
ships to be reconfigured and made visible, while the forward thrust that
emerges through the multiplication of exchanges and their overlaying
reproduces a specific form of sociality in time.
The chapter is composed of two parts: the first examines moments of
exchange and how, in those moments, Calon men put their masculinity
to the test. As we will see, in accordance with their view of masculinity
and relationships between men, which I analysed in the previous chap-
ter, men recast each event as singular encounters between equals. Like
Salvador and Gelson above, men stress that they act on their own voli-
tion and are not exploiting one another. In each exchange, parties to
transaction have to bring together several valuation scales anew. In
these ways, Calon guard against the tendencies for ‘hierarchy’ that,
according to David Graeber (2010, 2011: 120–124), lie behind debts.
This has other consequences: every deal—which brings with it an agree-
ment of a future encounter—enchains parties. Thus, in the initial act
when he had lent money to Salvador, Gelson had also expressed his
confidence in the former, which in turn—especially through gossip—
solidified Salvador’s reputation not only as somebody who suddenly
had cash, but also as somebody who had credit in the eyes of another.
The moment of repayment described above, in turn, provided another
further performative background for both to demonstrate themselves
as real Calon homens.
The second part of this chapter reveals how exchanges situate each man
and his household uniquely within relations to other people and
households. This chapter needs to be understood alongside the following
one, in which I will discuss loans to Jurons. Together, they substantiate the
126 M. Fotta
problematic of the first two chapters: the centrality of households and

how Calon space is put together based on them. When Salvador and
Gelson refer to each other as cumpadres, they confirm their care for each
other, their mutual implication in the life projects of each other. They are
also accompanied by their sons, wives, and relatives, who support each
other—although, as we will see, in the moment of deal-making between
Calon, important others—wives and children—are pushed to the back-
ground, even though they and their interests play significant roles. By
co-creating relationships and making them visible, each transaction that
results in a deferred payment motivates and enables (or blocks) other
deals—it overflows. The news about deals travels—far for big ones, not at
all for very small ones—and in this way realises the scope of one’s com-
munity. Exchanges emplace men within the web of relationships, estab-
lish their reputations, and help their households survive. Among Calon of
Bahia, men (husbands) are prime providers and I met only a few poorer
households where women’s activities added to daily subsistence.
Creating Dates-As-Events
Money and things that Calon obtain from Jurons are frequently recircu-
lated. Money can be lent out to Calon or to Jurons; an object can be sold
to a Calon for a smaller amount in cash immediately and the rest paid in
the future; or it can be put into a raffle among the Calon. It can also be
sold back to Jurons. The following story illustrates some of these
possibilities.
Several men were sitting in the shade provided by the tree in front of
Djalma’s tent when Babaloo walked out of his uncle’s tent holding a
watch. ‘It’s light’, his uncle Pancho pointed out. He added that it was a
good watch and that Babaloo should buy it. When Babaloo did not
respond, Pancho offered to swap their watches.
Babaloo pondered whether the watch was not paraguaio, fake (literally,
‘from Paraguay’), but Pancho insisted that it was ‘original’. ‘You can go
into a shop and see that it costs 300. Yesterday I bought it from Faustão
for 150, isn’t it?’ he asked, turning to Faustão, who was sitting next to
him. Faustão did not say anything, and Pancho continued, ‘You give me
70 on 20 March [i.e. in three months, in addition to Babaloo’s watch

now].’
Paulo—who is married to Pancho’s wife’s sister, Babaloo’s fraternal
aunt—was feeling the watch. According to him, it was an Oriente
Automático; it still had the ‘original’ wristband, and he would buy it if he
had the money. No other men became involved.
‘I cannot give you 70 in March. I will give it to you in April’, said
Babaloo.
‘Then give me 80’, responded Pancho.
They swapped the watches.
Immediately, Babaloo doubted his deal. ‘I screwed up [me lascei], didn’t
I?’
‘No, it’s a good watch. In a shop it costs 300’, insisted Pancho.
Babaloo seemed unconvinced. ‘I will sell it to a Jurin for 70 tomorrow’,
he declared. Walking away, he added, more to himself than to anybody
else, ‘You blocked me [me bloqueou].’
Pancho was beaming. He recounted the five deals he had made since
the previous day. ‘Two good ones and three so-so’ was his evaluation of
them. Paulo, however, was critical—he thought it was wrong for Pancho
to treat his own nephew in this way. But Pancho, who was already walk-
ing towards his tent, only waved his hand in dismissal and grumbled,
‘But tell me, who knows about our suffering. Who does?’
This snippet brings into relief the processes that underlie all deals
among Calon, both large and small. First, money can be earmarked,
divided up, postponed, hidden, added up, promised, or given in advance.
Second, the conditions for any of these possibilities to be utilised are time
gaps that emerge between the present and the dated future, or, as I will
show below, a temporal leap which extends the present moment. In the
vignette, Babaloo agreed to pay Pancho R$80 in three months. Ideally, by
the time the money was due, he would be ahead on the deal. In this par-
ticular case, however, he felt obstructed and declared his intention to sell
the watch the next day, albeit for a lower price than the one he was to pay
Pancho on 20 April.
In other words, every creation of a deferred exchange multiplies pos-
sibilities, creating a window of opportunity in which a margin can be
made through passing time and through expanding out, so to speak,
128 M. Fotta
from the context of the transaction towards others. This is one reason
why moneylending is thrilling to Calon: by dividing money, punctuating
time, creating new combinations, and so on, it allows men to foreground
their own skills. Even men who have a lot of cash on them—when they
come to play cards, for instance—buy things like mobile phones and
watches for deferred payments or for split payments in which one part is
always deferred and never due earlier than one month later. If they bor-
row money to play cards and then win, they do not pay their debt on the
spot, or at least not in full, but instead always wait for the agreed-upon
date to pay. The resulting punctuation of time by dates—by means of
sums paid or received ‘yesterday’, ‘tomorrow’, ‘in three months’, and so
on—opens up spaces for speculation; ‘embedded in a matrix of such
dates-as-events, people’s actions and imaginations pivot around compli-
ance and delay, synchrony and avoidance, and the multiple possibilities
for forward looking and backdating’ (Guyer 2006: 416).
This is what happened to the watches before they left my purview:
when I walked into the camp a few days later, I met Laécio from Bonfim
sporting the watch that Pancho had obtained from Babaloo. He had
bought it for R$70 to be paid on 15 February, that is, in two and a half
months. He immediately tried to sell it to me. Valdeli was wearing the
watch that Babaloo gained from Pancho—so Babaloo had not sold it to
a Jurin. When I asked Valdeli about it, he too began to take it off his
wrist, but I declined to buy it. Pancho was wearing Paulo’s watch, which
just two days earlier Paulo had described as being so good that he would
never sell it. In sum, at that moment, from Pancho’s point of view, swap-
ping watches with Babaloo would still result in R$80 in four months
from Babaloo and R$70 in two and a half months from Laécio, while he
possessed a watch with which he could try to make another deal.
Matching Scales
Every deal among Calon is singular. Lack of formalised guarantees, the
non-existence of institutions that would fix men’s claims, and a focus on
performances make each transaction a unique achievement. The event
unfolds in front of others—who might or might not be present—and is
commented upon by others later. Men cannot appear too eager, and they
stress the profitability for both parties in the transaction.
There are various ways to start a deal. A man can stimulate a potential
offer by talking about his other deals, or he can make a seemingly casual
remark about an object to which the other party responds, almost invari-
ably, with ‘Do you want to buy it?’ Or he asks if someone wants to bor-
row money. Iran’s favoured way was to ask someone, ‘Do you have money
to lend?’ If the response was negative, he followed with the next question:
‘And do you want to [have it]?’ The beauty of this one lay in its witty
double meaning, thus presenting deal-making as enjoyable and pleasing.
While negotiating, men would exclaim dramatically that a particular
dated payment would ‘kill’ them, or downplay the value of an object by
claiming that it was fake or old or that they could get it cheaper else-
where. The best strategy to avoid transactions is not to show any interest
or to offer a price that is obviously ridiculous. As a result, attempts at
transactions are abandoned just as quickly and casually as they are started.
In addition to these ritualised aspects—timings, utterances, and
embodiments—that turn any transaction into an event, heterogeneous
things and scales of valuation (Guyer 2004a), such as sums to be repaid,
the monetary scale, temporal scales, and types of relations and evalua-
tions among the persons involved all have to be brought together and
stabilised anew. Some objects are better than others, and seemingly alike
objects are distinguished through certain characteristics. In the deal
between Babaloo and Pancho, the watch was characterised by its brand
and type (Oriente Automático); its weight suggested that it was original
rather than paraguaio; it had the original wristband; and Pancho linked
its worth to its price in shops. All of this allowed him to ask Babaloo to
supplement his own watch with an additional R$80 in four months.
Some scales of valuation used by Calon, such as time and price, reflect
their general use within the region. Time intervals reflect logarithmic oito
dias (eight days, i.e. one week), quinze dias (15 days, i.e. two weeks), and
trinta dias (one month, i.e. the same day one month later) or its multipli-
cation (most commonly, three months). Bigger sums are usually repay-
able in ‘one year’, ‘two years’, and so on. Alternatively, due dates are set
on important days—‘until São João’ (24 June), ‘until Christmas’, ‘until
Semana Santa’ (Holy Week). In 2008 and 2010, for monetary loans
130 M. Fotta
under R$1000, the repayment sums were relatively fixed: R$50 for
R$100 in one month, R$100 for R$300 in three months, or ‘20 per cent’
on whatever sum per month. In loans above R$500, it was customary for
20 per cent not to mean percentages at all, but to be used as an increase
on principals: ‘20 percent of 1,000 added to the principal’ or ‘20 percent
of 10,000’—this is why in the story that opened this chapter, Salvador
handed over Orlando seven R$1000 wads plus two R$1000 wads on top
as juros. Despite such standardisations, the relevance of scales has to be
established for each transaction; men try to prove their worth and mutual
benefit through renegotiations of slight margins, such as an agreement to
add one week extra to the deadline of ‘30 days’, or, as Orlando did, to
offer the transaction partner some money to keep from the juros (which
the latter, of course, refuses).
Among Calon, juros, interest, are not a ‘rate’ at all. They are not fixed
rigidly and do not increase automatically following some standardised
time units. A fixed rate stands in opposition to what can be called the
Calon ‘logic of a swap’ (Stewart 1987: 224), premised on equality and
performed mutuality between exchange partners. Such a rate is a mecha-
nism of mistrust, a form of impersonalised calculation that necessarily
needs backing up by violence and which highlights a refusal to concern
oneself with the life of another—in sum, treating another as a Juron. If a
Calon man cannot pay the agreed-upon sum on the agreed-upon date,
the other either offers to wait (if it seems reasonable) or the men will
renegotiate the deal, treating it as a new exchange. In other words, in
deals between Calon, money is a means of pricing through which the
negotiated aspect of a transaction becomes foregrounded and which
allows further gain. The focus is on the act of negotiation, repayment,
and so on, and not on the promise of repayment and its hierarchical
relationship of debt. This is why at the end of transactions, nobody thanks
anybody (see Graeber 2011: 122–3).
Certainly, the isolation of a transaction from the Juron ‘street’ and its
prices is not absolute. Rather, the suggested separation is constitutive of
the final price. It allowed Pancho to claim that the watch cost R$300 and
Babaloo that he would sell it to the Jurin for R$70. Explicit marking of
domains and their separation allows differentiation, as well as arbitrage,
across them—the ideology of swaps between Calon is dependent upon
and contrasted with another regime of value into which money and
objects can enter and eventually disappear. Money serves as a standard of
value with which to compare any deal to potential loans men could make
with Jurons. In this way, the difference between two domains—deals with
Jurons and among Calon—is maintained.
Once, Sirley tried to persuade Kiko to buy a watch from him for
R$120 for one month. He argued that he had bought it for R$140, to
which Kiko retorted that for R$100 he could have Rogério Maluco steal
one for him. Nevertheless, seeing that his cousin needed money, he
eventually agreed to buy it for R$120, ‘but only to help you’, he stressed.
‘And I am only buying it because I know that next week I will get 2,000
from a Juron.’ The accuracy of these prices—100 and 140—is unim-
portant, since, as Calon maintain, men can ‘say any price they want to’.
The prices are relative in the sense that they emerge from within rela-
tions that determine their meaning. As Ferrari (2010: 182) observes in
the case of storytelling among Brazilian Romanies, ‘when a story is being
told, what is at stake is not “a performance of truth” but rather ‘a truth-
ful performance’—an emotional charge that connects persons and the
‘reality’ of a story (see also Brazzabeni 2012: 196). Statements about
prices are not about their absolute values. What matters are their effects:
the effects these pronouncements have on the enmeshment of persons,
how they connect and differentiate at different levels—as Ciganos and
Jurons, as family members, as two autonomous Calon men, and so on.
These questions will be explored later in this chapter and in the chapter
to follow. What matters here is that a price—including the price of
money as in Calon juros—in deals among Calon is not inherent in a
thing sold or in the division of time into units and their passing; nor is
it determined by a price somewhere else. An outside price is used in
argumentation, but a reference to it only works as a device through
which a deal is stabilised while bringing into focus the relationships of
parties involved. This is why, during the watch swap, Faustão remained
silent when Pancho asked him, rhetorically, for confirmation that he had
sold Pancho the watch for R$150 the previous day, or why Paulo criti-
cised Pancho only after the deal was over. The trick is to retain complete
presence, to have an overview of others’ transactions—or to at least seem
to—and to be able to evaluate instantly, because, as Judith Okely
132 M. Fotta
observes, if ‘a Gypsy makes a poor deal with another, he cannot cry

shame; it is a shame on him’ (1983: 197).
To summarise, then, we have seen that among Calon, most exchanges
take the form of either credit sales or monetary loans, and that transac-
tions are framed as unique events in which autonomous men negotiate
equivalences by bringing together diverse scales of valuation. By resulting
in agreements to pay specific sums at concrete future dates, the exchange
open up possibilities for further recombinations; within the unfolding of
these transaction-events, men see their futures change shape. The cre-
ation of time (and space) lag is the mechanism of the expansion of the
present moment, or its opposite—its ‘blocking’, as Babaloo put it. But
the real problem is that no man can foresee if another will indeed pay on
an agreed-upon date or if they themselves will have money.
Evaluating People
In the previous chapter we saw how any Calon man is assessed: Is he
‘without the future’? How much money does he have in circulation? Is he
honourable? It is through such questioning that his social position and
reputation become stabilised. It is therefore not without consequence
that whenever Calon discuss deals between Calon, they are very concrete
and talk of specific named individuals, dates, and sums, repeating remarks
made by parties involved and the dynamics of negotiations—whether
these are witnessed or only heard of. Anticipating the next chapter, this
dynamics contrasts with loan-making to Jurons, about which Calon men
remain vague and equivocal.
Such money-talk gives people a sense, however vague, of the money
that a man has in circulation, his ‘money on the street’. This aggregate—
which I suggested we could see as an inalienable hoard—indexes to itself
man’s transactions and motivates the desires and claims of others (Fotta
2017). It belongs to a social machine through which attributes of social
persons are gained. Consider Beiju: an old man by Calon standards, he
had an air of Clint Eastwood in older Westerns—tall, thin, and taciturn,
with chiselled features. The funniest thing I ever heard him say was when
he teased my wife that there were piranhas in the São Francisco River,
where we were going to go swimming. One evening, shortly after he was

released on bail for illegal possession of firearms, he was telling a group of
Calon men that he used to have R$15,000 prior to his arrest, but he
spent R$10,000 on the bail. From the rest of the money, Beiju explained,
‘2,000 is not mine, it is Hugo’s’. The men, who themselves had been deal-
ing with money their whole lives, could visualise the total sum shrinking
and Beiju’s options disappearing. However accurate this sum was, this
conversation added to Beiju’s reputation. Indeed, as we will see below,
some saw Beiju as morto, dead, to use this multifaceted Calon expression,
but his honour was not questioned; there was no doubt, at that moment,
that this respected man would not pay Hugo.
There is no transfer of collateral among Calon, and transactions are
guaranteed only by a man’s word. The worth of one’s word depends on
the reputation, referred to as one’s crédito, credit, or nome, name. Men
can be recognised as straight (diretos) or difficult, (atrapalhados); the first
type pays on time without any qualms, while someone in the second
category is known for his manoeuvring or delays. Male autonomy is cen-
tral and, just as men can ask for any price they see fit, they are also not
obliged to lend to anybody. Generally, they refuse to lend to those they
consider difficult, although avoiding lending to relatives considered as
such might prove more difficult and backfire. They do so, for instance, by
declaring that they are puros—without money at the very moment but
otherwise willing to help. Others avoid pushing the topic, since this
would put the men’s agency and their word to question. Men can also use
promissory notes, notas promisórias or letras, especially if their transaction
partners are not co-resident Calon, their relatives, or colegas (peers) with
whom they spend much free time. Put simply, as trust decreases, letras are
more frequently used. It should be noted, however, that the use of prom-
issory notes among Calon differs from their use with Jurons or from the
way they are used in shops throughout the region. For instance, although
Orlando used the same pre-printed yellow slips as the shopkeepers in
Santaluz, he would not put down any official information, such as the
name or address on one’s ID, nor would he ask for signatures. In other
words, although the state recognises notas promisorias, the use and con-
tent of which are regulated by the law, among Calon they do not repre-
sent impersonal tools, but rather mnemonic devices.
134 M. Fotta
A man’s reputation is established not only in his interactions, but also

through constant discussion about his deals and comportment among
others. Behind his back, so to speak, others—both men and women—
speculate about his forthcoming payments and their impact. In a particu-
lar deal, the known history of transactions by both partners is used to
evaluate them. Men try to avoid missing payments by huge margins or
being seen as doing it intentionally. At the same time, being owed a sub-
stantial sum by a rich man increases an individual’s liquidity, their crédito;
it is a long-term bond against which further transactions can be made. As
such, Calon recognise evaluation as recursive, and failures take ever-
increasing effort to overcome.
Fridges
Although Calon make an effort to present each transaction as a singular
event conducted between autonomous men, it is not disconnected from
other relationships—history and the potential for other exchanges,
responsibilities towards one’s households, and so on. While men might
push the latter to the background during negotiations, once a deal is
concluded the frame shifts immediately: if in the above episode Babaloo
tries to redeem his bad deal by planning to sell the watch to Jurons, and
Paulo blames Pancho for not behaving as a good uncle should, Pancho
suggests that a man is only responsible for his own household, and, ulti-
mately, nobody else cares about his difficulties in doing so. Individual
transactions therefore are tied up within a broader relational context,
which they simultaneously reconfirm. Resulting deferred payments reveal
this through their mobilisation of the third party—as witnesses, as com-
parators in ranking, as guarantees of future liquidity, and so on.
From the start, then, transactions are set in a specific form, and their
form recreates this ‘setting’ in turn. Having already explored transactions
as events, the rest of this chapter characterises the social world that is co-
constituted by exchange relationships between Calon: how dyadic
exchanges link to the materiality of households; how a man’s place in his
community is created and maintained through such exchanges; and how
exchanges between men contribute to the reproduction of Calon social-
ity, within the world dominated by Jurons, over time.
We saw in the previous chapter how a Calon settlement can be charac-

terised as a node of layered relationships of variable density and distinct,
if not unconnected, character. The distribution of one’s força, reputation,
standing, and size and scope of monetary and other exchanges with Calon
and Jurons are all mapped into space: a strongman’s patrigroup in the
centre is surrounded by other patrigroups or individuals. This more or
less translates into the quality of tents and their furnishings: if the strong-
man has the best car and the biggest tent or house, the widow, who by
definition has no exchange partners and depends on others, especially her
children, lives in the barest and simplest dwelling, often on settlement’s
outskirts. Recently married couples are exceptions to this: no matter
where their tents are located, their TVs, sofas, china cabinets, and so on
are new and often more expensive than those of more established house-
holds—these objects originate with new wives’ dowries.
In the case of Santaluz between 2008 and 2009, fridges provide an
excellent entry point to revisit this dynamic. Back then, they stood for
the spread of consumer goods and expansion of consumer credit underly-
ing emerging-economy Brazil. The majority of Bahian households of
modest means acquired them on hire purchase or by taking out a loan. As
this book illustrates, Calon partook in this boom not only by trying to
profit financially, but also by domesticating the expansion of consump-
tion and credit. Fridges also lay bare the contours of how aspects of Calon
sociality, such as generational transmission, gender relations, and mate-
rial obtainment, were recreated and reshaped at a specific historical
moment.
At the time, the fridge was the single most expensive item found in any
tent and there were households that did not possess one. It was common
for the first fridge in a household to be given by a bride’s family as part of
her dowry. As the money received in a dowry comes with role expecta-
tions, any subsequent replacement of a fridge demonstrated the husband’s
moneymaking capabilities, objectifying the household’s increasing
wealth. One day, Kiko and Paula decided to sell their fridge, and buy a
new one. This initiated a series of transactions: The fridge was first bought
by another Calon, who then managed to sell it to a Juron only to buy it
back for less, and in the end was won by a man living in the neighbouring
settlement in a raffle organised among the Calon. The sequence that fol-
lows is written up from my field notes:
136 M. Fotta
2 February: Pinto and three Jurons carried a fridge from Kiko and
Paula’s house to Pinto’s tent in the encampment. The fridge was 1.5 years
old and had originally been Paula’s dowry.
3 February: Kiko and Paula went to the furniture store to buy a new
fridge. They bought one for R$1800 on 24 monthly instalments (total
price R$2100) using his mother’s account.
28 March: Pinto bought a fridge from his cousin Adelino. He said it
was better and newer than the one he had bought from Kiko. Later that
day, Kiko walked into the camp and in a loud manner typical of him
rhetorically asked Pinto how much time Pinto had to pay for Kiko’s
fridge.
‘Until August’, Pinto answered.
Kiko exclaimed that the payment was due on São João: ‘You should be
an honest man [direto].’ Nobody said anything, although Rogério Maluco
suggested that they try to figure out when the payment was due.
Meanwhile, old Paulo returned to the camp. He had barely sat down
when Pinto asked him if he remembered when he was to pay Kiko. Paulo
answered that the money was due in August.
‘In my head it was until São João’, Kiko answered, now calm. ‘But it is
my father’s debt now anyway and so I don’t care’, he added.
March: A group of men were in Kiko’s house when a Juron appeared.
He was hysterical and sweaty, yelling something about a receipt (nota fis-
cal). I did not understand completely. When he calmed down, he
explained that he had just bought a fridge from ‘this Cigano here’, point-
ing at Pinto, but that it did not cool properly. Since it used to be Kiko’s,
he came to ask Kiko for the receipt. While explaining his situation, he
also mentioned that he was the brother of a town councillor and that he
would not have done such a stupid thing if it had not been for Jacira,
Pinto’s mother, who had put a spell on him. After chastising the Juron for
entering shouting, Kiko handed him the receipt; the man left. We all
laughed. ‘I never saw a Juron like this’, said one Calon. ‘He buys a bad
fridge and blames it on a spell [feitiço].’
The very same day, Pinto bought the fridge back from the Juron for
R$200 cheaper; he now possessed two fridges and an extra R$200.
1 April: Adelino bought a fridge from Valdeli, his fraternal uncle and
Pinto’s father, on deferred payment. As a result, Valdeli and Jacira’s house-
holds were now without fridges. Jacira hoped to use one of Pinto’s, but
Pinto and his wife refused to sell it cheaply to his parents. Neither did
their older son’s wife want them to store food in her fridge.
‘My daughters-in-law are good for nothing’, yelled Jacira and reminded
Pinto that it was she who had arranged the deal with the Juron.
While the women continued shouting, Pinto kept repeating that the
fridge was a prejuízo (a financial loss) and that he could not give it to his
parents.
‘When Muda’s retirement benefit comes, it will be all mine’, exclaimed
Jacira to her daughters-in-law from her tent.
Other camp inhabitants, who until then had been observing the situ-
ation, slowly picked up their chairs and went back to their tents. Tiago
came and sat down next to me. ‘I thought that he was a man, but he is
just a slut [puta]’, he stated loudly so Pinto would hear him. Tiago
explained to me that Pinto was a slut because he refused to sell his fridge
to his own mother.
A few days later, Tiago came up with an idea to organise a raffle for
Pinto’s fridge. It took place three weeks later. One hundred two-digit
numbers were sold between the Calon in the area. A Calon in Bonfim
had the last two digits drawn that Saturday in the Federal Lottery and,
15 months after it was bought on instalments in a shop in Palotina to
become part of Paula’s dowry and subsequently passed through several
hands, the fridge became his.
* * *
Selling and swapping fridges surfaced as an option to make a margin in

that specific moment in Santaluz. It implicated almost all households in
the settlement. Moving around fridges was intensively replicated laterally
until this trajectory for diverting and creating wealth was exhausted. In
the process, new ‘vertical’ openings emerged: half a year before his pay-
ment to Kiko was due, the purchase created a space of opportunity for
Pinto. In selling the fridge to the Juron and rebuying it, he made R$200,
while the raffle brought him R$700. As in August, he had to pay Kiko—
or, rather, Kiko’s father, to whom the payment was passed in another
transaction—and in June, he had to pay Adelino; any eventual profit
138 M. Fotta
depended on what he did in the meantime. One’s acts become a founda-

tion for further actions and the impact of exchanges on people’s future
possibilities is on both material and ideational levels. The two are inter-
linked: what men can do in any moment depends on how much money
they are known to owe and to be owed, as well as on a reputation solidi-
fied through various exchanges. This was not the end of this fridge’s saga
in Santaluz, however. Looking at what happened next will allow us to
explore how various exchanges are evaluated morally, how they are inter-
linked, and how they are implicated in Calon social organisation.
Types of Exchanges
In Santaluz, the poorest tent in the camp was Índio’s. In 2009, it was also
the only one that—besides that of Fé, a widow—lacked a fridge. Since
Índio had been looking for one he could afford, he thought that the pro-
posal Faustão made was interesting. It evolved from an existing deal
between them:
20 April: After ten days of playing cards, Faustão owed R$14,000 to
several Calon. He needed to renegotiate his existing agreements—among
them, his forthcoming payment of R$3000 to Índio on São João. He
asked Índio for four more years. They agreed that Faustão would then pay
him an extra R$2000 and give him his fridge and a watch now. In three
months, Índio was to give Faustão R$400 for the fridge. Índio felt he
could do that because Djalma was due to pay him also on São João.
Later that day, a group of men from the region gathered in the camp
in order to play cards. While they waited for Orlando to get up from his
afternoon nap, they talked in front of Djalma’s tent, which resulted,
among other things, in a few small transactions of watches and mobile
phones. In one, Índio sold the watch he had received from Faustão to a
man from Volta Redonda for R$70: R$50 payable immediately and
R$20 next week. ‘I need to eat something; we are without money [puro]’,
he explained to me.
* * *
Índio and Faustão were co-residents in the same settlement. Índio’s wife
Iracema and Faustão’s and Pinto’s mother Jacira were sisters. The money
involved in their deal—R$3000 payable on São João—was, according to
Índio, his ‘wife’s’—that is, it was linked to her dowry and he managed it
in the name of their young son. The son would reach 18 by the time the
transaction with Faustão was liquidated in two years. The deal also resulted
in the household’s first fridge, as well as a watch which Índio turned into
food for the family by selling it to Maurício, an unrelated man who lived
in the neighbouring settlement. In other words, if a man’s household, his
wife’s and children’s interests and their futures—here objectified in a
household’s fridge—are the main motives behind his seeking out new
deals, the quality of these exchanges, in turn, confers a specific character
on his household’s place in the world by marking and making visible rela-
tionships between the parties involved. Obligations within families relate
to exchanges with people outside the household—people from their set-
tlements, Calon from households’ home ranges, Jurons.
Motivations for seeking out such exchanges differ, ranging from a
promise of a sizeable gain, which can become a basis for one’s children’s
households in turn, through to covering immediate subsistence needs.
Let’s treat these differences schematically according to their rationale,
typical sums, due dates, and relationships between parties. The first type
of exchange includes subsistence loans. Sometimes people lack money to
cover their daily needs. Men lose at cards, are unsuccessful in collecting
from their Juron debtors, or just happen to have lent out all their money.
In some households, wives earn smaller sums by reading palms, but in
Santaluz this was done primarily on market days (Wednesdays and
Saturdays). To mitigate such shortages, men generally try to sell some-
thing to one another, swap like things with cash added, or borrow small
cash for ‘coffee and bread’. In 2009, the latter transactions were normally
loans of ‘5 for 10’ for a week or ‘100 for 150’ for one month.
Most financial obligations among Calon, however, are of the second
type of exchange: objects against deferred payments and monetary loans,
or, better, the swap of a sum today for a different, larger, sum in the
future. Known as rolos (deals), but also barganhas (bargain) or negócios
(business), they involve other Calon men from one’s home range. The
specific arrangements of each rolo depend on negotiations between men.
140 M. Fotta
They prove men’s skills, indicate a continued commitment to a broader

set of relationships, and allow parties to establish equality, reputation,
and honour. For this reason, they are also the most public of all exchanges,
and there is a sense of excitement in them. They sometimes occur as if
only to see what happens when people add to their overall velocity by, for
instance, swapping like objects with a deferred sum added by one side. In
Santaluz, the deferred payments that resulted from rolos varied signifi-
cantly—from R$80 in two months for a watch, to loans of R$1000 for
R$1300 in one month, to R$100,000 for an SUV in five years.
The third type of exchange involves gambling loans. These gambling
loans have the highest interest rates—usually, 100 per cent in a few
months. In Santaluz, whenever some men had money, they would sit
near players, hoping that somebody would want to borrow from them.
Some deferred exchanges are marked out as help (ajuda) or support
(apoio), the fourth kind of exchange. They carry a specific moral weight;
some insist that in the past, all money between Calon was lent out in
order to help a relative, that lending money with the vision of a gain
between Calon did not exist. First, there are gifts from parents to chil-
dren, which are continuous with parents’ efforts to stabilise the futures of
their children’s households. Second, there are loans and deferred-payment
swaps that involve relatives and are specifically treated as help. Relatedly,
refusals to enter into a deal, especially when one makes explicit his plans
and needs to his relatives, can be interpreted as denials of help.
The fifth category of loans represents what we could call ‘emergency
loans’. They are normally sizeable and made for long periods of time,
normally several years, and accompany tumultuous periods in people’s
lives or times when they need to put together daughters’ dowries.
Generally, these loans are conducted between peers of similar age who
sometimes socialise together, but are not siblings and have few or no
cross-cutting financial obligations; they are often outside of each other’s
home range, but within the reach of their respective reputations. In other
words, these loans involve people who know and respect each other, but
are not too close on a day-to-day basis.
Of course, reality is messier: several objects and temporalities can be
combined within one exchange, or an exchange can be interpreted differ-
ently. Did Índio, for instance, negotiate with Faustão because he wanted
a new fridge, or because he saw that Faustão, his wife’s nephew who
belonged to the same turma, was in trouble through gambling? Or did
the watch added to the deal make a difference, since he knew he could
convert into food, his family’s pressing need? Or did this seem to be a
good opportunity for him to make more money for his son—keeping it
stored until the son reached adulthood—through negotiating with
Faustão, who was, despite his current gambling, seen as a ganhador (an
earner)? Probably all of the above and more—new opportunities are
polyvalent.
Although Calon men present transactions between them as if they
were a male-only phenomena free of women (see Stewart 1997), the day-
to-day ‘work’ of communal assessment and testing of people’s views of
events is done by women. This circulation of information traces out a
man’s community, essentially those who care about his deals and whose
opinions matter in one way or another. This community is not homoge-
neous, as there are different expectations placed on people from one’s
family, one’s settlement, and one’s region, despite the fact that—on the
surface, at least—negotiations proceed in a similar manner and all
exchanges result in deferred payments. Recall the transaction between
Kiko and Sirley described above: Kiko explained that he was buying the
watch from Sirley ‘only’ to help him, stressing the mutuality involved and
distinguishing this exchange from a moneymaking and individualistic
rolo. In fact, this was how Sirley wanted to portray it at first, insinuating
that the deal had its advantages for Kiko. Parties to exchange and modali-
ties of exchange differ and, as a result, deals do too—not only, or even
primarily, in their formal characteristics, such as sizes of juros, dates for
repayment, or the use of promissory notes, but in their ‘remainders’ (Chu
2010: 168). These remainders demand recognition; ultimately, it is this
remainders-machine that produces enchainments and entrustments
among Calon and enables their moneylending to Jurons.
A fridge stands for the nexus between a moneylender and his wife, but
it can also become an object in raffles among Calon whereby, through the
circulation of a list of numbers and the subsequent collection of con-
tracted sums, the community of interconnected Calon is realised. In
other words, exchanges and circulations establish closeness and distance,
reconfiguring relationships between parties. Through their knotting and
142 M. Fotta
layering, through the multiplication and repetition of more or less stan-

dardised operations and interactions, they co-assemble the space of any
Calon moneylender and his household. From his tent to his network of
settlements where kin or peers live, through an always-existent, although
ever-changing, set of households with which he cooperates and who sup-
port him, such space is characterised by a temporality which cannot be
reduced to that of the individual exchanges that co-produced it. Indeed,
as we will see in the final chapter, as a form of economic integration this
space cannot be approached through an individual’s integration into a
market at all. As an emerging ecology, an archipelago of rancho-centric
spaces fabricated by individual Calon—always members of households
and not atomistic individuals—in the midst of Jurons, it also induces
specific behaviour and expectations thereof.
Between One’s Rancho and the Street

As everyone knows, transactions do not always go smoothly. Sirley,
Orlando, Beiju, Izânio, and I were sitting under a jackfruit tree next to a
small settlement in São Gabriel. Women were sitting separately near the
bricks that Orlando had bought in order to construct houses there.
Izânio, who lived elsewhere in São Gabriel and had stopped by for a short
visit, was complaining that Adair, who lived in Alto de Bela Vista about
an hour and a half away by car, owed him R$6000 and that the prazo
(due date) had passed already.
‘And when did it pass?’ asked Orlando.
‘Already three days ago’, answered Izânio.
‘Ah, that’s OK then. He will pay you only on Monday. If he does not
pay you tomorrow, the day after is Friday’, explained Orlando.
Romero, who had just arrived, finished his father’s reasoning: ‘On
Sunday he will not pay you, so it will be Monday.’
Sirley’s wife, who was standing nearby listening, suddenly intervened,
‘He has been owing Sirley for several months’.
‘He still hasn’t paid you?’ I asked incredulously. Almost a year ago,
Sirley had sold a car to Adair, part of which, R$2000, had been due a few
months ago; I was convinced that the transaction had been liquidated,
although I had not been much in touch with either Sirley or Adair during
that period.
‘Look, he also knows’, Sirley pointed out, as if my knowledge just con-
firmed the scandal of the situation.
‘He is a thief ’, added Sirley’s wife.
‘Why don’t you call him?’ asked Izânio.
‘I will leave it as it is. But here, he has no crédito for anything anymore.’
The truth was that Sirley was too proud—just like his father, Beiju. A
week earlier, Beiju had gone to Alto de Bela Vista to collect money from
a Juron, but did not stop at Adair’s to enquire about his son’s money. He
was apparently too ashamed (com vergonha).
‘And it’s a homem who can [has money], who has how to [pay]. And he
steals from the poor. How can he do something like that since he has the
means [condições]? Here, he has no crédito anymore, not even for ten
cents.’ Orlando looked around to make sure that nobody else—especially
Nelson, Adair’s brother and husband of Orlando’s niece, or Paula, Adair’s
niece and Orlando’s daughter-in-law, both of whom were in the settle-
ment—could hear him. ‘The whole family is like that. Also his sister
[Paula’s mother], and also Nelson.’
Speaking to nobody in particular, Sirley’s wife declared that Adair
always paid everybody but ‘you’—addressing Sirley. But she finished
abruptly, slapped her own cheek, and, already walking towards her tent,
exclaimed, ‘But it is not for a woman to converse [conversar] with men!’
Izânio urged Sirley again, ‘I would not leave it like this. If he were a
Juron, I would maybe even leave it and forget, but not a Cigano. How
could I ever eat at his house and have respect?’
Sirley only nodded in agreement.
* * *
It is when thresholds are reached that the fragility and internal coherence
of the overall system are brought to relief. We have seen some motifs,
which appear in the episode, albeit from different angles, already: the role
of third parties and the circulation of information, the constitution of
monetary exchanges between Calon as male affairs, or the impact of fail-
ures on men’s reputations. It was Adair’s responsibility to come up with
144 M. Fotta
the money, and since he had condições, his evasion could only be undestood
as intentional. On the other hand, Sirley, a young husband eager to build
up his place in the world, worried that he would show weakness or dis-
trust in talking to Adair directly. This is because, as Izânio highlighted,
there is a difference between exchanges with Jurons and with Ciganos.
Indeed, as we will see in the next chapter, although Calon are insistent
when collecting the money from their Juron debtors, they nevertheless
sometimes give up and accept defaults.
In addition, in contrast to exchanges with Jurons, women should not
get involved directly in transactions between Calon men, although peo-
ple know and accept that men often pay attention to their wives’ opin-
ions. A few weeks after Pinto had sold and then bought the same fridge
from the Juron, an event described above, I mentioned to him that at the
time, other Calon had thought it funny that the Juron claimed that
Pinto’s mother’s spell was what had made him accept such a bad deal.
Pinto turned to me with a serious air and explained, ‘But she did put a
feitiço on him.’ This might go some ways in explaining why women are
expected not to talk during—or comment openly upon—negotiations
between Calon, who present themselves as autonomous decision-makers.
On the one hand, this abstention shows a woman’s vergonha and main-
tains her husband’s honour. Sirley’s wife’s comments were inappropriate
from the point of view of the men present, and I know that in other
instances, such outspokenness led to Sirley hitting her. On the other
hand, men are ambiguous about women’s efficacy, since a good Calon
wife is precisely one who can talk convincingly, defends family’s interests,
and is shrewd with money, and in this way contributes to the common
project (compare Sutherland 1986: 75).
But why would money owed by a Calon be difficult to ignore while
simultaneously impossible to go after (correr atrás)? Izânio’s comment on
commensality is telling. Among Calon, commensality establishes amica-
ble relations and, like hosting, serves to mark male autonomy and equal-
ity. To understand that fully, although from the point of view of Calon
men, we must recall that a man’s marriage creates a moral, relational, and
financial framework for the intensification of exchanges. The capacity to
do this successfully is sometimes described as ‘bringing food’, especially
meat. As in Brazilian Portuguese generally, the idiom of eating can be also
used to describe predatory relationships of profit at another’s expense.

Stemming from these premises, ideas about food and eating can also
serve to express correct sociability. Whenever a Calon enters the settle-
ment of another, unless he comes to play cards, he is offered food to eat.
This offer is extended immediately after questions about each other’s
families and health, but before the men turn to business. At the very least,
a coffee is passed to him. Failure to offer food, at least rhetorically, is con-
sidered shameless, and people complain about such behaviour. As an
aside, we can also see how a fridge becomes much more meaningful: not
only does it centres attention to a household and objectifies its wealth,
but it is where water can be kept cold and meat stored, so one is prepared
and never fails to make a good impression.
Besides being a way to influence other people’s opinions of oneself,
offering food demonstrates one’s concern for others and underlying egali-
tarianism. People eat quickly and nobody offers thanks; the host down-
plays the meal, stating that the food is ‘simple’, ‘no good’, or that ‘it’s the
only thing we have in the house’. The message is clear: this is not hosting
or charity. Rather, ‘Ciganos are like that’, they would comment to them-
selves approvingly when reflecting on this point. Eating at another’s house
is proof of a baseline ‘communism’ which is not extended to Jurons, but on
which equality in ‘exchange’ between Calon is grounded (Graeber 2010).
The capacity to offer food is predicated on the existence of indepen-
dent households and of adult men capable of providing for their house-
holds. Accepting food from another constitutes the recognition of
commonality as Calon, but people avoid eating at their neighbour’s, as
this suggests dependency and even abuse; when there is a threat that a
household will go without food that day, it is women who communicate
this information among themselves and who send plates of cooked food
to one another. All of this requires that people fulfil their obligations,
continue to cherish amicable relations, and acknowledge the capacity of
others to engage with the world. This is why Izânio was correct in his
comment: there was no way one could eat at the place of a Calon who
refused to pay and relate to one another as Ciganos should, since the
denial of payment constituted the denial of precisely this recognition.
* * *
146 M. Fotta
One month later, Adair had still not paid Sirley. I happened to be in Alto
de Bela Vista when his brother Nelson visited him. Nelson, who was mar-
ried to Sirley’s cousin and had been living in the same settlement as Sirley,
brought Adair a message: apparently Sirley had asked him to talk to his
brother and tell him, ‘Don’t put me together with them. I want to create
my own future [criar o meu futuro]’.
Adair understood, but countered that he would only pay Sirley once
‘they’, meaning men in Sirley’s family who lived in Sirley’s camp—Sirley’s
father Beiju and Sirley’s uncle Pancho—paid him money they owed to
him; Sirley’s recently deceased uncle Zezinho also owed him. These men
often lived in the same settlements and supported each other.
‘But he has nothing to do with it. You cannot discount his debt from
a debt of Pancho’s’, argued Nelson.
‘What do you mean he doesn’t? He was there when I told him that I
would pay him after others returned my money’, responded Adair, add-
ing that he could not pay if nobody paid him. On top of that, the car
that Sirley had sold to him was actually pocado (alienado, i.e. there was
a debt on it in another state), so he had to sell it for less than he had
expected to.
‘Do not put them together’, Nelson pleaded. ‘Fulano died. His father
is close to dying. Pancho is dead. Pay the Ciganinho [a diminutive]. He
has nothing to do with them.’
In fact, only Zezinho was dead, and Nelson’s use of the placeholder
fulano (fella) had the double effect of showing respect towards the dead
by not mentioning his name and pointing out that his debts were not to
be taken into consideration. Pancho was not dead, however, but he was
unsuccessful, economically speaking, and had lost a great deal of money
to bad deals and gambling; his daughters were reaching marriageable age
and he needed to amass their dowries. Beiju—who, as he himself put it,
had cared ‘in my times’ (no meu tempo) more for his valiant reputation
than for money—was seen as past his zenith; we encountered him earlier
in this chapter talking about a little money he had in circulation after his
bail when his dues were taken into consideration. In other words, death,
as still life and the opposite of expansive (re-)productivity of adult men,
shadows men’s incapability to meet their obligations. At the same time,
one’s unwillingness to pay forces another into passivity and blocks his
effort at maintaining his place in the world—it complicates, or ‘blocks’,
his ‘creating’ of his future.
Living in the Moment
In this chapter, we followed the trajectories of money and objects in the
possession of a Cigano moneylender as they circulated among Calon,
examining how they were formatted, by conceptual and material means,
into specific forms and forced into certain pathways. By looking at things
differently, we continued circling around the question that has motivated
the first part of the book, namely, how a unique Calon lifeworld is co-
constituted through tools and mechanisms that nevertheless belong to all
Bahians, such as the state currency, promissory notes, novel credit institu-
tions, and financialised debts. Previous chapters suggested, first, that at
the core of Calon sociality lies the household as a husband-wife nexus,
and second, that the husband’s interactions with the broader world,
which are justified by care for his family, are framed as the seeking out of
novel opportunities—as their ‘making of the future’. Over time, these
efforts become sedimented into their male força and reflected in the con-
trol and scope of their space-time (Munn 1992), what Calon call a
grounded living or establishment. This chapter further explored specific
processes behind this dynamics: exchange relations among Calon men
and their multiplication. These exchanges assemble the world of each
man, and this chapter highlighted the spatial and temporal aspects of this
composition—its link to life cycle and settlement organisation. Although
Calon men stress the particularity of each transaction as an event and
masculine autonomy and skills involved, exchanges recompose existing
social relationships. In addition, monetary exchanges, which invariably
result in payments set on future dates, include visions of what money and
objects, as the storage of values, can do. Each deal is built on those con-
ducted in the past, some of which are still expected to bring payments,
and each enables further deals. To a greater or lesser extent, it also changes
what will come, which emerges as a horizon always already punctuated by
obligations.
148 M. Fotta
According to Jane Guyer (2006), through the constant rupture and

breaking down of coherent wholes, punctuated temporality—which is
especially evident in the dynamics of financialised credit and debt—
threatens middle-term processes that are necessary for modern society-
building. The near future becomes filled up with dated time, the middle
run is evacuated, and the very long run is framed as virtual or prophetic.
At first sight, the Calon ethnography presented here attests to this: the
constant scheming and evaluation of deals, disinterest in middle-run
politics, and a lack of interest in details of the collective past beyond one’s
personal memory all seem to be linked to Calon future-making that, by
definition, as a materialisation of one’s fate (futuro) can never be finished.
However, the Calon vision of generations, life cycle, and the past remains
central; as this book reveals, there does not seem to be a feeling that asyn-
chrony and rupture resulting from dates-as-events (Guyer 2006: 416)
represent a failure of—or a problem for—social reproduction.
At the same time, it is clear that the proliferation of dates-as-events is
associated with a distinct quality of time. A constant search for arbitrage
and possibilities of negotiation allows Calon to maintain a life that seems
free from arduous Juron work, which is tied (at least schematically) either
to the long-term temporality of annual peasant cycles or to the homoge-
nous time, split into equal units that characterise ‘fixity’ of those who
work for wages (see Morton 2016: 87pp). Calon ideology, which treats
money shortages as temporary, individuals’ fortunes as unstable, and
temporality as punctuated through heterogeneous deals-as-events, breaks
the narrative link between past and present exchanges and brings to the
fore people’s ‘acute alertness in the present moment’ (Zaloom 2006: 130).
In this context, deals become active interventions in the unfolding of the
future, while deferred payments tie up people’s performances within it.
Through the proliferation of exchanges, Calon men enchain each other’s
behaviour; within each act of negotiation, repayment, and so on, wealth
becomes entangled in future dated obligations interpreted according to
social expectations. Knowledge about people’s actions is extended through
discussions and becomes recursive. The existence of deferred payments
becomes one way of reinforcing people’s continued performance as Calon
moral—always gendered—persons. Borrowing, lending, and paying cre-
ate a man’s reputation as an objectification of such enchainment—of
continued relations among people as Ciganos.
Beyond individual plans for next steps, then, this multiplicity of

exchanges also represents an attempt to secure people’s future comport-
ment and relatedness in an unstable environment. It is not that exchanges
can prevent violent breakdowns, for instance. They do, however, give rise
to expectations and shift people’s image of their opportunities as a func-
tion of their relational enmeshment. To put it simply, by transposing
performances onto future dates, Calon extend the moment of Caloninity,
so to say, actualised in any transaction through recreating a shared frame-
work for evaluating behaviour.
Calon life ‘for the moment’ is therefore not an ideological abstraction
separate from transcendent durational time (Day et al. 1999), nor is it
automatically opposed to implications of debt which rely on such linear
temporality. Rather, the asynchrony brought about by awareness of the
sheer multiplicity of deals between specific named individuals—which
are impossible to follow but which are constantly talked about; which do
not add up; where interest is not a rate and does not depend on the pas-
sage of time; where the living ‘make the future’ separated from the dead,
whose debts are forgotten and their nomes play no role—gives rise to the
feeling of living in a constant, event-full present with others whose opin-
ions matter. Because there are more deferred payments than actual money
and debts are cancelled after death, a balance is never reached and it does
not make up a totality; there is no equivalence. Deferred payments are
directionless, criss-crossing any settlement of people who recognise each
other as sharing ethical commitment (Ferrari 2010; Gay y Blasco 1999).
The related appearance of abundance, the idea that things can always be
attained if one takes the proper action, does not reflect a form of confi-
dence born of an ideological inversion of Juron categories or practices of
those on the margins of the Juron society, but is instead grounded in the
trust generated through processes of such relational enchainments that
link the present and future. Each moment overflows the present and links
it to the future that it simultaneously creates (Pedersen 2012: 143).
Proliferations of Calon exchanges bring about the feeling of an event-full
present, where something is bound to happen to proper homens who are
not ‘without futures’. In the midst of Jurons who are too besta and unlike
deceased Ciganos who are the only Calon that ‘do not make the future’
anymore, this represents the hope that Calon will continue to lead a vida
do Cigano.
Chapter 5 Lending Money to Jurons
How Beto Misjudged a Client

Beto came to São Bento to play cards in the house of Castilhomar, one of
the richest Calon in the region. But first, he stopped at the tent of his
niece Paula and her husband Kiko, where Kiko handed him R$2000.
Soon, a Juron arrived on a motorbike and knocked on the gate—Kiko’s
tent stood within a walled property. As soon as the Juron, a man of around
30, took up a chair and sat down, Beto declared that the man had to pay
him R$42,000 on São João and asked Kiko to write up a promissory note.
Kiko went inside to get one.
The man was clearly nervous; avoiding eye contact, he continued to
repeat more to himself than anybody, ‘How will I manage to put together
all this money?’ It was none of his business, retorted Beto, adding that the
man should not have borrowed so much in the first place and that he
only wanted his money back. Agitated, Beto pointed out that the due
date had passed in February, two months ago: ‘I only want my capital,
what is mine.’ Trying to keep his temper under control, he then reckoned
the sum to the man. Six months ago he had lent him R$32,000 at a 10
per cent monthly rate of R$3000; R$2000 was given on top of the deal;

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_6
152 M. Fotta
the man had paid him R$4000 and then again R$4000, so the remaining
total was R$36,000. Beto repeated a few times that he had forgiven the
man two months of juros, declaring, ‘I don’t want to destroy families, I
only want my capital.’ If the man did not pay him, however, he could go
and ‘dig out a hole’, because Beto would ‘knock him down’ (derrubar).
Upon hearing the threat, Paula, who was washing dishes inside the
tent on the other side of a tarpaulin wall from the men, shouted at her
uncle not to get heated up and to stay calm. The Juron, looking con-
cerned, only repeated that R$42,000 was too much.
Throughout this exchange, Kiko, who was maintaining a calm dis-
tance, suggested several times that the Juron sign a new promissory note
and that he would surely pay it off. Finally the man asked Beto if
R$36,000 would suffice if he were to pay all of the money on 1 May, that
is, in less than one month. Beto agreed. No new promissory note was
signed.
Beto’s son, Kiko’s brother, and I did not say anything throughout this
exchange. When the man left, Beto complained to Kiko: how should he
have known that the Juron, who lived in São Bento, had no money? He
had always seen him at cockfights ‘betting 2,000, 3,000’ and had thought
the man was rich. Kiko assured him that the man would pay and explained
that the man had borrowed too much money recently, but that he would
sell some things and pay his off debt.
It was not a good week for Beto. As Kiko would later comment to
Paula, her uncle had already arrived annoyed because he had lost
R$5000 in cards the day before. And later that day, at Castilhomar’s, he
lost R$2000 he had borrowed from Kiko; Castilhomar won R$20,000
and Orlando R$3000.
The next day, Kiko and I encountered the Juron’s father in a market-
place. Kiko explained the situation to him: his son had borrowed too
much money and he might have to sell some things. The father was very
unhappy.
* * *
At the moment when this story took place in April 2016, São Bento
probably had the highest proportion of Calon population in the region
captured on the schematic Map 1.1 on page 39. Eight years earlier, there
had been no Calon living in this poor rural town. Over the years that
followed, some settled here only to leave a few months later, but others
stayed. Different turmas, arriving from different localities, ended up
occupying different neighbourhoods. These developments were related to
the reshuffling of other settlements in the region and, in particular, to the
disappearance of some settlements caused variously by a lack of economic
opportunities in their original location; a series of events seen as a sign of
bad luck; deaths that had forced people to move so as not to keep recall-
ing (relembrar) the deceased; or violent events involving Jurons and the
fear of retribution.
We saw in previous chapters how Calon spatiality interrelates with
their sociality and how Calon maintain their mode of life in the context
of—or even thanks to—household mobility and settlement fragmenta-
tion, interpersonal conflicts, and alliances. In some ways, nothing has
changed over the course of almost a decade. Like in 2008, in 2016
Castilhomar, Beto, and Orlando continue to play cards with other
Calon across the region, often at one another’s houses. Only the setting
of their games has shifted, since both Orlando and Castilhomar left the
towns where I encountered them in 2008 (Santaluz and Barra, respec-
tively). But life clearly goes on, and personal fortunes and relationships
between people have shifted. Some people have died, some married,
some became broke, some have moved out of the region, some stopped
speaking to one another, and so on. Kiko, back then a hot-headed,
recently married man without much cash, is now respected and estab-
lished. In 2007, Beto had opposed the marriage of Paula and Kiko,
wanting Paula to marry his own son instead. Now he borrows money
from Kiko, treating him as an equal.
In other words, although concrete nodes and lines of circulations
change over time, a complex structure remains maintained by means of a
relatively limited number of principles and relationships. At the same
time, the continued recreation of Calon community life, with its wed-
dings, rolos, card games, enmities and so on, depends on Calon relation-
ships with the outside. We can also put it differently: although the Calon
in Bahia hardly talk of their Juron neighbours, of ‘others than themselves’
(Williams 1982: 342; see also Gropper 1975: 183), vida do Cigano is
154 M. Fotta
maintained in interactions with—through Calon assimilation of—Jurons.

We have seen that this effort, which some Calon in Bahia captured through
the idiom of ‘making’ or ‘creation’ of the future, requires that adults manage
their closeness to and distance from Jurons. While, by means of differentiat-
ing modalities of exchange, for instance, men avoid passing onto ‘the Juron
side’, material obtainment, success in life, and the future of men’s children
depend on their relation to, and position among, Jurons. Thus, Kiko’s status
was intimately related to his relationships with Jurons in São Bento, such as
the man to whom Beto had lent the money and his father, where he had
been living for a few years. The money he lent Beto, or the food that Paula
offered to her uncle as soon as the Juron left, came from Kiko’s moneylend-
ing activities outside, among Jurons, on the street (na rua).
As Beto’s struggle to recuperate the money and his failure to properly
evaluate the client show, generating income in this way is not easy. The
sum that the men owed him was sizeable—about 40 times the official
minimum wage. But despite the validity of his arguments, his relative
patience, and discounts on the interest (juros) to the Juron debtor, who
will have to sell part of his land, he will ultimately appear as callous,
money-hungry, and cold—characteristics that Bahians ultimately expect
of a Cigano, today a synonym for a special kind of usurer (agiota). This
chapter explores Ciganos as such recognisable credit institution, a niche,
from the point of view of credit providers. By turning outwards, the
chapter thus continues to investigate the theme introduced in the previ-
ous chapter on the character of economic exchanges. As we saw there,
among Calon, men are expected to return money without much cere-
mony, although the deals presuppose the public. There are also certain
difficulties with demanding payment from a Calon debtor too actively
without losing face or causing a conflict. It is not so with Jurons. On due
dates, Calon men go after their Juron clients if they must. Among them-
selves, Calon rely primarily on one another’s word and reputation, but
loans to Jurons, as we will see, are often extended against collateral and
promissory notes are always used. In deals among Calon, interest is not
an independent rate and agreements can be renegotiated anew. When a
Juron does not pay on time, however, interest grows automatically and
any lowering of the sum to be repaid is presented as a discount or, as in
the episode above, a benevolent sign of goodwill. Alternatively, Calon
attempt to convince Juron clients to hold onto the principal and pay only
interest. Among Calon, such relation of a long-term unilateral flow would
be unthinkable. In summary, while in an exchange between Calon men,
the ideological focus is on the transaction event, on the autonomy of the
parties and simultaneously on the mutuality and trust between them, in
a loan to Jurons the focus is on the contract, on the impersonal and hier-
archical relationship of debt that is enforced, more or less explicitly, by
violence.
A Calon’s Juron Clientele

Viviane, Romero, Paula holding her baby, my wife Adriana, and I were
sitting in front of Orlando’s house in Santaluz observing the street, chat-
ting, and drinking our afternoon coffee. A few people stopped by or
called looking for Orlando, who was not at home. Since the early morn-
ing, he had been playing cards in Bomfim. Kiko was also not around. He
had left around noon to collect money in the neighbouring town of
Parnamirim.
At about 4 pm, Kiko and Diego, this family’s non-Gypsy middleman,
arrived in Diego’s car. Another Juron was sitting in the backseat. The car,
a white Chevrolet, had originally belonged to the former vice-mayor of
Muritiba and changed hands several times. Every now and then, it
appeared in Orlando’s garage. As they got out, Kiko handed a small yel-
low paper to Diego. ‘Here you are: 3.5 litres of gasoline. It is from a man
who owes me. You can fill the tank anywhere.’
Diego became upset. It was not enough to compensate for his driving
Kiko around Parnamirim; besides, he pointed out, the car ran on
ethanol.
‘You exchange it for alcohol’, said Kiko. ‘It is three litres … how much
is the gasoline… 3.24… it is almost 15’, he said, exaggerating.
Diego told him to stop fooling around. ‘Romero [Kiko’s brother] gave
me 40 last month’, he pointed out.
‘And I paid 50’, countered Kiko.
‘But I am a family man’, pleaded Diego.
‘Me too’, answered Kiko.
156 M. Fotta
‘But you only have one small son’, said Diego. Kiko, however, only
turned around, handed the yellow slip to Paula, and went to Barbudo’s
bar nearby to play dominos.
While this exchange was taking place, Viviane entered the house. The
Juron man who arrived in the car and had not been greeted by anybody
was still standing behind the car. He was about 45 years old. He began to
tell Diego that he owed Viviane R$150 until the 4th, the day after
tomorrow.
When Viviane came out again, Diego asked her, ‘How much will you
give him for three monthly salaries?… It is 420.’
‘443’, corrected the man.
While Viviane was considering this, Diego asked her where Orlando
was. ‘He went out’, answered Viviane.
Diego murmured that he would wait for Orlando because he needed
to talk to him.
‘He will not come any time soon. You know how he is when he gets
the money’, said Viviane. Turning to the man, she added, ‘I will give you
900 for three months. But the cheque [with his salary] is mine,
understood?’
Without a word, Viviane, followed by Diego and Romero, entered the
house. Standing there, the man explained to Paula, Adriana, and me, ‘I
would not borrow money, but the women took me to court.’ Apparently
he had three daughters with three different women, although he did not
live with any of them anymore. Although the oldest daughter was an
adult, he was late with the alimony for the other two, so the court had
ordered him to pay R$250 and R$350, respectively.
Viviane came out again, followed by Diego and Romero. ‘But you still
owe me 50 on 100.’
‘That’s right. I was telling Diego that I owed you money’, said the man,
‘but my business is an honest one’.
Viviane made the man confirm that the R$150, which was due the day
after tomorrow, was unrelated to the current loan. ‘I will give you 600 for
two months. And tomorrow you will come to pick 300 more for three
months.’
It took a while for the man to absorb what she was saying. Clearly
Viviane did not have all the money in the house, and Orlando was gone.
Diego asked the man if he wanted to wait for Orlando. Viviane, who did
not want them hanging around, countered that she did not know when
Orlando would return, but that tomorrow Diego could come and pick
up the remaining R$300 for three months.
‘This 600 is for two months’, she restated. There was a moment of
silence.
‘Mom, don’t you want to give him the money right away?’ Romero
asked, offering to lend her his money.
‘Keep your money to yourself ’, answered Viviane.
In the end, the man decided not to take the money, but said Diego
would come back for it tomorrow. They left.
* * *
Although this excerpt speaks to many topics discussed in this chapter,

such as the organisation of moneylending within a family or ways of cal-
culating interest, what interests me here is what it reveals about the peo-
ple who borrow money from Calon and their views of Ciganos.
The client from Parnamirim is what this Calon family considered a
good client: he was an acquaintance of Diego (their middleman), had a
wage, and was a returning client. He had to borrow because he had to pay
alimony. If he did not pay, he ran the risk that the company he worked
for would be ordered by the court to deduct the money from his salary
directly, and he would not be able to do anything until his daughters
grew up. At least that is what the man thought. Like most working-class
Bahians, who would puzzle each week over how to make ends meet, he
felt it was better to be in control of his money: ‘It is better to have money
in the pocket’, they would opine.1 Aware of this struggle over control,
Viviane stressed several times that the man’s monthly cheque was ‘hers’:
the cheque fixed the payment—she did not want him to bring the cash,
which would always create space for hesitation and for his spending
money on some other pressing need.
Clients like the man are apressados, under pressure. Such clients borrow
money to pay for emergencies, such as healthcare costs, funerals, and bail.
Others might be pressured by other debts, but have run out of credit
with—or avoid borrowing from—other institutions. But others borrow in
158 M. Fotta
order to invest in house renovations or car purchases, or to finance their

political campaigns (see Pina-Cabral and Silva 2013, pp. 112–117). Clients
come from all kinds of strata. For obvious reasons—capital availability and
long-term relationships and trust—powerful Jurons borrow only from
strong Calon men. Clients with good local standing and property habitu-
ally borrowed larger sums for longer periods of time. Entrepreneurs, farm-
ers, or landowners can use animals and property as collateral (garantia),
although these might not be actually transferred for the duration of the
loan. Such was also the origin of Diego’s car: a few years before, while still
in office, the former vice-mayor of Muritiba financed a couple of cars. He
had given this car to Orlando first as collateral for a loan and, later, as a way
to liquidate it. It then changed hands several times, especially between
Diego, Orlando, and other Calon, primarily as temporary collateral since
it was still being paid off. This was the second time that Diego had it.
Other clients used pre-dated cheques as collateral. Clients who borrowed
small sums for short periods, if they used collateral, would pawn DVD
players or even perfume. Mostly, however, collateral would not be involved
at all. The poorest clients sometimes exchanged their Bolsa Família cards
for cash with agiotas. However, Calon in Santaluz, unlike the local non-
Gypsy agiotas, did not often lend money to such clients. This is because
these clients borrowed very small sums; Calon, despite their pronounce-
ments, would normally, albeit reluctantly, agree to renegotiate the interest
or even accept defaults if clients could not meet their obligations.2
Generally speaking, most clients have some sort of stable income—
they are predominantly teachers, other state employees, or retired people
living on a contributory pension. Majority of them come from among
lower middle-classes, especially those belonging to the so-called middle
class C, an emerging middle class. This is an intermediate class, the
members of which have profited from the expansion of formal employ-
ment and rising wages of the 2000s, and especially from their incorpora-
tion into the mass consumer market through ‘financial inclusion’.
Although they had escaped poverty, they would struggle to maintain
their newly acquired status. As argued in the introduction, while there is
some continuity with the past when Calon sold animals to farmers and
fazendeiros on credit, the rise of the Cigano moneylending niche has to
be understood within this context of the financialisation of daily life in
the Bahian interior—the expanding offer of consumer credit and a

related diversification of household consumption. Seen from this point
of view, then, Ciganos are one of many credit institutions within a range
of institutions existing in Bahia today—some of them traditional and
‘native’, others novel, formal, and emerging as a result of state policies,
such as the creation of consigned credit or microfinance schemes for
Bolsa Família recipients. Individuals manipulate and navigate these insti-
tutions depending on their position, their interests, and their needs.
These developments have also influenced the way local politics is con-
ducted and have altered the nature of social relations, especially those of
political patronage. In the story above, Kiko originally went to Parnamirim
because his biggest debtor there, who owed him R$2000 in interest
alone, was avoiding paying him. The problem was resolved a week later,
after the town’s mayor intervened and guaranteed that the debtor would
repay the debt. Otherwise, Kiko could have taken the client’s mules—the
deal to which the mayor was a witness. Indeed, some of Kiko’s and
Orlando’s clients in Parnamirim had been given jobs in the town hall
after the most recent election, which in turn made them more creditable.
Similarly, a bank manager in Volta Redonda explained to me that
‘Ciganos are in the town hall every day’. Although an exaggeration, the
statement reflected the fact that Barão, a Calon strongman in Volta
Redonda, had an especially good name in the town hall. The mayor had
borrowed from him to pay some salaries of municipal employees. In
other words, many rich Calon lend money to local politicians, and this
tendency has intensified as a result of an increased demand for cash in the
Bahian interior. Today, candidates have to resort to short-term clien-
telism, sometimes literally to buy votes with cash, rather than rely on
long-term relationships of patronage that were presented in the language
of kinship and long-term reciprocities (also Ansell 2010). Just like every-
body else struggling to navigate various financial obligations and respon-
sibilities—the salaries of their clients, development work, their personal
debts and instalment plans—politicians too rely on various sources of
income and credit. Diego’s Chevrolet, financed by a losing vice-mayor of
Muritiba and which he passed to Orlando as part of a loan payment, was
one such example. In more dramatic cases, federal transfers (verba) are
used to pay loans from agiotas, primarily non-Gypsy ones.
160 M. Fotta
‘Ciganos Have Many People in Hand’

The 2008 municipal elections in Santaluz saw three serious candidates for
mayor. Two of them came from established families that had alternated
in the mayoral office for decades, and the biggest tensions were between
factions of these two contenders. One Saturday evening, after the rallies
finished and people converged in the town centre, a large fight broke out
between the two blocks. From a nearby bar, where I was with Rogério
Maluco, a non-Gypsy friend we had in common turned to Rogério
Maluco and commented accusingly, ‘The confusion is entirely your fault.’
When Rogério Maluco asked him what he meant, the friend—who
supported the Workers’ Party candidate, a third serious contender, but
only privately as he depended on a job from the current mayor—rephrased
it. It was the fault of Ciganos: ‘The candidates need to win in order to pay
off their debt [dívidas] [to Ciganos].’
As far as I know, Calon had not lent money to mayoral candidates that
year and were divided amongst themselves on whom to vote for. At one
point there was a Workers’ Party flag raised on a pole in the middle of the
tent camp, with the banner of another candidate hanging from Orlando’s
house. In a nearby town, Calon complained to me of their alienation
from politics. Politicians did not even come to ask for votes from them
because they were afraid to be seen as ‘eating from the hand of Ciganos’.
The direct influence of Ciganos on local politics was exaggerated by many
people, including my friend, especially given the weak position of Ciganos
in the local community and perceptions of them as not belonging to any
faction beyond any immediate interests.
Moreover, other sources of funding are available: apart from party
funding, the non-Gypsy agiotas dominate the moneylending business in
Bahia, and a bank manager in Santaluz was fired for a large, but irregular,
loan made to a brother of one of the main contenders in the run-up to the
elections. What interests me here, however, is what such comments reveal.
There is a sense that Ciganos are somehow profiting from confusion, ani-
mosities, and a collapse of order that accompany political contests, which
become particularly visible in liminal moments such as the evenings after
political rallies during a local campaign period. I will return to this point
in the epilogues. Here I only want to point out that this view emerges
from an established folk image of Ciganos as tricksters (Ferrari 2006; see

also Piasere 2011). Similarly to mythical tricksters, who subvert predatory
relationships in a way that brings them gain without becoming either
predator or prey (Hyde 2008), Ciganos are seen as manipulating alli-
ances, structures (e.g. of political competition), and relationships (espe-
cially of hierarchy) while seemingly escaping them, which they achieve, in
the eyes of non-elites, through colluding with those more powerful. For
instance, during the period of slavery in Brazil, some Ciganos were
involved in local slave trade, while Cigano spells were sought out when
looking for runaway slaves. At the same time, however, Ciganos were
accused of supplying quilombos (maroon communities) with weapons
and animals, of kidnapping freemen and selling them into slavery, and of
buying children stolen by runaway slaves from their former masters in
ex-slaves’ acts of revenge; an anonymous letter to the chief of police in Rio
de Janeiro from 1834 stated that one such gang of Ciganos accused of
slave thefts was ‘protected by persons of high esteem’ (Soares 1988: 86).
This history is still to be written, but it must be stated that the role of
Ciganos was marginal to the system, but, and this is the point, Ciganos
were relatively identifiable. What interests me is the ambiguous image of
Ciganos as it emerges within the crucible of the Brazilian slavery: while in
many ways Ciganos served as the systems’ conduits, they were also seen as
short-circuiting the pathways that the powers-that-be needed to keep
morally and ideologically separated and in so doing threatened to subvert
its hierarchies and expose its contradictions.3
Today, in the eyes of many Bahians, Ciganos profit from existing eco-
nomic order by deflecting established—and even desired—flows without
being caught within these arrangements’ predations and hierarchies.
Ciganos tap into flows of money originating in the state or utilise formali-
ties that define relationships, but seemingly avoid having to deal with the
negative consequences of financialised debt, even profiting from failures
of others within this system. Let’s look again at the case of the man from
Parnamirim who almost borrowed from Viviane. He had to deal with the
demands made by the court that interfered in the way he managed his
parental obligations—he had been ordered to pay alimony for his two
daughters. Viviane offered R$900, which he would repay by giving her
three monthly salary cheques, but as she did not have enough cash, she
162 M. Fotta
suggested giving him R$600 on the spot in exchange for two monthly
cheques. The next day, the man could come and pick up another R$300
from her husband Orlando and the loan would be extended for another
month—three months in total as the Juron had wanted. Her reasoning
was clear, but the man seemed unconvinced. Although the rate was the
same, he seemed to worry whether there was a catch in the delay. So when
Viviane refused to consider her son’s offer to take the money from him, a
suggestion that Romero had foolishly made in front of all of us, the client
decided not to borrow and decided instead to come back the next day.
Most Bahians consider Ciganos cold, single-mindedly money-loving,
masters of artifice, and potentially violent. This is not a mere popular
view, but stabilises a Simmelian ‘social form’ (Simmel 1972) within which
some interactions are marked by historically layered continuities despite
the fact that the ‘content’ of these interactions has shifted from animal
dealers to moneylenders. Facing this ambiguity, sometimes people visit
Ciganos after dark so nobody can see them, and most people would claim
that for them, Ciganos are a source of credit only as a last resort. This is a
normative view, since in reality many people use Ciganos as just another
source of money and of potential profit and do not wait to approach
Ciganos only when all else fails. Thus, they can end up taking a loan from
a bank or a financeira to pay their debt to Ciganos, that is, in the opposite
order. Clients know that as long as they have some property or income,
Ciganos generally do not ask for collateral or demand paperwork.
Shopkeepers also hired Ciganos as cobradores (debt collectors). For
them, it was preferable to recover at least a portion of their money than
to pass along the names of their debtors to SPC or Serasa—credit refer-
ence agencies—and lose the money anyway. In Santaluz, poorer Calon
would usually make money in this way, collecting sums between R$30
and R$100 for smaller shopkeepers for a commission of usually 20 per
cent. This way, José made about R$10 to R$15 on days when he was
asked to collect debts. His strategy was to sit in front of debtors’ houses,
often for hours, until they paid at least part of it or arranged a payment
plan. Generally this worked, as people felt intimidated and shamed.
Stories that commonly circulate about Cigano cobradores speak of Cigano
wilful behaviour: a group of them would invite themselves into some-
body’s living room and either sit there without doing any harm until an
agreement was reached, or they would start emptying the house of its
furniture. In general, however, Ciganos are marginal to this business—a

major recognised category of cobradores are policemen, who are hired to
recover especially high debts.
In sum, people of varied social background borrow money from
Ciganos. Just like those of any agiota, their Cigano loans are considered
exploitative, and Ciganos are seen as calculating and not a part of ‘famil-
ial’ relations of patronage, godparenthood, or affinity. This places them in
an ambiguous position at the threshold between regimes of value: between
the ‘traditional’, or local, one, on the one hand, and one where the state
is the ultimate guarantee and origin of value, on the other. The equivoca-
tion from which Ciganos are seen to profit therefore emerged from within
a changing distribution regime which has been accompanied by changes
in the sources and flows of wealth and in which the state plays a more
central role. Although some shopkeepers’ debtors threatened José with
justiça (court), he argued that they could not complain to the police
about him since he had promissory notes from shopkeepers; the value of
these notes is backed up by the state power.4 At the same time, hiring
cobradores or even selling their customers’ debts to others allows shop-
keepers to continue selling fiado, ‘on credit’, to their neighbours (viz-
inhos), friends (amigos), and even co-godparents (cumpadres), while
recovering at least part of their money, which they normally badly need.
The setup, then, by confirming an ethnic distance, also recreates the ideal
of local, non-Gypsy sociability to which Ciganos appear external despite
their centennial presence in the region. Nevertheless, the slippage between
differing regimes of value is a constant potential; in order to do business,
Calon need to constantly recreate their separation from Jurons. This is
because the warmth, friendship, and consideration that clients demand
from Ciganos who live in their town might end up redefining the mean-
ing of any loan and thus threaten the capability of Calon to make money
through the niche threshold.
How Calon Manage Loans to Jurons

One day, Orlando and I were talking to old Augusto and his youngest son
in a camp in Alto de Bela Vista, where the latter lived when a Juron boy
came looking for Augusto’s oldest son. The boy explained that his father,
164 M. Fotta
who was an administrator at a nearby farm, had sent him to tell Augusto’s
oldest son to come and collect some animals.
Augusto told the boy to tell his father that tomorrow they would ‘send
somebody’ to pick up the animals.
Augusto’s youngest son felt, or so it seemed to me, that he should say
something too, and he added, ‘Good. Tell your father that I will come for
the animals tomorrow’.
‘No. Don’t go. Send somebody.’ Orlando, who had been quiet until
then, restated old Augusto’s point. Switching to Calon Romani so the
Juron boy would not understand, he explained to the young Calon that it
was not good when Jurons saw Ciganos as they went around collecting
animals.
‘We will send somebody tomorrow.’ Augusto dismissed the boy.
Calon are aware of the moral distance that separates them as Ciganos
from others in the folk discourse and feel the need to remain aware of
how their actions are seen by non-Gypsies and act accordingly. Augusto’s
youngest son did not seem to fully appreciate this fact. But, as shown by
the skirmish during the mayoral campaign described above, Ciganos are
readily blamed for profiting from adverse situations. Even people who
otherwise interact daily with Ciganos often see them as primarily inter-
ested in money and not to be trusted even when they call themselves
‘friends’. Although this image of Ciganos, which draws on established
tropes and stereotypes, certainly exists, and it can prove useful when
collecting money, its functioning is far from automatic and it has to be
managed: Ciganos have to constantly construct their loans as ‘imper-
sonal business’ (Hart 2005). They do so through, for instance, the utili-
sation of technologies that the state created in order to shape the internal
market and stimulate consumption—by using promissory notes and
cheques or withholding of bank cards—or through more mundane
means, such as through insinuations of violence. This is because loans,
due to their deferred liquidation, invite other interpretations over time
and thus threaten to turn into relations other than exchange. Clients
would frequently try to elicit sympathy for their situation or suggest
that, in fact, the relationship between them and specific Cigano mon-
eylenders was of a different kind. For their part, Calon sometimes
embraced such suggestions and were, for instance, lenient and
even generous towards their long-term clients or neighbours. More

often, though, they would reject such suggestions outright. This is what
Viviane did when a man wanted to borrow money from Orlando, but
ended up borrowing it from her:
Orlando, Kiko, Romero, and I were sitting in the backyard of Orlando’s
house eating breakfast when Viviane walked in from the garage and
leaned on the table. ‘That sick man [who came looking for Orlando the
day before] who wants to borrow is here.’ Since Orlando was not inter-
ested in lending a small sum to a relative stranger, he replied, ‘Tell him I
don’t have any money’. Smoking slowly, he was contemplating the game
yesterday in which he won R$5000.
As she was leaving, Viviane hesitated, then turned around to face her
husband. ‘He wants 200, doesn’t he? I’ll lend him that.’ She put her hand
into her purse, to take money out very but very slowly, eyeing Orlando’s
reaction.
‘We don’t even know where he lives’, Orlando pointed out. Otherwise,
however, he did not object forcefully—he could have just ordered her not
to lend him the money.
‘He is a pal of João from the shop Preço Bom. And he says he lives on
Rua da Lama’, answered Viviane, pointing towards the borders of the
neighbourhood.
‘Call him in.’
A moment later Viviane returned alone, saying that the man was scared
of their pit bull running around the garage. The man would not enter it
for anything.
Meanwhile, Kiko had joined the man in the garage. ‘Give it to him for
30 percent’, Orlando told Viviane as she was leaving again. Soon Orlando
followed her and, with a friendly air, offered the man a chair.
Viviane, who did not know how to write, handed a promissory note to
Kiko to fill in. ‘It will be for 300 for 30 days.’
‘Cut off 20 Reais’, pleaded the man.
‘Today is the fifth…’
‘Cut off 20’, the man repeated.
‘What shall I put on the note?’ asked Kiko.
The man gave his name.
‘And where will I find you?’ enquired Orlando.
166 M. Fotta
‘Ask around for Ery, the car mechanic. Everybody knows me there [on
Rua da Lama].’ He again asked Viviane to discount R$20 and repeated
several times that if he did not have to, he would not be borrowing the
money, but he needed to go to a doctor with his son.
Viviane responded that she would not give him money for free and
added tersely, ‘I would not give you the money, even if you told me that
you had a pain in your head’. Nevertheless, ignoring the man, she told
Kiko to put R$280 on the note.
When the Juron left, Orlando complained to Kiko so that Viviane,
making lunch, could overhear him: ‘Your mother does not want to earn
more when she can. Whenever I earn a bit, I buy bread; when a bit more,
I also buy butter; and when even more, I buy cheese.’
As this story reveals, a loan-making interaction between a Calon and a
Juron client involves establishing the nature of the relations between the
two. On the one hand, there is a constant danger of this exchange slip-
ping into other reciprocities. When the man tried to justify his loan,
Viviane retorted quickly that she would not lend him money even if he
told her that he had a pain in his head. Although a stupid comment in
hindsight, she was rejecting any suggestions of personalised concern—
she was neither his friend nor his patron and was not interested in his
wellbeing. Ultimately though, to the dismay of her husband, she softened
and gave the client the discount he asked for. But she did so without a
verbal acknowledgement of the man’s plea.
We can also imagine the impression the man received walking into
Orlando’s and Viviane’s house—the huge house of the most renowned
Cigano in Santaluz, with an untrained pit bull running around; this
ferocious-looking dog disturbed most people, Calon or not. Orlando also
cultivated his own assertive, but not violent, image. Whenever he negoti-
ated, he switched between terse questioning and a friendly and benevo-
lent manner: in this case, he took his time in coming and talking to the
man, but then offered the Juron a chair and was very friendly. He asked
him a few details about his life, but otherwise was present through his
silent, superior withdrawal from the transaction.
Other techniques Calon men use to manage distance in such interac-
tions include supporting one another in negotiating with a Juron client;
switching to Calon Romani among themselves and thus shutting a Juron
out of the conversation; or calling a client gajão/gajin, a term non-Gypsies

recognise as what Ciganos call them. In all of these ways—which consti-
tute the character of empréstimos, loans—Calon recreate their clientele as
‘Juron-borrowers’. The two terms cannot be separated, as they arise from
the ontological premise of Calon sociality: interactions with Jurons reflect
a specific morality, and in this way Calon forge their own place in the
world. As we have already seen, this requires detachment and distancia-
tion from Jurons despite Calon enmeshment with—and dependence
on—them. As Calon men mature, they are encouraged to socialise pri-
marily with other Calon, a process that culminates in the founding of
their households and a consequent intensification of their exchange
relationships.
Ultimately, becoming ‘established’ and attaining a ‘grounding’ in life
mean finding a balance between personalism and impersonalism, being
trusted but respected as a Cigano moneylender by Jurons, and, in the eyes
of other Calon, becoming a man who, while making a living interacting
with Jurons, concerns himself primarily with things that truly matter
from the Calon point of view. The comments that Orlando made to Kiko
about Viviane’s deal were therefore not solely about her making less
money. Although the money nominally belonged to Viviane, she could
not go against Orlando’s wishes; indeed, the man had come the day
before, but because Orlando was playing cards, Viviane had told the cli-
ent to come back later. Rather, her discount put the interests of the debtor
before concerns of the household and the need to improve its standing
and thus its future. Viviane’s failure to grab an opportunity to create
more pressure was akin to a lack of trying to provide better kinds of
food—‘butter’ and ‘cheese’ besides ‘bread’—for the enjoyment of her
family and guests.
Creating Clients
Although Juron clients often resorted to the language of trust, Calon
knew that it was necessary to reinforce this trust, and therefore repay-
ment, by other means. Orlando and Viviane knew almost nothing about
‘that sick man’ and ended up relying on the promissory note, on knowing
168 M. Fotta
roughly who the client was and where to find him, and on the intimida-
tion arising from their reputation. Without any previous relationship
with the client, Viviane felt justified in stressing their non-relation and
defining the deal as impersonal. But for the same reason, Orlando thought
that they should have gained more. Such loans to relatively unknown
people are often small, at high interest and for one month, and the client
might never borrow again; in fact, if such clients failed to pay eventually,
Calon usually accepted defaults, although they would keep reminding
the debtor of his or her debt.
It always surprised me how little Calon knew about their clients and
how little they cared to find out. This is true not only of those who came
to borrow small sums, but also of those who borrowed significant
amounts, as we saw in the case of Beto at the beginning of this chapter.
Calon trusted their senses and figured that sooner or later they would
bump into a debtor on the square or in the marketplace. Of course, they
did not always lend the money; on a few occasions, when in doubt, they
would ask other Calon about potential clients. Most of the time, how-
ever, they did not even know clients’ family status. In other cases, trust
was enforced by means other than profiling, such as asking for clients’
CCT or retirement cards as collateral. Sometimes people pawned small
objects. From the Calon point of view, the most reliable clients are either
those who are employed by the state or by a large companies or those
who are receiving contributory retirement. These were also their most
common clients. It should be remembered that the period between 2002
and 2013 saw a rapid spread of formalisation on the job market, along
with the regularisation of economic activities. The formally employed
and pensioners have an option to borrow from other official sources. In
other words, both official and illegal credit institutions rely equally on
clients’ bank accounts, stated guaranteed income or on flows established
through direct intervention of the state in its project of financial inclu-
sion and its effort to expand domestic consumption through stimulating
credit. Normally, Calon would ask these clients to fill in cheques before-
hand or hand over their whole chequebooks or bankcards. In his bed-
room, which stayed locked during the day, Orlando had a plastic jar with
a lid, in which he held clients’ bankcards (and a few Bolsa Família cards)
along with PINs, promissory notes, and chequebooks. Such aggregates—

objectifications of men’s deals ‘on the street’, a sort of personalised hoard
in circulation—remain hidden from sight.
Although the money coming from the withheld cards of state employ-
ees brought more stable and secure income, bigger and riskier loans were
what excited Calon men and established their reputations. Here, politi-
cians, employers, the self-employed, fazendeiros (landowners), and those
who could demonstrate solvency borrowed larger sums. But although
Orlando sometimes ended up with a key to a small house, a new motor-
cycle in his garage, or a gun (given either as a payment or as a guarantee),
most of the time garantias never changed hands. Not infrequently, clients
seeking such loans were turned down: when they were complete strang-
ers, the garantia seemed insufficient, or a person already possessed a bad
reputation. Thanks to the large sums these deals brought, the dates of
their repayment influenced the timing of social events, such as wedding
dates or relocations. Nevertheless, it was precisely these types of clients
that, in a similarly spectacular fashion, threatened to bring financial and
social ruin to individual moneylenders.
This ruin is in part caused by another tendency. In order to ‘establish’
oneself, one needs to develop what Leonardo Piasere (1985: 143–46)
called capital gağicăń o, social capital in, or among, non-Gypsies. One of
the most common ways to create long-term clients was to collect only the
interest and to dissuade them from borrowing from other Ciganos. When
Kiko moved from Alto de Bela Vista to Muritiba, Orlando advised him
to hang on to a good client in Alto, who had borrowed R$1000 for
R$1700 in two months, and to collect only the interest. In this manner,
over the course of their lives men build a network of clients dispersed
throughout their home ranges. Thanks to mobile phones, cars, and
cheques, retaining these dispersed customers is even easier now than it
was in the past. In most cases, good clients are those who are reliable and
who repeatedly borrow larger sums of money. Sometimes they are often
richer and more powerful than Calon lenders themselves, and enforcing
such loans and enticing payments require a great deal of effort.
On his move to Muritiba in 2010 from Alto de Bela Vista, Kiko
explained to me how he was going to build up his clientele. He often
170 M. Fotta
walked down the street, sat around in the square, or visited a local bar,
and everywhere he greeted people enthusiastically, making himself visi-
ble. ‘Next week, I am going to tell him [the bar owner] that I am a
Cigano and I have money to lend.’ Apparently they always refused at
first, ‘but they always come and borrow the next day. You will see, when
you come next, this guy’—he pointed at the bar-owner—‘is going to owe
me money.’ Eventually, the bar owner turned Kiko down, but by August,
he had a few clients in Muritiba. Although he would receive individual
payments at different times, Kiko explained that his money in circulation
(de giro)—that is, his loans plus interest—was R$21,200, according to
him (see Table 5.1). That did not include the Bolsa Família payment his
wife received and two other benefit cards totalling around R$700 per
month, which he owned ‘for life’—he bought a Bolsa Família card a few
years ago from his aunt, which would expire the next year, and received a
retirement benefit card from his father, who had bought it from another
Calon.
To summarise, although Calon moneylenders mobilised the image of
Ciganos as ruthless tricksters, Calon men and their wives constantly had
to work hard to keep their business ‘impersonal’ and to prevent loans
from turning into other forms of relationships. Generally speaking, there
were two types of customers: on the one hand, there were those with a
Table 5.1 Kiko’s debtors two months after moving to Muritiba

Person Amount to be received Town
Juron R$1350 Parnamirim (K. lived in nearby
Santaluz until August 2009)
Cigano R$1450 Alto de Bela Vista (K. lived there
(brother-in-law) between March and July 2010)
Cigano R$1300 Alto de Bela Vista
Juron R$1700 Alto de Bela Vista
Juron R$1400 Muritiba
Juron R$2500 Muritiba
Cigano R$3900 Boa Vista, near Muritiba
Cigano (father) R$4000 Muritiba
Ciganos (various R$600 Various towns
deals)
Cash at home R$3000
TOTAL R$21,200 Four localities
guaranteed income, because they were either employed or receiving some

sort of a state transfer; they borrowed small sums, but at a relatively high
30 per cent interest, usually for consumption. More desirable, however,
were larger and more spectacular deals, which brought large, single, abso-
lute sums and affected one’s reputation. Since these depended on trust as
well as on the violent image of the Cigano, they could also bring ruin.
‘Running After the Money’

In Table 5.1, the two largest sums—both around R$4000—were owed to
Kiko by other Calon men. This is because young men—or, more gener-
ally, those who are ‘weak’ (fracos) and have only a few deals—prefer to
lend larger sums for longer periods of time to other Calon, if possible. In
daily conversations, as a way to create pressure and highlight what kind
of behaviour is appropriate, they would swear never to lend to Calon
again because they were not honourable like the Ciganos of yesteryear;
however, such men have good reasons for lending to powerful Calon.
Although loans to Jurons bring greater profits, they also require more
effort. This was the case with a loan that Kiko had made to a woman in
Santaluz, which she avoided repaying; I do not blame her, since she was
paying a lot of money on the accumulated interest.
One day in November 2010, Orlando, who was living in São Gabriel
at the time, arranged to meet Diego, his middleman, at a gas station in
Santaluz. Diego walked towards Orlando’s window and rather hastily
handed him a wad of money; apparently it was R$600 in total for
Orlando, Romero, and Kiko, who was still in prison. As Orlando com-
plained that it was all bundled up together, Diego took the money and
passed R$100 to Romero, who was sitting next to me on the back seat,
and explained what the rest of the money was for.
As he was leaving, Orlando told Diego to stop by the house of a high
school teacher, Kiko’s client. Incidentally, I had visited that teacher with
Kiko before in February 2009. She had owed R$500 at a monthly inter-
est of R$150. By that time she had already paid R$450 for accumulated
interest and arranged with Kiko to pay another R$450 in April 2009, but
without paying off the principal.
172 M. Fotta
I had lost track of what had happened in the meantime, so I decided

to go with Diego to the teacher’s house. When she came out and Diego
told her that he had come to collect Kiko’s money, she feigned ignorance
of what he was talking about at first, maybe due to my presence. Diego
told her to hold on while he called Orlando to ask about the details.
While he was trying to call Orlando, he continued to explain to the
teacher that Orlando had told him to stop by and collect the money. The
teacher finally said that before Kiko was imprisoned, she had agreed with
him that she would pay everything in December. It was clear to Diego,
and even to me, that she was not being completely sincere, but we left.
If among Calon men, at least in ideology, it is a point of honour to pay
without probing, with Jurons such behaviour cannot be automatically
assumed. Rather, moneylenders have to run after the money, correr atrás
do dinheiro. They prefer to set due dates just after paydays and to come
early in the morning of the due date before debtors can leave their houses;
at ten in the morning, they are often ready to play cards. But often they
need to try several times—like poor Wanderlei, who returned four times
by bus to a town about 50 kilometres away to collect a few hundred,
always without success. At other times, it was rather tragicomic to
encounter poor Calon couples searching for their clients up and down
the town.
Men have to remember their dates, since unless deals with Jurons are
particularly spectacular, no details are known by other Calon; even in the
case of such loans, men always withhold some details. The only ones who
more or less know about men’s deals are members of their close families,
an aspect which—as we will see in the following chapter—is revealing of
the way Calon moneymaking activities are institutionalised. Generally
speaking, wives, sons, and fathers know about each other’s deals and
remind each other’s clients of their dues whenever they meet them by
accident. Sometimes, fathers and sons collect debts for each other,
although they do not share the profit or pay each other a commission.
Despite this, men often fail, and clients, who are initially welcomed as
about to bring large profits, avoid paying for years or pay only in part. We
have already seen several examples of this throughout this book. Paulo—
one of the poorest Calon in Santaluz in 2008, who had virtually no cli-
ents, but lived with his wife on her retirement benefit—had to concede
one R$300 loan to be paid in instalments of R$20–40 sums, but only

whenever the client had money. It took the client two whole years to pay
off the principal, and she never paid any interest. In other words, making
money was not as simple as Calon wished; all Calon lost money to bad
loans and had to accept defaults (tomar callote). Some of the reasons for
this can be found in their generally nonchalant attitude to information
and especially their desire to create long-term clients, a project that relies
heavily on trust. In the example above involving the teacher, for a loan of
R$500 she had paid Kiko R$900 in interest over the eight months while
Kiko still lived in Santaluz. As soon as the situation changed and Kiko
was imprisoned, however, she decided to renege on her debt. Resisting
payments, clients often decide to stop paying the interest, attempt to
renegotiate the terms, or even refuse to pay outright. Despite their collec-
tive notoriety and individual reputations, there is very little most men
can do about it, and the relatively frequent burning of Calon settlements
by mobs is a constant reminder of their fragile social position.
Consider Adair, who had lived in Alto de Bela Vista for a decade. In
October 2009, he seemed satisfied and confident. He had just killed a
bull to celebrate his return from Bom Jesus da Lapa, a pilgrimage site in
the Bahian interior. Some years earlier, he had made a votive promise
(promessa) to the Virgin to go there every year and was convinced that
this was the reason why his economic situation was improving. A week
later, however, his contentment was gone. I met him at his brother
Nelson’s house; he was quiet and hardly touched the food his sister-in-
law put in front of him. He was anxious about what to do about one of
his debts: the debtor had given him a cheque for R$8500, but it had
turned out to be worthless. That day, he had arrived earlier to see the
client and talk about it, but the man had gone to Feira de Santana to
buy cattle.
Nelson suggested that maybe the cheque was invalid. This would
not have been surprising, since this is what clients frequently do—
they call their banks to say that their cheques with such and such
numbers are lost. This has no consequences in relation to their bank,
unlike passing bad cheques—that is, writing cheques without having
sufficient funds in their accounts, which might lead to their bank
accounts being blocked and, theoretically, even to criminal fraud
174 M. Fotta
charges. Bad cheques often result from writing one or more pre-dated
(predatados) cheques in exchange for a loan, which is then cashed too
early, although this is an extremely unlikely situation, as it damages
the moneylender’s reputation. More likely pattern was one in which
clients do not have sufficient funds by the time of repayment, despite
their intentions at the time when they exchanged the cheques for a
loan. It is my impression that over the years, and especially after Brazil
entered economic recession, the first option became more prominent,
while at the height of financial inclusion—when banks had been
competing for clients and money seemed everywhere, as some put
it—debtors also paid with bad cheques, but banks usually did not
draw any consequences from it.
In the case of Adair’s client, however, the cheque was neither cancelled,
nor expired, nor bad: ‘It is missing one signature’, Adair explained. ‘I was
in the bank and the manager told me that the man had money in his
account, but one signature was missing. He [the manager] wrote a code
22 on the cheque, which means that it is missing a signature.’ As it was a
company cheque, it apparently needed two signatures.
Adair handed me the cheque. He also handed another one to me worth
R$1000. It was dated for the 18th—ten days ago. The ‘11’ written on it
meant that the cheque was sem fundo, ‘without [sufficient] funds’—a bad
cheque.
‘If I had to kill for every unpaid debt, I would have more than fifty
crimes on my back [nas costas].’ I looked at him, puzzled. ‘Seriously’, he
reiterated.
‘We should be more violent’, said his nephew, who also lived in Alto
de Bela Vista and today was accompanying Adair, ‘so people fear us’.
Nobody said anything to that.
The whole afternoon, most of which we spent at the marketplace,
Adair was distraught. ‘What will I do with it? How can I solve this?’ he
repeated over and over. ‘Every day I spend 50 just to come here to São
Gabriel. I spend a lot of money.’
‘If you don’t spend, you don’t gain’, Nelson remarked, trying to calm
his brother down.
‘Yes’, agreed Adair, ‘but the prazo was Monday. Then I returned on
Tuesday. Then I had to come back on Wednesday. Today is Thursday.
And tomorrow Friday.’ He tried to call the client, but his phone was out
of range. ‘What will I do now?’ he continued in his lament.
* * *
R$8500 was not a trifling sum; the official minimum salary that year was
R$465. Such large deals often represent a large proportion of a man’s
capital. When they go well, by adding to one’s fame as well as to one’s
estimated worth, they increase one’s standing and efficacy as a Calon
man. But when they go badly, they hamper his capability to meet other
arrangements, such as payments to other Calon, and thus threaten his
name and thus his future. In the previous chapter, we saw how Nelson
described Pancho as ‘dead’, morto, in the discussion with Adair. Nelson’s
assessment was based on his knowledge about Pancho’s economic situa-
tion. Pancho had had a lot of money in the past, which he wasted in cards
and bad deals—basically, he lent money and waited too long to recover
the principal. The debtors did not pay him the whole accumulated inter-
est, but because they tied up his money, he also could not lend it out
further. Around this time, Pancho complained to me about his more
recent deals, ‘The people from here have stolen from me. Did not pay the
money’. When I asked him to clarify, he explained, ‘The man in
Parnamirim owed me 18.000 Reais. He gave me a van that I sold for
3,000’.
‘Yes, I remember the van’, I confirmed.
‘And another one in São Gabriel owed me 5,000 but paid only 1,000.’
‘And will they return the money?’ I asked.
‘They will not’, Pancho answered.
‘But why don’t you take a motorcycle from them or something?’ I
asked.
‘They do not have anything’, he explained, adding, ‘This is why I
accepted 1,000 rather than losing everything’.
‘But why did you lend to people that do not have money?’ I asked.
‘But they had [money]. One of them lost a job, and another, I don’t
know, maybe he is hiding it from me, but he has no money.’
Still other clients threatened to take Pancho to court for usury. It is
through such deals, and the knowledge of them by other Calon, that
176 M. Fotta
Pancho became, in their eyes, dead—an unlucky person who is not

expected to be able to create new large deals and should not lend large
sums of money. Even more distressingly for Pancho and his wife, his
older daughter was at the age to marry soon, but without money to pay
for the dowry and wedding costs, she had little prospect of finding a rich
groom.
This brings us back to the central theme of this book, namely, how
moneylending is not solely about a way of making a living, but a way of
making a life. Moneymaking is underlined by a specific sociological
directionality, so to say, which articulates with the Calon view of how
people gain attributes of social persons and how their society is repro-
duced. Making loans to Jurons is built on and makes visible other rela-
tions. For instance, empréstimos to Jurons are explicitly contrasted to rolos
among Calon and wives play a much central role, sometimes even lend-
ing money themselves, which brings to the focus households as principal
economic units. Also, empréstimos not only bring monetary gains (and
losses), but reorder the social space of each individual, since the loans are
incorporated into Calon sociality and influence the character of exchanges
between Calon men. All of this becomes reflected in the ways Calon
understand their integration into local economies, to which we turn in
the following chapter.
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 Família 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 ‘mysteri-
ous’ 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.
Chapter 6 Moneylending Niche
As Householding
‘Ciganos Do Not Work’

The Calon of Bahia whom I know do not work for wages. Both Calon
and Jurons held the same opinion: Ciganos live a life of deals, such as buy-
ing, selling, and especially moneylending. In Bahia, these are referred to
as negócios (business, trade), berganhas or breganhas (deals, transactions),
or rolos (shakeups, disturbances); in Minas Gerais they go by the regional
term of catira (swap, negotiation). To be more specific, Calon of Bahia do
not work for somebody else if they do not have to, and an emprego fixo
(stable employment) is not ideologically valorised. This is a pattern also
reported in ethnographies of Brazilian Calon from the states of Ceará
(Silva 2014), São Paulo (Ferrari 2010: 35–36), and Minas Gerais (Campos
2015: 49–50). Throughout the years, I only encountered a few Calon
men who received payments for their work: there were a handful of poor
men who very occasionally worked for pay as day-labourers, two rich and
strong men who received remuneration as elected town councillors, and
one who worked in a part-time and flexible position for the municipality.
For all of them, however, moneylending remained the main occupation.

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_7
180 M. Fotta
In addition to them, there was a Baptist pastor who received a salary from
church and gave up moneylending and a university professor who mar-
ried a Jurin and does not live in a Calon settlement.
This last man saw differences between his Juron employment and his
brothers’ ‘Cigano’ mode of making a living and, more broadly, how social
relations and identities are structured in relation to economic practices.
As he explained to me, and I paraphrase here, ‘When I tell my brothers
that I earn 10,000 Reais a month, they tell me that in one good deal they
can make 10,000 but then do not have to work for the rest of the month
if they do not want to.’ He would also frequently express his incredulity
and even annoyance over the fact that his brothers and nephews thought
little about parting with objects—a new car that one week would be
praised as the best there was would be sold readily the next. Anything—
even a house one lived in—seemed to be able to return to circulation.
There are differences, however, between what Jurons and Calon meant
when they said that ‘Ciganos do not work [trabalhar]’. The former would
normally go on to highlight a Cigano love of money, aptitude for negotia-
tions, and capacity to gain benefits through deception. In this rendering,
Ciganos stood outside the world of productive work associated with either
agriculture or employment.1 When Calon talked about their deals, on the
other hand, they presented themselves as living thanks to their efforts and
put forward the image of Calon men attuned to their surroundings. There
are at least three levels to the latter’s view. First, it reconstitutes a difference
between Ciganos and Brasileiros. Second, and related, it expresses the ideal
of deal-making as conducted by autonomous Calon men who take care of
their family thanks to their skills and acumen. Implicit in all of this, and
dependent on it, is a third level, which recognises that acquiring attributes
associated with Calon masculine personhood through moneymaking
depends on the existence of community—of which households are central
structuring nodes—as people whose opinion matters. As a rule, there is a
constant circulation of comment and gossip throughout Calon settle-
ments about deals various men (and, infrequently, also women) have.
Through this, knowledge of people’s overall wealth—in circulation, in
property, and in bank accounts—and what large deals they are involved
in—whether witnessed or heard about—becomes an aspect of their social
position and standing within a given network. The extent of this knowl-
edge—which, depending on social distance, can be more or less exact or
purely speculative—retraces the extent of people’s communities and, in
turn, gives rise to a context within which individual behaviour is evalu-
ated (Fotta 2017). This community, within which status becomes realised
and name and reputation circulate, is not given, but built up through
exchange and other relationships.
In sum, for Calon, men’s moneylending—currently the predominant
form of deal-making—is not only a way to make a living, but materialises
out of a form of life—a vida do Cigano. Lending money to Jurons is a
form of economic interaction through which a community can maintain
its sovereignty and distance while obtaining subsistence necessary for its
reproduction. Loans to Jurons combine with other sorts of debts and
shape persons’ creditworthiness, which becomes objectified in house-
holds, in relationships between households, or in the spatiality of settle-
ments. As this book has shown, particularly in Chap. 4 and Chap. 5,
moneylending has to be analysed in its relation to other obligations and
flows in terms of its pragmatic effects, that is, how productive capacities
of credit and debt organise people in time and space (Peebles 2010).
Moneylending is therefore not only an exploitation of opportunities
existing in the ‘surrounding’ ‘majority’ society—a dualistic view that sep-
arates Calon lifeworld from it—but an interstice that belongs to its socio-
economic milieu, but on which Calon confer their own characteristics
and meanings.
Building from the insights of the previous chapters, this chapter
will suggest a comparative framework for analysing Ciganos-as-credit-
providers as a historically and culturally contingent niche. It gener-
alises this niche as a form of economic integration. It reconsiders
relationships between money, households, the proactive stance of men
as husbands, and the variety of deals they get involved in, arguing that
Calon moneylending as a form of integration into the current Brazilian
economy should not be approached as that of individuals into a soci-
ety in a modern sense, but as a form of householding. It argues that
this view is consistent with ethnographic data on Romani communi-
ties elsewhere.
182 M. Fotta
Householding Mode of Integration

For Judith Okely (1983: 53), the history of English Gypsies is also ‘the
history of their refusal to be proletarised’. The Gypsies’ preference for
self-employment has become a boundary-marker between themselves
and non-Gypsies, although the content and form their activities take and
the ways this boundary is asserted differ according to context (Okely
1979). Similarly, according to Leonardo Piasere (1985), for the Slovensko
Roma in Italy an autonomous mode of making a living is central to their
cultural survival, since employment—individual-based and guided by
specific rules, orientations, and relations—brings with it the threat of
their absorption into the non-Roma world. Qualifying these conclusions
somewhat, Michael Stewart (1997) finds that for the Hungarian Rom,
who at the time of his fieldwork in the 1980s were fully employed in
factories, wage work has not become a privileged site for their identifica-
tion. Rather, in their social philosophy, they highlight romani butji, ‘Rom
work’ or ‘Rom trades’—a concept that covers a range of economic prac-
tices and that celebrates the Rom capability of gaining wealth through
intelligence and skill.
What all three classic ethnographies capture is a sense of unease of
these communities with, and even ideological oppositions to, the domi-
nant world of waged work. This socio-cosmological attitude becomes an
important mechanism by which Romani claim distinctiveness and assert
their cultural independence. This does not mean that Romanies do not
recognise the necessity of productive activity or do not find pleasure in it
(e.g. Olivera 2016). Rather, they object to normalising and moralising the
productivist ethic of the ‘work society’ (Weeks 2011) from the position of
those on the margins of societies who have been accused and persecuted
over the centuries for allegedly being work-shy. But it would be a mistake
to remain only at the level of discourse or ideology. The above ethnogra-
phies clearly demonstrate that, because Romanies’ refusal is a refusal to
naturalise the social role of wage work, structure their relations around it,
and reconfigure subjectivities and social identities around abstract work
ethics, any analysis must explore the social world to which their economic
activities belong. More precisely, if autonomous moneymaking is what is
valorised within a particular Romani community, the focus should not be
on individual exchange relations that could be reduced to the dynamics of

profit and opportunism, but rather on the conjunction of practices and
the view of the world enacted by it.
This is probably most vividly captured in Stewart’s (1997) ethnogra-
phy, in which he argues that Hungarian Roms’ view of work has been
shaped by their centuries-long interaction with Hungarian peasants and
confrontation with their work ethics. The economic ‘exchanges’ with
non-Gypsies that Rom particularly value are those in which they domi-
nate the former verbally. In so doing, they reverse everyday social hierar-
chies between themselves and non-Gypsies. But the same object—say, a
horse—is exchanged following a different logic when the deal is between
two Rom men. These transactions are configured as forms of ‘swaps’
between equals that are based on trust and respect. The contrast between
an exchange as capture between a Rom and a non-Gypsy, on the one
hand, and exchange as reciprocal giving between two Rom, on the other,
thus recreates a moral boundary between two sets of peoples. But it would
be wrong to stay at this level of ethnic boundary. As Stewart argues, a
Rom sees his success as contingent on a proper relationship to others,
especially with his wife. In addition, once exchanges are concluded, a
Rom man is expected to be generous with the money he earned through,
for instance, buying drinks for merrymaking in his settlement, where,
according to the Rom ideology, all men are his ‘brothers’. In other words,
no horse trader would be able to claim his ‘Gypsyness’ fully, to show
himself as a ‘true Gypsy’, if he based his claim only on individualised
Romani descent, so to say, or on in manipulating an ethnic marker within
the context of a dyadic exchange involving a non-Gypsy, but failed to
perform his proper membership in a Rom household and community.
Piasere’s (1985) account also highlights how the cultural survival of the
Roma in Italy depends on two sets of relations: exchange of women and
food among Roma, on the one hand, and exchange of goods and services
with non-Roma, on the other. These two processes are distinct but mutu-
ally constitutive. Put somewhat bluntly, since the Roma live in the midst
of non-Roma, from whom they obtain food and money that circulate
within the community, they have to enter into exchange relationships
with them. These relationships range from predatory ones, in which
Roma give nothing for non-Roma goods, to those viewed positively by
184 M. Fotta
non-Roma, that is, exchanging goods, services, or labour for other goods.
The latter becomes a basis for what Piasere calls capital gağicăń o: good
relations with influential non-Roma (gaĝe) that are essential for the Roma
to live within a non-Roma territory (Piasere 1985: 143–46; see also
Solimene 2016: 114–15). This capital can be inherited, passed on, and
also bolstered—through godparenthood between Roma and non-Roma,
for instance. Non-Roma are the source of income, while space for Roma
reproduction is created through exchange relationships with them. Roma
community life is anchored in, and enabled through, assimilating a non-
Roma milieu in its orbit, which in turn might instigate changes in
Romani socio-cultural organisation (Gropper 1991: 56).
There are striking similarities between the pictures provided by the
above ethnographies and the Calon moneylending niche described
throughout this book. Previous chapters have discussed how households
are central to men’s claims of autonomy; how households can only be
seen in relation to other households; or how similar transactions are dif-
ferentiated. In discourse, at least, a Calon man treats deals with his Calon
peers differently not only from loans he makes to Jurons, but also from
those that he makes to his close family or those who inhabit the same
settlement and may or may not be members of his close family.
Transactions differ in the relationship between transactors, modality of
exchange, and objects exchanged (Robbins and Akin 1999: 10). Even
though all are ‘loans’, formally speaking, they are distinguished, among
other ways, by their size, enforcement, and moral evaluation; they are
described by distinct terms—not all of them are called empréstimos (deals)
and not all are seen as rolos (swaps, deals); sums are repaid and due dates
are established differently; and juros, interest, qualitatively differ and are
not always a rate. They also differ in how a central identification of trans-
actors is constructed. For instance, from a Calon viewpoint in exchanges
with Jurons household unit takes a much more prominent role and wives
can become actively involved, while among Calon men, women’s influ-
ence is downplayed and even opposed.
I want to suggest, that similarities in the logic of economic practices
between geographically distant Romani communities to which I alluded
above are not incidental. They speak of a shared mode in which these
communities are incorporated into their respective local economies as
‘Gypsies’, if you will, since from the point of view of local non-Gypsies,
what marks them as different are their ‘Gypsy-like’ economic practices,
including their refusal to be employed in the same manner as a normative
‘everybody else’—to sell their labour as individuals, to treat work as the
source of dignity, to see the education of children primarily as the prepa-
ration of individuals for the labour market, to exploit their living time,
and so on. At the same time, similarities across various national contexts
also highlight analogous processes through which Romanies assimilate
local economies. This demands that exchanges within communities and
with non-Romanies are approached not only as a matter of morality and
boundary creation, since, as Rena Gropper (1991: 56) argued long ago,
‘boundary maintenence [sic] ordinarily is not a full time job’, but rather
as pertaining to a particular institutional arrangement through which the
vida do Cigano as a form of relating, accountability, and dwelling in the
world is reproduced within the world dominated by non-Gypsies.
Following Chris Gregory (2009), we could speak of a distinct pattern
of integration—a ‘non-institutionalised householding’.2 The model that
Gregory provides is explicitly Polanyian; that is, it is concerned with a
form through which production and distribution are organised in each
society, but with one caveat: householding, as we will see, is organised
around modes of exchange that reflect specific values, and it (probably)
never integrated entire economic regions or economies in their totality
(Dale 2010: 118). Precisely for these reasons, however, it becomes a form
of economic insertion of spatially non-contiguous or diasporic commu-
nities that depend on exchange relations with majority societies, which
see them as ‘outsiders’ or ‘strangers’ and from which these communities
maintain their difference at the same time.
Gregory begins his analysis by pondering what happened to the prin-
ciple of ‘householding’ in the writings of Karl Polanyi. He first observes
that in The Great Transformation (1957b [1944]), Polanyi suggests four
general principles of economic behaviour: ‘reciprocity’, ‘redistribution’,
‘householding’, and ‘money-making’. In his later writings, Polanyi
(1957a) recasts ‘money-making’ as a specific type of ‘exchange’ and elab-
orates three ‘forms of integration’. ‘Householding’ disappears and
becomes subsumed under ‘redistribution’. Gregory argues that this hap-
pens because the model of householding was not general enough—
186 M. Fotta
according to Polanyi, an autarkic form of householding emerged, only

with the more advanced level of agriculture, but dissolved in the era when
markets became dominant.
Gregory (2009: 143) questions Polanyi’s conclusions and suggests that
just as ‘exchange’ as a principle of behaviour is not restricted to the era of
self-regulating markets, ‘householding’ as a principle of behaviour does
not need to depend on an autarkic form of peasant proprietorship and
can exist within today’s market economy (although—and this is what
Gregory does not delve into—this does not resolve the issue that ‘house-
holding’ as he develops it is ultimately maintained by exchanges, reci-
procity, and long-term prestations). Because such householding is
embedded within the market as the dominant mechanism of integration,
its form has to remain ‘non-institutionalised’. To be more specific, the
institutions that it depends on cannot be approached as transcending
individual lives in a socio-centric manner.3 They cannot become petri-
fied, and their boundaries remain fluid and dependent on day-to-day
transactions. Ethnographically, Gregory bases his argument on the
example of the middle Indian ‘brotherhood’, which he shows to be a
dualistic system that divides the world into ‘brothers’ and ‘others’.
‘Brothers’ in this system consist at the bare minimum of one’s kindred
group, a sibling group, but people can be added through various pro-
cesses. Taken together, a conglomerate of those who can be potentially
appended or estranged (ibid.: 151) creates an ‘us’ versus ‘rest of the world’
division. This sort of arrangement does not produce stability and unity,
but it is nevertheless guided by values and motives of its own, which
straddle market as well as non-market domains. This is particularly visi-
ble in the case of distinct modalities of exchange—the focus of this chap-
ter. As Gregory argues, with one’s kindred, one ‘shares’; with ‘others’, who
can under certain circumstances become one’s brothers, one ‘reciprocates’
or ‘gives’ to; from ‘the rest of the world’, one ‘takes’ (ibid.)
These observations are applicable to Calon as well as many other
Romani communities (see also Brazzabeni et al. 2016a; Gmelch 1986).
Hungarian Rom have a developed egalitarian ideology of brotherhood,
whereby all male inhabitants of one’s community are talked about as one’s
‘brothers’, although the concept also refers to members of a particular
extended family (Stewart 1997). Calon do not have an explicit discourse
that captures cultural aspirations towards a cohesive community gov-

erned by rules of masculine equality and sociability; quite the contrary
(see also Gay y Blasco 1999). Calon view their world as inhabited by
potentially dangerous Jurons and Ciganos, and violence on the horizon
limits day-to-day interactions. Nevertheless, we have seen that, when
traced through men, settlements are composed by patrigroups, such as
households of siblings (mainly brothers, but also brothers-in-law) and
their children (married or unmarried), or households of a father and his
sons (married or unmarried) and sons-in-law—which can live alone or
with other patrigroups. Even if close relatives (parentes) do not live in one
settlement, they are expected to support each other in conflict. The term
turma can refer, depending on circumstances, to all the people who camp
together or to one such extended family; the latter can be also talked
about as specific people, povo, associated with a particular man—such as
‘Iran’s people’. It must be highlighted that these entities are not automatic
reflections of kinship and do not refer to pre-existing units. Rather, they
need to be made visible by cohabitation, visits, support in feuding, work
of mourning, or exchange relationships. These relationships are laden
with specific meanings and values; as a consequence, the boundaries of
arrangements are not fixed. Conversely, as this book has amply docu-
mented, dyadic relations and social configurations frequently change
although the overall character remains unchanged.
One last point could be added here. As Gregory (2009: 146) observes,
when such overlapping kindreds with elastic boundaries are viewed from
the perspective of society as a whole, this conglomerate can seem as an
amorphous ethnic group—non-Romani Brazilians, as well as Calon
under certain circumstances (such as when talking to government repre-
sentatives), speak of—or for—all Ciganos. However, no such entity
appears from within, as it were—where família or parentes to one are
Gregory’s ‘others’ to another, where one’s família de inimigos are often
former kin members and where, by rule, enemies used to be close enough
(settlement co-residents, potential affines, or collegas) and so on. But this
is what makes them all Calon.
While exploring Calon householding as a form of economic integra-
tion, this chapter will return to themes discussed in the preceding chap-
ters—households, husbands and wives, movement and settlement,
188 M. Fotta
various forms of exchanges and kinship relations. It highlights the fact

that an analysis of Calon integration into the Bahian economic world
should not be approached through individuals, which is a starting point
for liberal analyses of economic practices as well as for dominant forms of
labour market integration and exclusion, but through households.
Households, however, are not some meta-individuals; rather, as the
householding model highlights, they are a matrix of relationships through
which transformation and adaptation occur—they are nodes of circula-
tion. Any Calon household is a relational entity that exists only in its
specific life-cycle moment—itself a realisation of its history and of its
opening up towards a specific future, such as children’s marriages—and
in relation to other households: to one’s patrigroup (‘people’), one’s settle-
ment’s turma, one’s family (that might live elsewhere), one’s partner’s
(husband’s or wife’s) relatives, other Calon in other settlements, deceased
Ciganos, Jurons. Relatedly, one’s rancho should not be seen as an exclusive
space of one’s household, but a mode of emplacement that is fabricated
and maintained through distinct sort of economic relationships.
Husband-and-Wife Nexus
Orlando, his sons Kiko and Romero; his nephew Rogério Maluco; and I
were in the backyard of Orlando’s house in Santaluz. The men were
attending to fighting cockerels and Viviane was cooking lunch when a
member of the Santaluz town council arrived. He followed Orlando into
the house so that they could have some privacy. When they reappeared a
few minutes later, Orlando was visibly angry. ‘I will go and ask him if he
still wants to continue to fool me [enrolar]’, he commented and stormed
out of the house. We followed him to the gate in an attempt to see what
would happen, but he left in his car without a word, followed by the
councillor on a motorcycle.
While Orlando was gone, an unfamiliar Juron arrived. He was in his
late 60s, bald, thin, and well dressed. He explained that a clerk at Bradesco
Bank recommended that he borrow money from Orlando. Viviane told
him to wait and that her husband would come back soon; Kiko offered
him some coffee. For about 15 minutes he sat quietly behind us by the
wall while we ate lunch at the table in the middle of the room.
When Orlando finally returned, he was not pleased to see someone in
his house. Viviane explained that the man had come to borrow money,
only R$200. Orlando turned to the man, asking him whether he came to
borrow money—he had to speak up, as the man was slightly deaf.
The man started to explain that he lived in Parnamirim on such-and-
such street; that he owned a house; that he was retired and used to live in
Salvador, but had recently moved back to Parnamirim, his native town.
He began to drop the names of people that they both might know and
said that he had come only because ‘Elena at Bradesco’ had told him that
‘I should go to Orlando Cigano, he will lend me money’.
Orlando did not seem interested, and he was still angry. He was cold,
but not rude: ‘I will be straight with you. I don’t know you at all, I have
never seen your house … Do you have cheques?’
The man clearly wanted to borrow, and it seemed to be his first experi-
ence with a moneylender. Stressed out and intimidated, he took out not
only a Bradesco chequebook, but also his various cards, explaining that
he was retired and every month he received a retirement benefit.
Orlando cut him short. ‘But o senhor knows that it will be 200 for 400
[per month].’
The man stared in incomprehension and stammered that he did not
know, and that it was too much. He turned to leave.
Loudly enough so that Orlando—but not the man—would hear him,
Kiko remarked critically to Viviane, his mother, that it had been clear
from the beginning that his father did not want to lend to the man.
Viviane turned to her husband. ‘Lend him the money; you can see he is
direto [honest].’
‘But we are talking about caden [‘money’, in Calon Romani] here’,
snapped Orlando, and started adding rice and meat to the bowl of beans
that Viviane had handed to him. Both Kiko and Viviane tried to con-
vince Orlando to lend to the man, but he was adamant.
The man was already in the garage, leaving the house, when Kiko
stopped him to tell him that he would lend him the money: ‘200 for 300,
can be?’ The man agreed.
190 M. Fotta
‘If he does not pay, I am going to cut his ear off’, murmured Orlando
as he ate. By this point, Kiko was dictating to the man what information
he should write on the cheque that Kiko would cash in one month’s time,
while Viviane was getting R$200 from the inside of the house.
* * *
The story reveals clearly that in exchanges with Jurons, cooperation within
the household and between related Calon plays an important role. In
deals between two Calon men, households were pushed to the back-
ground and third parties were criticised for interfering. If the client had
been a Calon, Orlando’s refusal would not only have been much more
careful. He would probably also have stressed his respect for the Calon
and his desire to enter into a transaction, but admit a lack of available
funds. This would be the end of it; nobody would say anything else about
the topic. At the same time, the Calon would not be allowed to sit in the
same room with other Calon while they ate without being offered food
himself.
Loans to Jurons follow a different logic. In this particular case, both
Viviane and Kiko tried to change Orlando’s mind; they challenged his
opinion. It was obvious to them that the client was honest and was will-
ing to exchange pre-dated cheques for urgent cash, and that Orlando did
not want to deal with him because he was angry and the sum was not
interesting. The rate for small loans to unknown clients is more or less
standard: essentially, it is a 50 per cent interest rate (100 for 150, 200 for
300, and so on) to be paid on the same day one month later.
Viviane got involved in the transaction—she talked to the man and tried
to convince her husband. Admittedly, Viviane was more involved in
Orlando’s deals than other women in the region; his relatives complained
that he did only what she wanted. This was more a matter of degree, how-
ever. Everybody in town knew Orlando and where to find him; after all the
man in the episode above was sent to Orlando’s house by a bankclerk after
he had failed to obtain credit in the bank. As a consequence, most of his
deals were conducted at home in Viviane’s presence. In Santaluz, apart from
Djalma, the strongman, who would be visited in the camp, most men hung
around the marketplace, making themselves visible, or looked for clients
while their wives remained at home. Nevertheless, when collecting debts,

especially from difficult clients, they sometimes turned to their wives for
help. I often met Calon couples—and even women alone—looking for
their husbands’ debtors. Admittedly, when men (especially richer ones)
went to negotiate (or enforce) deals that involved a lot of money and
promised to bring large returns, they would normally be accompanied by
their adult sons or, less regularly, by brothers or adult nephews.
Nevertheless, it is taken for granted that whenever wives are present,
which happens when deals are concluded at home, they might get
involved. It is also generally accepted that they might be the only ones to
know the details of their husbands’ deals. This is not a rule and I knew
households where wives knew and cared little for husbands’ deals. The
point here is that their involvement in exchanges with Jurons is not a
target of opprobrium and that, relatedly, in these deals men represent
more or less explicitly their households’ interests, rather than presenting
themselves as autonomous individuals.
In other words, a Calon household is, besides being a nexus of conju-
gal obligations, a common wife-husband enterprise. It differs from the
casas of Bahians of modest means in that it is a project that ideally syn-
chronises domesticity, fertility (and family life cycle), and economic
improvement. Clearly, a household’s place in the world depends on its
initial conditions, its capital, and its place within the Calon network—
the size of the dowry, the strength of the husband’s (and also wife’s) father
and family and the help he offers the couple, and so on. But the house-
hold’s status changes with further developments, including interruptions
caused by conflict. A household’s life within Calon sociality unfolds inti-
mately tied to its relationship with, and position among, Jurons. Ideally,
a household’s increasing wealth and social status is accompanied by the
maturing of children and is demonstrated in the latter’s marriages.
At the same time, it would be too crude to speak of a household as if
it were an entity, rather than a mode of relating. Let’s look again at the
above episode. Not only did Viviane and Kiko attempt to openly con-
vince Orlando, something they would not do if he were dealing with
another Calon, but the whole scene was observed by other two persons
apart from me: Orlando’s younger son, Romero; and his nephew, Rogério
Maluco. While Rogério, who lived in the tent camp in Santaluz, was
192 M. Fotta
extremely poor and depended on Orlando and Viviane for subsistence, it

was also true that these four men supported each other to best of their
abilities. Kiko often asked Orlando for advice; Orlando sometimes bor-
rowed money from his sons in order to lend it further so both would
gain; Rogério Maluco often accompanied Kiko or Orlando in debt col-
lecting; and so on. In this case, Viviane decided to lend money to the
client after the grumpy Orlando refused to do so. This money was ‘hers’,
but it was not merely her pocket money—a part of it would be given to
Romero a year or so later when he married. Since she could not write, it
was Kiko who organised the promissory note. After observing them, a
grumbling Orlando ultimately, although grossly, showed his involvement
in, and support for, his family and its material interests, by declaring
what he would do if the man did not pay the debt.
In other words, it is not clear what the economic unit is here.
Householding, as a mode of integration in Gregory’s sense, does not sepa-
rate the domestic and public spheres in the same manner as other forms.
Rather, it is through making relationships visible that its values, which
straddle domestic and economic spheres, become confirmed. Support,
sharing, and overlapping—although not necessarily identical—interests
bring into being what Gregory calls ‘us’: Calon households, families, or
patrigroups, depending on the situation; this mode of integration is ‘us-
centric’ (Gregory 2009: 151). These relations depend on, and are con-
trasted with, other relations that involve either ‘others’, that is, other
Calon, or ‘the rest of the world’, that is, Jurons.
Being the Cigano in a Town

Although making money by lending it to Jurons is a responsibility of each
adult married man, it is also embedded in other relationships. Men who
live in the same settlement ask each other about particular Jurons—if they
know the Jurons, what their reputation is, and so on. It is also understood
that a man cannot take another’s client, although there are Jurons who
borrow from several Calon. Whenever a client visits a Calon in the settle-
ment, other Calon present support the deal if necessary. At the same
time, however, people complain when there are too many Ciganos in a
specific locality, and making a living becomes difficult. In addition, on

most occasions Calon men strike deals alone, outside of their settle-
ments—only sometimes are they accompanied by others, usually family
members. In general, they remain indefinite and ambiguous about the
identity of their clients and especially about the nature of deals. When
asked directly, which is seldom the case, Calon men respond vaguely, say-
ing that the deal involved ‘a Juron over there on the street’, for instance,
and commonly exaggerate or downplay sums involved.
Sons are generally an exception to this secretiveness. From an early
age, they accompany their fathers on business rounds—not on a regu-
lar basis, as they have to go to school, but often enough to observe and
learn. Fathers also pass clients along to their sons or accompany them
whenever the clients turned out to be atrapalhados; as we have already
seen, when fathers die, their clients and money—even that which is
tied up in loans—are inherited by their sons. Fathers and sons, or
groups of brothers, sometimes pool money or collect outstanding debts
for each other.
After abandoning Santaluz in 2009 and living in various locations in
São Gabriel, Orlando and Viviane bought a house in Massagueira in
2012 and moved there. On the property they started constructing a
house for Romero, who was about to marry. Orlando was excited about
Massagueira—in this small town there were no Ciganos. When I asked
him whether he was planning to invite his relatives who used to live on
his plot in São Gabriel, he winked at me, ‘Am I going to bring my com-
petição [competition] here?’ Santaluz, where most of his customers still
lived in 2012, is only 25 minutes away by car. Parnamirim, where there
were no Ciganos either, is only about 30 minutes—Orlando had a good
standing there too and his deals were managed mostly by his middleman,
Diego. Orlando had built a good reputation among Jurons, but he was
unwilling to use this as a base to forge the position of a strongman for
himself (see Fotta 2016b). Nevertheless, although he preferred to avoid
his relatives’ competition, gaze, and demands and hoped to support his
two sons, he could not totally escape his obligations towards them.
Between 2008 and 2018, there were times when other relatives lived in a
settlement with him, and his nephews often asked him for loans or offered
him deals which he accepted because he felt he should help them.
194 M. Fotta
At first, Kiko was not living with Orlando and Romero in Massagueira.
After his release from prison in 2011, he had moved to Alto de Bela Vista
to live with his wife Paula’s family. They lived there until he got into a
conflict with his in-laws, and in a panic Paula called Orlando. Orlando,
Viviane, and I drove about 90 kilometres to pick them up. On our return
journey to Massagueira, Orlando explained to his son that it was better
than Alto de Bela Vista: there were no Ciganos, the biggest non-Gypsy
agiota in the area had been imprisoned recently (for drug trafficking), and
although only one month had passed since he had moved into the town,
people apparently already knew that ‘there are Ciganos living in
Massagueira’ and came to borrow money; a local corretor (realtor, broker)
offered 10 per cent for loans he would arrange. As if to prove his point or
in order to help his son with the transition, the following day Orlando
gave Kiko a retirement benefit card which had been ‘sold’ to him by
another Calon. This provided Kiko with a new steady monthly income.
Massagueira is a small and economically marginal municipality subdi-
vided into six districts—12,000 inhabitants occupy 70 square kilometres.
Such small towns are normally dominated by one Calon moneylender,
accompanied by the households of his closest family or other related
households. These would form one—albeit not always contiguous—set-
tlement. Unrelated Calon are hesitant to move to such towns; indeed,
they have few reasons to move there, since it would mean building up
their reputation among potential clients while distinguishing themselves
in some ways from the Calon already residing there who would try to
undermine their efforts—a very delicate affair, even if attempted. In big-
ger towns there are often several settlements of different sizes and occupy-
ing different neighbourhoods, or, at the very least, different streets within
neighbourhoods. Although there is no fixed rule and no enforcement of
territoriality, a new household settles in any settlement only when invited
by some of its inhabitants and when a strongman endorses it or cannot
effectively oppose it.
The overall shape of any settlement—which, of course, when seen
more broadly, only represents a segment of a network—is not given. In
2012, Orlando did not want to invite his relatives to join him in
Massagueira, even though at the end of 2009 he had invited his two sis-
ters’ and their children’s households to join him on a plot in São Gabriel—
they lived there while he was constructing two houses into which he was
planning to move with his son. He never finished the houses, instead
selling a plot and moving with his younger son, Romero, to Massagueira.
When Kiko joined his father and brother in Massagueira, he had differ-
ent ideas: in part, he hoped to improve his own position by having at least
some of his cousins live in the town, which would change the settlement’s
dynamics. The tensions that began with his imprisonment—between him-
self and Paula, on the one side, and Orlando and Viviane, on the other—
had continued; they were the reasons why he had been living in Alto de
Bela Vista until then. Whenever he met his cousins, he would tell them
that Massagueira was a good place with many opportunities. He was not
worried about their competition, he told me, since they were ‘weak’ (fracos)
and ‘afraid to lend to Brasileiros’, so they lent only to Ciganos. However,
his cousins and aunts had their own reasons to remain in São Gabriel.
All of the above only elaborates upon the rancho-centricity of Calon
socio-political organisation which we discussed in Chap. 1. We saw then
that varied combinations of tents and houses—each occupied by a nuclear
family—compose settlements that emerge around strongmen. People refer
to their abodes as their ranchos. For Calon, a rancho—which in Portuguese
denotes variously a camp, a modest rural habitat, or food served commu-
nally to a group of people working or walking towards one common goal—
enfolds into it, from one’s point of view one’s conjugal relationship, one’s
settlement as a space of specific relationships (of kinship, support, sharing,
and so on) as well as relations outside of the settlement. One’s own place in
the local economy—one’s niche, if you will—therefore depends not only
on the moneymaking opportunities that any town presents, that is, on
exchange relationships with Jurons. Rather, it emerges from within relation-
ships internal to Calon sociality and is stabilised though a variety of rela-
tionships with other Calon. These relationships depend on and motivate
exchanges with Jurons both discursively, as a source of moral contrast, and
materially, as a source of money and objects that circulate among Calon.
Values of Householding
A few days after he moved to Massagueira, Kiko agreed that it would be
a good place to live. Its contours began to come into focus for him
through exchange and other relationships and circulations. While he
196 M. Fotta
maintained a few clients in Alto de Bela Vista, he immediately started to

build up his clientele in Massagueira. He and Paula contrasted the two
towns: in Alto de Bela Vista, as Paula put it, her family ‘had turned their
backs on them’ despite the fact that Kiko had always been helpful. They
complained that Paula’s older brother, who dominated the settlement in
Alto de Bela Vista along with her uncle, never ‘helped’ him. Although
Kiko did not own a car, her brother never offered to take him by car to a
neighbouring town in order to go to the Saturday market. Kiko had to
take public transport to get his family’s weekly groceries. The tensions
increased when Kiko did not lend her older brother, who wanted to buy
a car, R$2000 and explained to him that he had lent all the money he had
to a Juron. The brother-in-law did not believe him. The only person with
whom Kiko got along was his younger brother-in-law, but when the lat-
ter got into a conflict with Paula’s cousin, who also lived in the s ettlement,
and Kiko was indirectly blamed, both Kiko’s and his younger brother-in-
law’s households had to leave.
Kiko’s and Paula’s reflections reveal that it is relations that make a place
a good place. ‘When you are smart, you can double you money in one
year’, Kiko confidently explained to me while describing how he would
find new clients in Massagueira. But a vision of good deals with Jurons is
only one aspect of a good place. There was the support, either direct or
indirect, that Orlando was offering to his son’s family. This contrasted
with the disinterest of Paula’s relatives in the family’s wellbeing and the
breakdown of trust between Kiko and his older brother-in-law. When
exchanges—such as an empréstimo to a Juron, a rolo with another Calon,
or a small sum lent to another to buy weekly groceries—are viewed indi-
vidually, they appear similar; they are money given in an expectation of
future larger payment. On the other hand, as we have seen in the last two
chapters, they are not the same. They differ according to rationale, typical
sums, due dates, and relationships between the parties they inscribe.
Different exchanges are also constitutive of distinct spatial and temporal
dimensions.
No exchanges take place with enemies or unknown Ciganos, both of
whom are avoided. On the other end of the spectrum, small subsistence
loans characterise daily life in settlements—most inhabitants of settle-
ments are close relatives who get along with each other, and small loans
between them could almost be seen as a form of pooling together that

demonstrates people’s mutual investment in one another’s life projects.
At the same time, people are careful not to suggest dependence or abuse.
Rolos, agonistic deals or swaps, are carried out with known, and some-
times related, men from the same region and are discussed by others.
They create prime performative backgrounds for forging a man’s name
and confirming men’s equality and their autonomy. Help, ajuda, or sup-
port, apoio, is given with the explicit aim to help another party to estab-
lish their household; unlike other deals, they also foster longer-term
reciprocities. People who help each other commonly belong to one patri-
group of cognates, and they would be normally expected to stand up for
one another in conflicts. Small patrigroups (a father and his sons, a group
of brothers, etc.) often also form cores of settlements. Through framing
transactions as ‘help’ and ‘support’, affines also continue to demonstrate
their commitment to each other and confirm relations established
through marriages. These relationships are particularly volatile4 and, as
Kiko’s fallout with his affines shows, one’s refusal or incapability to col-
laborate with or to show support lead to tensions which do not exist in
other types of interactions. Lastly, Calon avoid borrowing from Jurons,
although they might buy things from them on credit. Money between
Jurons and Calon should flow one way, from the former towards the lat-
ter, along the trajectory opened by a loan.
Fathers and sons help different people—their own in-laws and chil-
dren—and have different colegas with whom they play cards. Brothers
and affines might not necessarily live in the same settlement, which does
not prevent the maintenance of relationships of help. While settlements
are more or less clearly demarcated localities, what these various modali-
ties of exchange trace out are not separate spheres of circulation that
could be imagined in a geographical—socio-centric—sense, but indi-
vidualised networks of varied forms of interaction. They are brought
about by one’s effort over time: from a point of view of an individual
man, his place in the world is a collateral creation of his effort to ‘make
the future’, which, as we saw, is always on the horizon and which, as a
process, only ends with death. Individualised domains reflect one’s kin-
ship position, gender, and age, and, especially in the case of men, are
mapped into areas shrouded by one’s reputation—one’s settlement, a
198 M. Fotta
town identified with one’s name, an extension of a community to which

knowledge about one’s behaviour matters. The existence of the multiplic-
ity of exchanges actualises a man’s circumstances and expresses his singu-
larity—his relations with others and his success or failure as a Calon. This
is most visible when, following deaths, men’s debts are forgotten, fridges
and other household objects burnt or sold, and men’s houses and settle-
ments—places that their efforts helped to construct and maintain—
abandoned. Men’s credit dissipates, their names are rarely mentioned,
and, with the passage of time, their unique individualities become sub-
sumed into the characteristics of anonymous Ciganos of the ‘before’
(atrás, antigamente).
In sum, the Calon view of social life, although unfolding within a
Juron-dominated world, is not imagined as an abstract space of social
enclosure carved out from the non-Gypsy world. After all, as we have
already seen in Chap. 1 , settlements do not have identities on their own.
Rather, Calon images of sociality focus on the efforts, circulations, varied
forms of interactions, social expectations, and so on through which a
community, as a multiplicity of those aware of each other as moral beings
(Gay y Blasco 1999: 15), is constituted.
In the area of economic life, as a form of integration by means of
which Calon assimilate to the local economy while managing to remain
Calon, this corresponds to a form of householding in Gregory’s sense
described above. This householding remains embedded in, and depen-
dent on, the broader local economy. Calon do not idealise household
autarky and non-interaction with others. This form of householding is
non-institutionalised, and, as a consequence, the exchanges on which it
depends come with specific motives and values that do not belong strictly
to the ‘economic domain’, however this proper object is defined. Particular
transactions differ in size, character, modality, and the ways in which they
realise relationships between parties. A man supports and cares about his
family or those in his settlement. These are his ‘people’ or turma, in Calon
eyes. He enters into reciprocal exchange relationships with Calon from
one’s home range. Although his proximity of these people varies, he gen-
erally hears about their affairs and deals by means of phone calls, personal
encounters, weddings, and so on. These ‘others’ can become his family
members. Alternatively, these ‘others’ might have co-constituted ‘us’ in
the past, but are now avoided as a result of feuding, for instance. And,
finally, there is ‘the rest of the world’: not only unknown Ciganos, but,
above all, Jurons. Calon attempt to control interactions with the latter
and make money, ideally in an asymmetrical way.
But as we have seen Calon kindred groups and the aggregates they
give rise to are flexible. Rather than reflecting pre-existing boundar-
ies, these entities are maintained through interactions. The character
of people’s networks and of their place in the world (such as the posi-
tion of their tent within their settlement) reflects their social status
and therefore also the moment in life in which they find themselves.
For sake of illustration, let’s resume, for the last time, the shifts cap-
tured in the various episodes in the lives of Orlando’s and Kiko’s
households that have peppered this chapter. Chapters 1 and 2 have
already described the spatial reconfiguration of this extended family
(Fig. 1.2) that occurred after Kiko was imprisoned and Orlando was
forced to leave Santaluz in 2009. In this one, the focus is complemen-
tary, but different. Its purpose is to shed light on how the reorganisa-
tion of this family in space, its moving and settling, is tied to exchange
practices. This is particularly revealing of Calon integration into their
surroundings.
The episode at the beginning of this chapter, from 2009, encountered
Orlando as a rich and established man in Santaluz, with a good reputa-
tion among both Calon and local Jurons. He lived surrounded by his
brother, his wife’s nephew Rogério Maluco, and his older son Kiko, and
he was also supporting them. Among other occurrences, his brother and
Kiko lived in his houses, he was arranging the marriage of his younger son
Romero, and Rogério Maluco spent most of his time at Orlando’s house,
where he also ate lunch virtually every day. Other close relatives lived in
the tent camp in Santaluz and in a settlement in São Gabriel. In 2010,
Orlando ended up constructing houses for himself and Romero on a plot
he bought in São Gabriel in late 2009. He encouraged his two sisters and
their two children—that is, four households—to join him there. When
he and Romero moved to Massagueira in 2012, however, he did not invite
them to come along. Moreover, they were not interested in leaving São
Gabriel, where some of them had lived most of their lives, and they
formed a settlement on their own. Kiko was out of prison, but he did not
200 M. Fotta
move in with his father and brother at first. He and his wife preferred to
live with her brothers and moved to Massagueira only after Kiko got into
a conflict.
The first thing to note is that Orlando never moved alone—at the
point when he was accompanied by the fewest amount of people, he
moved to Massagueira with his son Romero who was about to get mar-
ried; Orlando started constructing a house for the new couple. Second,
settlements—as places not only of co-living, but also of daily sociability,
mutual involvement in the lives of one another, and sharing, and which
emerge around Orlando, who is rich and thus commonly owns the
property on which they exist—are constituted by a changing number of
households that compose them. Movement and rearrangement are not
caused only by dramatic events. Rather, even the composition of seem-
ingly stable settlements changes over time, albeit at different rates. Third,
Orlando did not move in with just any people, but instead with those
who helped him when needed, and who he commonly supported. These
were primarily members of his extended family. Fourth, he never moved
to a small place dominated by another Calon. Fifth, not only was the
movement of his household anchored in kinship and determined by rela-
tionships with other Calon, but also none of the various localities where
he settled were further than 50 kilometres from Santaluz. It was there
that Orlando had virtually all of his clientele.
We can also see how settlement fragmentation and family life cycle are
related. It is interesting to note that unless they are extremely poor, men
with married adult sons do not usually inhabit the same settlements as
their brothers with their married sons, especially if their own fathers are
not alive or strong anymore. What happens more or less is this: as a man’s
sons grow older and his standing increases, he focuses primarily on sup-
porting the households of his sons while simultaneously attempting to
free himself from the demands of his cognates. Although he still ‘helps’
them when needed, this commonly results in his attempt to live in a
settlement on his own, surrounded by his sons and possibly a few rela-
tives. It should be noted here that even when they live in different settle-
ments, visits among close relatives are frequent, and contact between
them via mobile phones is intense. Nevertheless, such sociological ten-
dency is visible in Orlando’s efforts: first to dominate Santaluz with his
sons, and then to move to Massagueira with them. These tendencies are
not expressed as problematic, but rather the contrary: every man is

responsible for making his future and for giving his children their futures
in turn.
At the same time, however, married sons have their own sets of rela-
tives and affines and develop their own client bases—often in different
places than their fathers’, which ultimately leads to divergence in the
interests of fathers and sons. Over the years following their move,
Orlando’s sons—especially Kiko, who avoided Santaluz—created Juron
clients in locations other than Santaluz, where their father had created
his. By 2017, Kiko, on the one hand, and Orlando and Romero, on the
other, ended up living in two different towns: Orlando and Romero close
to Santaluz in Volta Redonda, once again in the same camp with the
families of Orlando’s sisters; and Kiko in São Bento, where he had become
one of the richest Calon. His sociability had shifted once again towards
his brothers-in-law in Alto de Bela Vista, who were not linked to his
father or brother in any way.
Integration Through ‘Money on the Street’

Here lies a paradox: In their discourse, Calon men are individualists.
Especially among other Calon they highlight their individual skills,
valour, and equality with other men. Rolos, as we have seen, are approached
as singular events where scales of valuation are aligned anew and male
reputation and autonomy are put on display. At the same time, however,
such autonomy is anchored in one’s relations with others and requires
transactions with others. Ferrari (2011: 724, emphasis removed) cites one
Calon woman explaining Calon conception of freedom, or, rather,
autonomy: ‘Free is a person who is accompanied, with her family. […] A
Cigana can never be free alone (sozinha).’
On the one hand, the capital—social, economic, cultural, Juron—that
determines the relative starting point and standing of each man (and
woman) depends on others—particularly his (her) parents, wife (husband),
and in-laws, but also on whether or not a person has siblings. In fact, a
moneylender does not enter moneylending business, or the market more
generally, ‘alone’ as an isolated and self-possessed individual, but instead
202 M. Fotta
always does so as a Cigano, a husband (or potential husband), and thus

somebody’s son, son-in-law, affine, and so on. On the other hand, every
time a man demonstrates his autonomy and equality with other men—
or, as discussed in Chap. 3, when other Calon men acknowledge that
they are ‘talking to a Cigano’—his life is revealed to be, and thus becomes,
entangled with those of others and dependent on them. This is particu-
larly true when entering into exchange relationships. I have suggested
that the multiplicity of exchanges can be seen as a mechanism of enchain-
ment through which people’s future comportment and relatedness in an
unstable environment become secured. This can be put slightly differ-
ently: every extension of the present moment, through a temporal jump
into the future via a deferred payment, co-creates an environment within
which people’s actions are evaluated. As a consequence, while Calon men
are autonomous individuals, they are not free in a liberal sense. Their
autonomy resides in a recreation of a sovereign space of accountability
within which the meaning, motivation, truthfulness, and worth of peo-
ple’s acts can be evaluated according to a logic that is separate from that
of a non-Gypsy majority. By means of concluding this chapter, let us
refocus on individual men and on the world they fabricate and maintain
through their actions. We will do so by looking at moneymaking in the
strictest sense—on how specific sums create individuals’ ecologies.
We have seen in Chap. 2 that a man’s extraneous activities are given struc-
ture and meaning by his wife and household. The materiality of the domes-
tic space, which originates with his wife’s dowry, is the base from which he
interacts with the wider world. Dowry money, his ‘wife’s money’, which is
variously intermingled and differentiated with ‘his own’ money, an out-
growth of his father’s care, serves to finance his activities. Most of the money
gained in transactions is reinvested in further deals, although a man also
aims to improve the material quality of his household over his life, which
demonstrates his improving status. In turn, his management of money
becomes the basis for the future households of his children. We could say,
therefore, that money serves as a technology of sociality among the Calon
thanks to its capacity to expand and stabilise people’s place in the world.
Exchanges make relationships, and continued commitment to Calon
morality, visible. They do so primarily by means of differentiated treatment
between parties in transactions. In the process, through exchange
relations’ sedimentation, feedback interaction, repetition, contrast, and

so on, Calon interactional spaces—families, settlements, networks, and
so on—emerge.
When a man dies, the furniture from his dwelling is destroyed or sold;
his house is sold, tent burnt, settlement abandoned. Effectively, the sin-
gular space—premised on his household and thus his wife—he had cre-
ated through interacting with others disappears. Importantly, however,
his money—his cash, money obtained from the sale of his possessions
that were not destroyed, and his money in loans (future-dated pay-
ments)—is inherited by his sons, just like his Juron clients themselves. It
is as if money had always already been there—with his parents and
parents-in-law, other Calon, and, ultimately, with Jurons—and was to
remain in circulation even after his death. Nevertheless, just like the
deceased, his sons need to tap into it and personalise it through exchanges
in which they can be involved as legitimate parties. This is what deter-
mines a man’s place in the world: through money, a Calon enters into
relationships with others and gains a reputation—money in circulation
anchors his life. This is meant quite literally: households of strongmen are
less mobile, although they continuously move larger sums, while one’s
strength depends on how grounded, or supported, apoiado, one’s life is.
If money is a tool, specifically masculine tool, of stabilisation of peo-
ple’s lifeworlds, this stabilisation occurs not through the multiplication
and aggregation of morally differentiated dyadic exchange relations, but
through the reconstitution of what Calon sometimes called ‘money on
the street’, dinheiro na rua (Fotta 2017). Every transaction becomes
indexed to this totality composed of man’s money in circulation, money
in his name. This whole becomes grounds for evaluation of his actions—a
medium through which his relations to others are made visible and a
background against which his prospective behaviour is being assessed.
Money on the street represents a set of all the money a Calon man can
hope to receive at various points from his existing loans to Jurons and his
deals with other Calon that have resulted in deferred payments. In sum,
there exists a singularised totality which condenses a man’s reputation.
Members of his community hold some idea of this set, as it is consid-
ered potentially knowable: people comment how much a man has in the
204 M. Fotta
bank, in circulation, and on the street, and whether what he says about
his wealth is true. This awareness of people’s money on the street has
already begun with the public character of the dowry a bride brings to the
union and is later constantly approximated through conversations and
rumours, particularly those that concern important deals. It is a specific
but ‘vague whole’ (Verran 2007), and its ‘accuracy’, represented by a
number value in reals, depends on one’s relational closeness. Sons and
wives have a more or less exact knowledge of the sum. Only Orlando’s
family was in the car with him when he declared that he had ‘160,000 on
the street’, although I was told by another Calon that a few years back he
had inherited R$300,000 from his uncle.
It is useful to approach this object as a hoard (Peebles 2014). A man’s
community—that is, people whose opinion matters—emerges in the
process of their behaviour being oriented by, and towards, this hoard. In
exchanges, as a man creates himself as a moral person, he co-ordinately
creates his own environment: his money on the street and his unique
community that deems the existence of the whole as important. In turn,
since money on the street is an object of others’ talk, claims, and desires,
any expenditure—which is always a precise sum—becomes potentially
worth discussing. As a consequence, any expenditure realises an individ-
ual’s community simultaneously with the encompassment of the whole—
a vague but specific summation—by Calon values.
To summarise, as an aggregate of sums payable in future by Jurons
and other Calon, money on the street depends on a man’s actions, while
as a concrete amount it turns transactions into events in which the con-
crete sums detached from it express people’s relationships. These char-
acteristics are premised on the Calon understanding of social personhood
whereby any displacement of a sum from the whole, which ultimately
depends on the existence of the man’s household, merges a man’s actions
with social reproduction—it becomes an instantiation of Caloninity.
As a meshwork of dyadic exchanges, money on the street co-creates,
and maintains, his physical and social place in the world, his commu-
nity. As an inalienable, singularised quantity, it is a source of stability
that allows myriad exchanges to circulate around it and his actions to
become visible.
Georg Simmel (1990 [1900]) has already described such a dual prop-
erty of money—first as a means of exchange, and then as the environ-
ment that makes modern exchange possible, which occurs after relations
between objects have been redefined in terms of relations between mon-
etary sums (see also Holbraad 2005). It is these equivalences, in turn, that
confirm the belonging of exchange partners to their social group (Simmel
1990 [1900]: 178). However, for the Bahian Calon, who do not concep-
tualise of themselves as a transcendent social group and for whom dif-
ferentiation from Jurons is the ontological premise of their socio-cosmology,
such an environment is not transcendent, or, in Simmel’s terms, univer-
sal. It remains personalised, seen in terms of the money each man has ‘on
the street’. In other words, each man creates his own environment through
relating to others, and this environment becomes an aspect of his reputa-
tion. Knowledge about other’s men’s deals is not only a way to assess
men’s liquidity, but also delimits (however fuzzily) their own spheres of
known Calon that can be retraced as the extent of the fame of their
‘hoards’.
When Simmel and other classical sociologists characterised growing
abstraction and universalisation of money as a consequence of money’s
immanent properties, they misrecognised the role of nation-states in the
dynamics they witnessed (see, e.g., Gilbert 2005). They also paid little
attention to the spread of formal banking during this period, when peo-
ple’s monies-in-mattresses were turned into savings by being brought to
local banks, which in turn began to circulate credit—and paper cur-
rency—backed up by this general reserve. This movement entailed the
alienation of individuals’ future-planning to official institutions, rear-
ranged community boundaries, and reoriented subjectivities (Peebles
2008). People experienced themselves as parts of national economies not
only because of their specific nation’s currency, which bound them imagi-
natively through iconography and circulated within national borders,
retracing national communities. Rather, each individual’s relationships of
credit and debt were oriented by a new material whole: the national
reserve.
These dynamics resonate with the processes of banking (bancarização),
financial inclusion (inclusão financeira), and social inclusion through the
206 M. Fotta
market (inclusão social via mercado), by which between 2002 and 2016
financial mechanisms and instruments were expanded to those Brazilians
who did not have access to them until recently, changing social relations
in turn (e.g. Müller 2014). What this book argues, however, is that there
exist Brazilians who, despite their full participation within this economic
system, have domesticated this financialisation and, in so doing, rein-
vented their resilience and separateness from others—they have used
financial inclusion (of individuals) to recreate their separateness as a dis-
tinct community. Calon of Bahia have refused to treat the state as the
final arbiter of value and have refused to tie their future to it, despite
seeking out opportunities within the expanding credit economy. At the
heart of this (often precarious) sovereignty from the future orientation
promoted by the state and the financial market, there lie Calon matrimo-
nial dynamics and an archipelago of singularised inalienable hoards that
become enabled by it—this is what allows Calon to continue to make
their own futures.
Notes
1. This contrasts with the situation in Europe and North America, where
many Romani communities derived significant income from seasonal
agricultural labour or collection of forest produce.
2. My analysis here is influenced also by that of Martin Olivera (2016), who
argued that the organisation of the economic practices of Gabori Roma of
Romania could be understood as the domestic mode of production
(Sahlins 1972). I prefer Gregory’s model of ‘householding’, since it is bet-
ter suited for analysing a form of integration fully embedded in the mar-
ket and for capturing how the flexibility of social arrangements, kinship,
and exchange relate.
One must not conflate householding as a concept used here with
‘house’. In the present case it is applied to people who might prefer living
in tents, do not value ‘house’ as an institution transcending individual
lives, for whom one’s house is not a source of any special emotional attach-
ment and who easily part with physical houses.
3. In ‘The economy as instituted process’ (1957a), Polanyi suggests that
three forms of integration presuppose the existence of specific institutions
and social relations that, in different historical settings, are marked by dif-
ferent modes of their coexistence: thus, ‘reciprocity’ can be associated with
the symmetry of moieties and ‘redistribution’ can depend on the centric-
ity of temple economies, while ‘exchange’ most strongly characterises self-
regulating capitalist markets.
4. Many interpersonal conflicts mentioned in this book involve affines:
Manuel was killed by his sister’s husband Mauro; Beiju and Camarão
killed a man who had come to marry their sister, but who instead killed
their father the night before the wedding; Viviane’s father was killed by
her maternal uncle; and so on.
Epilogue: The Crisis, the Stranger,
and the State
The End of the Cocoa Civilisation

In the late 1980s and 1990s, a cocoa production crisis unfolded in south-
ern Bahia, leading to economic collapse and social and political shifts in
the region. On the eve of the crisis, cocoa constituted 70 per cent of
Bahian exports and Brazil was its second-largest global producer. By the
late 1990s, 250,000 workers had been laid off and 15,000 fazendas
ruined. The reasons were both external (historically low global prices of
cocoa, witches’ broom disease [Moniliophthora perniciosa], and irregular
rainfall) and structural (land speculation, indebtedness, lack of invest-
ment, and landholding structure). As long as landowners and coroneis
(locally dominant oligarchs) kept land, labour, justice, and politics under
control—with the support of violence and corruption—cocoa trees
promised to bring them large fortunes indefinitely. In contrast with self-
contained sugar plantations and ranches, most large cocoa producers
lived in towns, spent a great deal of time in the capital, or travelled to
Europe. They were generally unprepared for the crisis. They had weath-
ered a previous dramatic drop of prices on world markets in 1980 through
loans from banks and export companies or by delaying payments to their

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6_8
210 M. Fotta
workers while suppressing any efforts at unionisation. But prices remained

low, and the region experienced extremely low rainfall in 1986, subse-
quently suffering from the rapid spread of witches’ broom disease within
three years of its first detection in 1989. Producers’ debts became unten-
able. The bust of this export monoculture brought to an abrupt end one
of the most vibrant, luxurious, and often bohemian Brazilian urban
cultures.
Bahian author Euclides Neto captures this period in his 2001 collec-
tion of stories O Tempo É Chegado (The Time Has Come). In the stories, as
in reality, many landowners who cannot face their ruination abandon the
region, go insane, or die. All become impoverished and lose their power;
some turn to other sources of income. In one of Neto’s stories, an elderly
widow, whose daughters used to travel to Europe four times a year but
now sell cheap perfume, and who herself lives in a poor people’s asylum,
recalls ‘those final days’: ‘The burial of her husband, the inventory of
fazendas, the dropping prices of cocoa, the witches’ broom eating the
plantations. The banks, the Ciganos, the cocoa exporters taking the rest.
The gold, platinum, her house, the breeding stock on the farm in Gongoi,
all had gone long before’ (Neto 2001: 24).
A story entitled ‘Os Ciganos’ (‘The Gypsies’) focuses on Nicodemo, a
non-Gypsy who falls in love with a beautiful Cigana, Carmelita, prom-
ised to a Cigano. Nicodemo is one of the few who still has some money.
Besides a large bankrupted estate, parts of which are being repossessed, he
runs several local businesses, including petrol stations and a beer distribu-
tion company: ‘He dominated the town square. Not to mention some
coppers [money] on interest which he never received, precisely because of
the crisis’ (ibid.: 68). As Nicodemo becomes involved with Ciganos (also
referred to as Gajões), he is persuaded, with the help of Carmelita, into
exchanging his ventures for increasingly worthless land that Ciganos
themselves obtain for defaulted loans. At the end of the story, he ends up
dishonoured and with only one-fifth of his original fazenda left, which he
trades for land in the semi-arid hinterland where he then moves.
The motif of trickery and tragic enchantment by a beautiful Gypsy
woman who, moreover, is revealed not to be a Cigana at all—at the end
of the story, she turns out to be an experienced harlot—is no way unique
and draws on tropes that go back to at least the early modern Iberian
Peninsula of Miguel de Cervantes. After all, behind the fervour with

which, in the early eighteenth century, Portuguese King João V tried to
rid the country of Ciganos by deporting them to Brazil, there was said to
be an unhappy love affair with a beautiful Cigana (Donovan 1992: 38).
Neto’s story is of interest, however, since in addition to the altered for-
tunes of the cocoa elites, it outlines other changes, presented as the related
inverse, in the lives of Ciganos: Gypsies change from itinerant traders to
moneylenders. At the beginning of the story, a group of Ciganos—
‘nobodies [pés rapados], almost on the alms, chicken thieves’ (Neto 2001:
67)—arrive in town in a caravan of mules, horses, and donkeys. The
women read palms and the men are involved in petty trade with animals.
They are ‘capable of anything in order to deceive’ (ibid.: 65) and Neto
lists several tricks commonly attributed to Ciganos across the Brazilian
northeast.
This group of Ciganos, however, is soon pushed out by its enemies,
who arrive in the newest cars. They are well fed and dressed, erect spa-
cious tents, and sport golden teeth and thick gold rings. They are inter-
ested in animals or land only when their debtors cannot pay otherwise.
They wheel and deal with cars, but their prime activity is lending money
on interest: ‘Within two months since the arrival of the rich Ciganos, as
they became known, many landowners and traders, previously also
wealthy, took out loans from them, some to pay the workers or even not
to starve. The banks tightened from one side, the sun sapped the plants,
the trees without leaves looked like scrub [caatinga] and, completing the
devastation, the witches’ broom swelled the buds of cocoa trees. The so-
called crisis was known by many, but the oldest ones claimed that there
had never been one like this. The Ciganos have coppers in abundance,
circulated the rumour. Everybody turned to them. The question of life or
death’ (ibid.: 69).
The narrative captures the historical trajectory that I traced in this
book’s introduction, although in Neto’s story it is more dramatic—the
debt crisis of the early 1980s and the structural adjustment reforms that
followed are compounded in the region by locally specific circumstances,
the collapse of cocoa monoculture. Indeed, from my conversations with
a few Calon, it transpired that until the mid-1980s or so, Calon were far-
ing well in southern Bahia. I was told that they were richer than those
212 M. Fotta
living elsewhere—a situation which, despite Neto’s claims, changed as

the whole region became impoverished. As the demand for animals
decreased across the country—more suddenly in southern Bahia due to
the economic collapse—Calon moved to trading with cars and property,
but especially began focusing on lending money on interest. Relatedly,
throughout the Brazilian northeast, Calon abandoned their itinerant life-
style and began to reside in towns for longer or shorter periods of time,
often living in houses. As this book has shown, however, this does not
mean that they became sedentarised in any meaningful sense. Rather,
Calon spatiality is structured according to specific principles that cannot
be reduced to economic expediency. The ideal for one’s household to live
in a ‘grounded’ manner (viver apoiado) does not presuppose fixity. Indeed,
as we have seen, households move for various reasons: because they are
looking for new economic opportunities, because they are bored or sim-
ply their members want to live closer to their kin, or because they have to
deal with unforeseen events. In Neto’s story, the rich Ciganos organise a
wedding ceremony between Carmelita and her betrothed Cigano, which
is attended by the whole town. On the wedding day, the first group of
Ciganos, which Carmelita and her fiancée had abandoned, returns to ‘get
its revenge’ (Neto 2001: 70). Following the shootout, all of the Ciganos
disappear from the town, although they keep returning ‘to collect pay-
ments and take hold of the town and the region as if they were small
banks’ (ibid.: 71).
Are There Strangers in Bahia?

Although in Neto’s stories we encounter rich Ciganos extending credit to
landowners and businessmen only, this book has illustrated that many, if
not most, Ciganos are rather more humble, deal with people from all
strata of the society and often without much profit. While big rolos are
definitely highly valued, only a few Calon men can afford them, and
most deals involve partners of more modest means—today, often those
with stable salaries or pensions. Such customer diversity has always been
the case: travelling through the Brazilian northeast in the mid-nineteenth
century, Felipe Patroni observed that Ciganos ‘entered all kinds of farms
and settlements and maintained commercial relations with people of all

castes, rural and urban, poor and rich’ (1851: 46). We could see this as a
specific manifestation of the ‘stranger phenomenon’ described in Georg
Simmel’s famous essay ‘The Stranger’, first published in German in 1908.
According to Simmel, the stranger—as a formal position that arises from
within a structure of any relationship or community—‘comes into con-
tact, at one time or another, with every individual, but is not organically
connected […] with any single one’ (Simmel 1950: 404). Several scholars
have explored the social incorporation of Gypsies through this essay’s lens
(e.g. Bancroft 1999; Berland and Rao 2004; Bhopal and Myers 2008;
Hadziavdic 2012; Myers 2015; Sigona 2003) and the same assumptions
and modes of problematisation that inform Simmel’s essay are present in
much literature on both Romani and non-Romani Gypsies. This raises a
few interesting questions in relation to the Bahian case presented in the
book.
In Brazil, Ciganos are commonly presented as entering local arrange-
ments from outside, ‘coming from who knows where’ (Neto 2001: 65).
Because the stranger stands apart from social relations seen as character-
istic or dominant in a given social universe, a person in such a position is
able to manipulate money, short-circuit arrangements, arbitrate across
time, and in this way generate new opportunities. For the same reasons,
authorities in Brazil have often decried itinerant traders for frightening
and corrupting the povo (the people), while others have lauded them as
‘agents disseminating civilisation and progress’ who provide respite from
the limiting and exploitative localised relations of hierarchy and power
(Goulart 1967: 71; see also McGrath 2005). These views of the social
position of Ciganos resonate with the observations of Gilberto Freyre,
one of the most famous interpreters of Brazilian civilisation. According to
Freyre (1951: 790), ‘These nomads [Ciganos] have adapted to our patri-
archal system only as marginals: as small and sometimes sadistic slave
traders in the cities and, in the interior, as horse dealers and traders, and
repairers of pans, cauldrons, and machines for sugar refinement’. A few
sentences later, after providing a few facts about Ciganos in Brazil, Freyre
states that ‘many Ciganos, following the initial phase of the socially path-
ological marginality, dissolved within the Brazilian whole’ (ibid.: 791).
And with reference to certain traditions recorded by French painter
214 M. Fotta
Jacques Debret at the beginning of the nineteenth century, Freyre con-

firms that although at Debret’s time these traditions represented
‘Gypsyism’ (ciganismo), by his days they have become spread throughout
society and ‘can be considered good and authentic Brasilianism’ (ibid.)
My purpose here is not to assess Freyre’s claims. But let me point out
that, although Freyre does not quote Simmel, just like common opera-
tionalisations of the latter’s stranger, his argument rests on an assumption
of fixed social relations, closed economies, demarcated identities, and
shared common features—in his case, a Brazilian patriarchal society, the
character of which he derives from the manorial system of sugar planta-
tions. Ciganos enter these arrangements only as ‘a supernumerary’
(Simmel 1950: 403) and remain, by definition, marginal to them as long
as they continue being ‘Gypsies’. The only resolution of this situation—
which from the dominant viewpoint is ‘pathological’—is assimilation
(Bauman 1990). This necessarily occurs whenever individuals become
‘dissolved’, as Freyre puts it, in the societal whole and their community of
origin ceases to be the ultimate source of value.
It is questionable whether Calon can be viewed as an ethnic minority
in such a manner, however. This book has also suggested a view from
another direction, as it were, and argued that, rather than being passively
external to the society, Calon actively orchestrate specific form of assimi-
lation of dominant socio-economic arrangements by means of their ver-
sion of non-institutional householding (Gregory 2009). Although this
householding is flexible and open to change—that is, although it can
result in varied modes of collaboration, residential arrangements, and dis-
persal in space—it nevertheless comes with its own system of values and
motives: its ethics (Olivera 2016). This is most readily visible in the way
different exchanges realise different relationships between parties—
between family members, relatives, within one’s settlement, with Jurons,
and so on. In entering into varied sorts of exchanges, Calon men gain
attributes of social persons and contribute to reproduction of Calon com-
munity, as a multiplicity of those sharing moral commonality (Gay y
Blasco 1999), that, contrary to individualised modes of assimilation,
continues to exercise a socially compelling normativity. Multiplication of
exchanges, of dated events that cause realignments of social relations,
serves as a mechanism through which a Calon happening world is
maintained.
No exchange can be seen in isolation as a dyadic matter of concern of

two individuals, if only because at its core lies a household. After their
weddings, and equipped with money linked in ideology to their wives’
dowries, adult men are expected to provide for their households and to
enter into exchange relationships with both Jurons and other Calon. This
is what Calon men I knew sometimes talked about as ‘making the
future’—the ultimate purpose of which is to ‘establish’ themselves and to
give ‘futures’ to their children. Indeed, Calon social organisation is
rancho-centric, where rancho not only refers to one’s own residence and
thus to one’s conjugal relationships, but conjures and folds into itself a
host of relationships that stabilise one’s place in the world, including
those with Jurons and unknown Gypsies.
In other words, this form of economic integration occurs via house-
holds, which are always embedded in a network of social relationships.
A Calon Cigano or Cigana, as one of Florencia Ferrari’s female infor-
mants once put it, ‘is never free alone’ (Ferrari 2011: 724). But it is
precisely through this mechanism that a certain sovereignty and distan-
ciation from the Juron world is achieved. It is my conviction that, as long
as a specific sociality is maintained, the vida do Ciganos (Gypsy life), as
Calon call their mode of being in the world with its unique sociological
intentionality, is reproduced over time. Its integrity and vibrancy is not
determined by any single trait (golden teeth, tents, palmistry, supersti-
tion, or even moneylending), and it is reproduced even when a particu-
lar trait is abandoned over time—when it, as a ‘Gypsyism’ of yesteryear,
becomes a ‘Brasilianism’ of today, or even when it had never been quite
unique to Ciganos, but was of a broader Iberian or European origin
(Coelho 1892: 274).
All of this discussion suggests that there are limits to treating Ciganos
as representations of the stranger, whether explicitly or implicitly. First,
such approaches start by reifying certain arrangements which become
hegemonic and from which Gypsies are excluded; in this vision, it
appears that if what are commonly called ‘barriers’ to inclusion or eco-
nomic integration are removed, Romanies would become just like the
rest of us, more or less dissolved in the whole. This might be true for
Romanies in countries like my native Slovakia, where, over generations,
ordering by the state apparatus, modernisation of the economy, and
related symbolic domination have challenged and disrupted ‘traditional’
216 M. Fotta
(for lack of a better word) visions of the world, making them useless or
at least devalued. However, such approach fails to take seriously the
worldview of Romanies like the Calon of Bahia described in this book,
for whom moral encompassment of and differentiation from Jurons who
englobe provides an ontological premise constitutive of proper sociality
and personhood (e.g. Ferrari 2010; Williams 2003). This Calon mode of
assimilation of Jurons is still possible to enact materially in a sustainable
fashion today. Since the vida do Cigano is a form relation and account-
ability to the community of a specific kind, then, it does not represent a
failed attempt at ‘dissolution’ in Brazilian society.
Second, seeing Gypsies through the prism of ‘the stranger’ or a similar
view fails to recognise the modern economy as the ‘Gypsy economy’
(Brazzabeni et al. 2016b), that is, to treat anti-Gypsyism as a structure and
the dominant institutions of economic integration, such as the market, as
sites of power and not only of opportunities (if their barriers to inclusion
were only removed). Freyrian sugar plantations, for instance, not only gave
rise to the specifically Brazilian patriarchal view of the world, but were
mechanisms for managing labour along racial and ethnic lines, and them-
selves were incorporated into the international commodities market and
division of labour. ‘Gypsies’—just like Latin American peasantries,
European housewives and their breadwinning husbands, racialised Africans,
or always already ‘disappearing’ indigenous people—have emerged in the
context of modernity and its dark side (capitalist expansion, slavery, colo-
nialism, witch hunts, etc.). I would argue that alignments of this modernity
are reproduced today also whenever we treat certain modes of dwelling in
the world and economies as illegitimate, marginal, or strange, and do not
see in them real alternatives (e.g. Hage 2012).
This is the hegemonic view, of which Simmel’s stranger—or, to be
more specific, its ‘major’ reading—is but one iteration. It resonates with
the liberal thought of Freyre as well as the European minority discourse
on Romanies (van Baar 2011) and is generally characterised by method-
ological individualism and nationalism. The two represent aspects of the
Eurocentric theory of modernity and nation-building. But models of
Romani ethnicity derived from territorialised nation-states, or those that
reproduce nation-state ideology (‘How does this ethnic group fit in?’ or
‘How can individuals be better integrated into society?’), are of limited
use for understanding Calon singularity in Bahia today (see Stewart

2013). Moreover, European modernity cannot be understood in isolation
and as separated from its twin process of colonialism (e.g. Chakrabarty
2000). Thus, as Paul Gilroy (2002: 214) has convincingly argued, a
friend-enemy-stranger triad, which Bauman (1990) deems as archetypal
forms of Simmelian sociation and from which he derives his analysis of
modern assimilation, falls short of capturing the dynamics of Atlantic
slavery and anti-black racism. Masters and slaves were neither enemies
nor strangers to each other.
In Bahia, social arrangements have not been guided by ‘cognitive clar-
ity’ and ‘behavioural certainty’ (Bauman 1990: 146). Bahia has never
been a closed economy or society, but rather has always been incorpo-
rated into global flows of people, objects, ideas, and so on. And although
European peasants have been often posited as paramount face-to-face
closed communities which reject or incorporate strangers (most proto-
typically, the Jews) and which themselves have become gradually incor-
porated into the orbit of the modern state and the market after the
Middle Ages, one cannot propose such a theory of origins, even if ficti-
tious, for Latin America and the Caribbean. Rather, as Sidney Mintz
(1971, 1979) has shown, peasantry has emerged in the region as a reac-
tion to—and an escape from—sugar plantation economy or debt peon-
age (for similar dynamics today, see Morton 2016). Peasant societies are
not closed societies, but aspects of primitive accumulation and displace-
ment; their origins are characterised by lack of freedom, captivity, flight,
mobility, and violence, all of which remain always on the horizon (see
also Roberts 2015).
Gypsies are not latecomers to Latin American societies in any mean-
ingful sense (i.e. apart from the point of view of the subjected and deci-
mated indigenous populations), and their historical presence on the
continent can be documented in the earliest days of Spanish and
Portuguese Atlantic expansion. Moreover, they have been settling in the
Americas in tandem with their settlement throughout the Iberian
Peninsula (and before they reached many European countries), so the
Peninsular Romanies can hardly be considered anterior. Rather, the for-
mation of Kale Romani communities on both sides of the Atlantic—and
thus also the emergence of Iberian stereotypes—occurred in the context
218 M. Fotta
of European maritime expansion and colonialism. For instance, several

Gypsies, most of whom were originally deported from Europe, appear as
either accused or accusers in Inquisition records from Bahia dating to the
end of the sixteenth century. Since four of the seven denunciations were
levelled between Gypsy women themselves and all but one of the women
were married to Gypsies, a certain separation of Gypsy social life in
Salvador of the period from that of non-Gypsies can be discerned along
kinship lines. While historical research on the position of Gypsies in
Portuguese colonies still needs to be done, these observations seem con-
sistent with other ethnographic and historical data. Taken together, they
suggest that the vida do Cigano is not only a reaction to assimilation or a
life on the margins of a pre-existing fixed society, but one modality
(among many) of embeddedness within the context of colonial, postco-
lonial, and internally colonial dynamics. This modality, as the book has
argued, integrates local economies into the sociality of Calon Ciganos via
the mechanism of non-institutionalised householding.
A few Bahians asked me during my fieldwork, ‘What is the origin of
the Ciganos?’ I believe that this question should not be read as a form of
folk minoritisation of Ciganos that treats Romani singularity as essen-
tially a problem of nation-building. Ciganos have constituted the Bahian
world ‘from the very start’ (Bauman 1990: 149) and are tentatively being
recognised today as one of Brazil’s so-called traditional people; I have
never heard people doubt that Ciganos belong to this land. The question,
I believe, expresses amazement and puzzlement at the resilience of the
Calon lifeworld, its separation and uniqueness: How come Ciganos prac-
tise ethnic endogamy (in ideology, at least) in a world that prides itself on
racial miscegenation (in ideology, at least)? Or, why have they retained a
distinct language when everybody else—with ancestors from different
regions throughout the world—speaks only Portuguese today?
Progress Against Commonness

Although I suggest that the tendency for statist minoritisation of the
Romanies and the liberal-nationalist view of integration that is premised
on a modern individual-society distinction should be resisted or at least
approached with caution, aspects of Simmel’s original formulation of the

stranger phenomenon are nevertheless useful. First, it has to be recalled
that for Simmel the stranger is not an essence, but a form of interaction
that is present in all human relationships, even the most intimate ones. A
lover might feel that her passionate relationship is special, but ‘[a]n
estrangement […] comes at the moment when this feeling of uniqueness
vanishes from the relationship’ (Simmel 1950: 406). In any relationship,
no matter how close and particular, ‘many possibilities of commonness’
shared with people beyond the relationship exist (ibid.; italics in origi-
nal). Such commonness might be disavowed, but—to get away from the
essentialist language into which the stranger analyses often slip—it exists
in virtuality within the actual ‘pattern of coordination’ (ibid.: 403) or ‘a
particular structure’ (ibid.: 404) of interaction—it belongs to its social
milieu. The stranger phenomenon is this ‘unity of distance and remote-
ness’ (ibid.: 402) in a certain proportion when it is recognised that what
is shared with a close person are qualities that are common to others, or
when the relationship does not appear unique, but of a more general
kind, that is, when ‘the connecting forces have lost their specific and cen-
tripetal character’ (ibid.: 406).
It is telling that in the Brazilian social thought, this mixing of near-
ness and remoteness has been commonly understood not in terms of
strangeness, but along the personalism-impersonalism dichotomy. In it,
impersonalism and its accompanying features—rationalisation, state
bureaucracy, commodity exchange, and money, as well as atomisation,
individualism, and universalisation—are associated with the European
and settler societies of the Northern Atlantic, and opposed to the mutu-
ality and personalised nature of relationships that Brazilians are said to
endorse (DaMatta 1991). One can easily see how a Cigano money-
lender errs, as a pattern, on the side of the former. Although he greets a
potential client warmly in the main square, and while they might have
known each other since childhood and even speak of each other as
friends, a loan from the Cigano, with its independent interest rate and
its collection shadowed by violence, presents itself as an impersonal
exchange: a rejection of both the uniqueness of the relationship between
the two and of the concern (even if paternalistic or hierarchical) with
the lives of one another.
220 M. Fotta
But things are not so straightforward; impersonalism needs to be

explained, as Keith Hart (2005) argues. As we have seen, debts and mon-
etary loans are ubiquitous throughout Bahia and are interest-bearing
even among friends, while Cigano agiotas tweak seemingly impersonal
loans in a way that suggests uniqueness (such as by adding extra days to
repayment without changing the absolute amount of interest). At the
same time, Calon put a lot of effort into convincing their clients that
loans are ‘just’ business and nothing personal, since the latter try to make
them consent to the contrary; in fact, Calon men often accept defaults—
a ‘theft’ of ‘their money’, in their words—if they want to continue to
successfully provide for their families. But it is also this personalised loy-
alty and support within a family, in a form of trading and social capital,
which enables individual households to succeed.
In October 2009, two months after Kiko had been imprisoned for kill-
ing the Juron in Santaluz, Barbudo, the owner of a bar just off the Rua dos
Ciganos, asked me rhetorically, and I paraphrase, ‘What stupidity did our
friend do? And how could he have done it? They were friends. They always
played dominos in my bar.’ Barbudo’s claim did not ring true to me. I had
spent a year with Kiko’s family, and I had never encountered the man he
was accused of killing; they definitely had not played dominos regularly in
our local bar. Personalism, then, is an ideal, a horizon, that needs to be
asserted even if counter-factually. But in Barbudo’s words flashes, in a
Simmelian fashion, a disavowed remoteness within nearness: if Kiko and
the man were friends, maybe our own friendships and intimate relation-
ships always already contain within them their antimonies and denials.
After all, Barbudo and Kiko not only used to be neighbours and often
teased each other playfully, but he was still Kiko’s client and debtor. To me,
this points to a certain indeterminacy that characterises much of social life
in a small-town coastal Bahia, an highly unequal context, where dyadic
relations are potentially volatile, bringing about violence; where trust is
non-generalised and demands localised patronage; where u npredictable
ways of making a living require special navigation, a jeito; where uncer-
tainty makes social relationships central to attaining a level of autonomy;
or, where Gypsies are called Gajons. This indeterminacy and a resulting
‘personalist culture’ are related, among other things, to the history of the
peripheral and dependent position of Brazil in the world system, where,
for instance, the state has not been able to guarantee the value of imper-
sonal money or equal citizenship for all (Sansi 2012).
But there are also different tendencies immanent to developments over
the recent decades. Let us return to Euclides Neto’s collection of short
stories about the end of the south Bahian cocoa civilisation. Neto is not
nostalgic about the olden ‘fat years’, when landowners controlled vast
tracts of land and constantly tried to extend their hold to include even
more, or when they determined the lives of locals and broke any opposi-
tion by means of violence, whether personalised through their jagunços
(henchmen) or impersonalised through the judges and policemen whom
they nominated. Quite on the contrary, Neto sees a cosmic justice in their
downfall. These landowners were not ‘owners of the soil’ in the figurative
sense of belonging to and caring for the circulation of ‘life-substance’
within this social environment (Simmel 1950: 403). In his second story
‘O Tempo É Chegano’ (‘The Time Has Come’), Neto lays out this vision:
‘At the beginning, the Indians, enjoying the freedoms of Creation’ (Neto
2001: 11). Then came the hunters lured by nature’s abundance. They built
humble houses, opening up clearings and trails in search of others—‘seeds
in the uterus of the agitated earth’ (ibid.). They also planted cocoa trees,
but only in small numbers. As the land became ‘more domesticated thanks
to the courage of the first ones’ (ibid.), shopkeepers arrived, followed by
outsiders from the north.1 They invented ‘debit entries in the blurry book-
keeping of fiado sales’ (ibid.). Gradually, through trade on credit and sup-
port from the state bureaucracy, landowners emerged. The first inhabitants
became sharecroppers on landowners’ farms or began to sell their labour.
But nature was ‘vengeful’: ‘The sun, the witches’ broom, the feasts of
banks, houses gnawed by miniscule creatures’ (ibid.)—all forced the col-
lapse which, through its unfolding, gestured towards a return to the ori-
gins of time and the primeval forest. When this abandoned land was
occupied by the landless, who erected shanties of black tarp ‘in the mourn-
ing for the bygone era’ (ibid.: 12) and restarted its cultivation, the land
‘fulfilled its destination to return to its ancient inhabitants’ (ibid.: 13).2
The unjust situation that had arisen as a result of internal colonialism,
indebtedness, violence, and dispossession is rectified by forces that stand
beyond anybody’s control—witches’ broom disease, drought, low global
prices, banks, export companies, workers that need to be paid by the
222 M. Fotta
order of the court, and so on. Impersonal forces of the environment,

global markets, money, financialised debt, and the judicial system under-
mine the power of the cocoa coroneis—those paragons of personalised
hierarchical politics who derived their wealth from their position within
impersonal global markets. Ciganos are one in a series of these phenom-
ena that come from a distance, act without concern for local relation-
ships, unhinging them in turn. This just and necessary historical
development is objectified, among other things, in the landless workers’
movement—one of the major social movements that supported Worker’s
Party governments (2002–2016)—occupying otherwise unproductive
land.
In Neto’s ‘The Gypsies’, when rich Ciganos, subtending the position of
coroneis through debt relationships, take over local politics and their can-
didate wins the local election, their victory is annulled by the Supreme
Court. This dynamics, I suggest, represents an emergent way of thinking
about development and community, which puts the state—its impersonal
justice, form of distribution, classification, and so on—into a central posi-
tion. By redefining commonality in particular ways, it also impacts how
Ciganos are viewed. I encountered something of this kind in Santaluz in
2008 during the municipal elections. For the first time, there was a serious
alternative to the two candidates from established families who had alter-
nated in the office for decades. The hopeful candidate was nominated by
the Workers’ Party (PT) and drew on, among other things, the popularity
of President Lula da Silva. One day during the campaign, I was sitting
with Kiko in Barbudo’s bar (aptly called Progresso) playing dominos when
a slightly drunk man approached our table. A PT activist himself, he lived
nearby; I knew him as a drummer at ceremonies in the biggest Candomblé
temple in Santaluz. He only stopped by our table in order to accuse
Ciganos of wanting the traditional candidates to win. When I asked him
why, he explained that it was because it was better for their moneylending
business. He, however, would vote for the PT candidate because he wanted
‘progress’ (Eu quero progresso).
The vision of a strong central state—capable of breaking the power of
localised relationships of hierarchy and debt, delivering development to
the povo, and providing individuals with a measure of autonomy—has
been solidified in recent decades under the Worker’s Party governments
(e.g. Ansell 2014). It was also during this era that, as we have seen in the
introduction, people have become incorporated more firmly within the
orbit of the state and the consumer market. Many people of modest
means, like the man above, became ‘financially included’, a process that
relied not only on new modalities of credit and new cash transfers, but
also on new formalisations and categorisations of people and aspects of
their lives. The combined policies of expansion of formal employment,
the creation of new modalities of credit, and programmes of social redis-
tribution brought with them economic growth and decreasing inequali-
ties, which peaked around the time of the elections. But it also contributed
to the redrawing of social boundaries and identities and influenced peo-
ple’s views of themselves, realigning themselves with the state as the ulti-
mate arbiter of value (e.g. Sansi 2007).
While Calon moneylending represents in many ways an intensifica-
tion and transformation of the sale on credit, we have also seen that as a
recognisable niche Cigano agiotas belong to this changed context.
However, as people’s indebtedness becomes untenable and state project
of development less certain, and as the bureaucratic and financial infra-
structure built over the period of growth becomes mobilised for purposes
other than originally envisioned, locally, at least, Ciganos begin to be
increasingly seen as standing on the wrong side of historical progress. In
the context of the current economic and political crisis, unfolding class
war, racial and ethnic violence, and the reactionary wave sweeping
through Brazil, there is a possibility that Ciganos will become blamed
and even scapegoated. In itself this would not be surprising. In the past,
whenever authorities had troubles with the unruliness of the people,
Ciganos became targeted (Fotta n.d.). This singling out can also be seen
in Neto’s stories: despite the century-long presence of Ciganos in south-
ern Bahia, they become differentially visible at the moment when the
existing order was crumbling. As Simmel (1950: 405) has noted, in times
of social disorder, which formally is a sign of estrangement between the
elites and the people, it pays off to blame instigators from the ‘outside’
(also by redrawing what the ‘inside’ is). In thus exonerating the people,
the elites exonerate themselves, denying any real grounds for discontent
and reasserting the nearness and common interest between the two—
such as the desire for ‘real progress’ shared by the state and the people.
224 M. Fotta
While in the past, such initiatives were localised and often symbolic,
when the central state is called upon to redraw the boundaries of com-
monness, a new danger emerges: the coagulation of a new invariable
‘strangeness’ of Ciganos. Under certain conditions, ‘many possibilities of
commonness’ between Cigano and non-Gypsy Bahians that exist might
be denied, and the vida do Cigano, as a source of value and meaning for
the people partaking in it, becomes increasingly suspect.
Notes
1. Historically, a great deal of cocoa production in the region was carried out
by more recent migrants from Europe.
2. Neto is an author of the Brazilian internally colonial nation-state. ‘The
first inhabitants’ for whom nature restores the land and who are thus
‘owners of the soil’ in Simmel’s sense are not the Indians, whose presence
has been erased and accepted as vanishing, despite the continued struggle
of the Tupinambá in southern Bahia today (Viegas 2007).
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Index1
A comparison between Romani

Affinity, 57, 163 communities, 19, 181, 182,
tense relations of, 42, 56, 57, 79, 184, 186
93, 94, 201 Autonomy, individual
Age, 13, 25, 80, 91, 99, 106, 108, equality between Calon men, 25,
123, 140, 146, 176, 193, 197 29, 90, 98, 144, 147, 155,
Ajuda, see Help 184, 197, 201, 202
Alertness, 98, 100, 148 and honour, 26, 55
Alimony, 156, 157, 161 as premised on households, 25,
Alone (sozinho) among Jurons, 61, 87, 88, 90, 184
100 and wealth, 16, 107, 110, 133
as shadowed by social death, 100 Autonomy, of Calon
Angola, 8 from Jurons, 18, 19, 28, 55, 90,
Apoio, see Help 95, 101, 103, 108, 110, 115,
Assimilation, 102, 154, 214, 131, 133, 134, 144, 155, 180,
216–218 184, 191, 197, 201
Atrapalhado/a, 72, 74, 133, 193 from labour market, 90, 185,
See also Direto 188
Autonomous economic activities, from the state, 16, 18, 101, 110,
preference for 133, 147, 221, 223
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96409-6
238 Index
Avoidance in conflict, 56–58, 105, C

112, 194, 197 Caatinga, 45, 211
See also Enemies; Revenge Caden (money in Calon Romani),
(vingança) 26, 189
Californian Rom, 64n3, 64n4
Calon
B definition of, 18, 29, 57, 105, 118,
Bad luck (azar), 26, 100, 153 125, 135, 148, 168, 198, 212
Bank accounts, 10, 12, 13, 16, 17, difference from Jurons, 5, 20, 22,
68, 85, 108, 111, 168, 174, 58, 89, 99, 101, 104, 117,
180 131, 144, 180
Bank cards, 9, 14, 17, 164, 168 Camp burned by mob, 56
Banks, 1–3, 6, 10–14, 16–18, 159, Candomblé, 222
160, 162, 173, 174, Capital
176–177n2, 188, 190, 204, financial, 17, 84, 151, 158, 201
205, 209–212, 221 gağicăń o, 169, 184
Barganha, 5, 139 social, 169, 201, 220
See also Business, deal (negócio); Cardoso, Fernando Henrique, 8,
Rolos (deals among Calon 73–76
men) Cards, see Gambling
Barraca, see Tent(s) Care for kin, 25, 42, 57, 187, 212
Baseline communism, 145 See also Help
Bauman, Zygmunt, 214, 217, 218 Catira (swap, negotiation), 179
Begging, 25, 68, 84, 108 See also Rolos (deals among Calon
Belo Monte dam complex, 62 men)
Bestas, 98, 100, 109, 116–119 Ceará, 37, 101, 179
Bezera, Felte, 5 Cervantes, Miguel de, 211
Bolsa Família Program, 9, 13, 16, 17, Chefe, see Strongmen
85, 87, 114, 158, 159, 168, Cheques, 10, 16–18, 31n9,
170, 176n2 156–158, 162, 164, 168, 169,
Brasileiro(s), 22, 117, 180, 195 173, 174, 176n1, 189, 190
definition of, 104, 105 Children, 19, 25, 29, 35–37, 42, 43,
See also Gajons; Juron(s) 46, 48, 52, 59, 64, 66, 67, 75,
Broker (corretor), 194 79, 80, 82, 83, 85–89, 90n2,
Business, deal (negócio), 1, 8, 19, 100, 109, 112, 114, 126, 135,
139, 179 139, 140, 154, 161, 177n3,
See also Barganha; Rolos (deals 185, 187, 188, 191, 194, 197,
among Calon men) 199, 201, 202, 215
Index 239
Ciganos Community
as agiotas, 5, 6, 8–11, 15, 154, as commonality, 59, 63, 145, 214,
163, 220, 223 222
as ambulant traders, 5–7 and hoard, 86, 107, 132, 169,
non-Gypsy views of, 2, 3, 20–22, 204–206
24, 39, 56, 160, 163, 194, Complexity, and personalised
210, 224 relationships, 55, 59
as one source of credit, 5, 6, 10, Conditional cash transfers, 16
15, 162 Conflicts, 46, 51, 53, 56–58, 73, 76,
in the past in Brazil, 2, 5, 7, 78, 79, 105, 112, 113, 153,
21–23, 62, 161, 211, 213, 154, 187, 191, 194, 196, 197,
223 200, 207n4
presented as external to local See also Avoidance in conflict;
social relations, 4, 17, 117, Revenge (vingança)
124, 180, 213, 214 Conhecimento, see Knowledge
as slave traders, 213 Consigned credit, 11, 13, 14, 159
tropeiros (drover Gypsies), 37 Consumer credit, 11, 13, 14, 135,
Clients 158
building relationships with, Cortorari of Romania, 80
194 Cosmological nomadism, 54, 101
good clients, 117, 118, 157, 169 Credit (crédito)
information about, 16, 41, 133, access to, 9, 12, 13, 16
143, 145 as communal reputation, 134,
negotiations with, 173 143, 154, 192
refusing to pay, 145, 173 sale on, 223
See also Evaluating people variety of institutions in Bahia,
Coaracy, Vivaldo, 6, 7 17, 159
Cocoa, 209–212, 221, 222, 224n1 See also Fiado (sale on credit)
economy of southern Bahia, 209, Credit reference agencies, 11, 162
211, 212, 223
See also Witches’ broom disease
Collateral D
animals as, 158, 162 Dates-as-events, 126–128, 148
bank cards as, 158, 168 Dates of loan repayment
among Calon, 133, 154, 158 calculated according to local
cheques as, 10, 158 custom, 9, 15, 18
Colonialism, 216–218, 221 on important holidays, 129, 130
internal, 221 renegotiations of, 95, 97
240 Index
Dead, 107, 133 Dreams, 98, 99, 104–106

differentiation of the living from, Due date (prazo), see Dates of a loan
92, 100–103 repayment
place, 82, 87
See also Stillness
Deals among Calon men, 129 E
Deals, see Rolos (deals among Calon Earner, an (Ganhador), 141
men) Economic crisis, 13
Death and indebtedness, 14
and abandonment of settlements, Economic growth, 9, 11, 12, 28, 223
111 Economic niche
and destruction of property, 82, ethnic, 4, 12, 63, 163
111 and the management of distance,
as lack of movement, 101 63
as social, 99 as a social form, 4, 18, 63
Debret, Jacques, 8, 214 stabilisation of, 12
Debt, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, Efficacy
17–19, 26, 28, 30, 86, 114, 124, as dependent on knowledge, 99
125, 128, 130, 136, 146–149, loss of, 102
152, 155, 157, 159–163, 168, Emergency loans, 140
172–174, 177n4, 181, 190, Emerging-economy Brazil, 18, 22,
192, 193, 198, 205, 210, 211, 135
217, 220, 222 Empréstimo, 167, 176, 184, 196
Debt collectors (cobradores), 162 See also Loan
Default on a loan, 210 Enchainments, 141, 148, 149, 202
Deferred payments among Calon Endogamy, 218
refusal to pay seen as theft, 220 Enemies, 30, 41, 57, 59, 187, 196,
renegotiation of, 95 211, 217
Deportation, of Ciganos from and kinship, 41, 57, 188
Portugal to Brazil, 211 See also Avoidance in conflict;
Detachment from Jurons, 116–119 Revenge (vingança)
Direto, 133, 136 English Gypsies, 64n3, 182
See also Atrapalhado/a Equality
Domestic mode of production, 206n2 and autonomy, 25, 29, 110, 144,
Dowry, 42, 67, 68, 71, 75, 78, 197, 201, 202
83–87, 93, 94, 109, 111, and commensality, 144
114–116, 135–137, 139, 176, and exchanges, 29, 30, 130, 140,
191, 202, 204 144, 145, 202
Index 241
Esperto, 99, 116 66, 68–70, 72–85, 87, 92, 93,

Espiritos Ciganos, 87 100, 104–106, 108, 109, 111,
Established, being, 17, 66, 79, 84, 112, 114, 118, 131, 135, 139,
111, 134, 147, 161, 167 141, 143–147, 152, 155,
Ethics, 5, 182, 183, 214 157–160, 167–170, 172,
Ethnic distance, 3, 163 176n2, 180, 184, 186–188,
Ethnic minority, 5, 214 191–196, 198–201, 203, 204,
Ethnic niche, 4 214, 220, 222
European modernity, 217 fights (brigas de familias), 58, 59,
and colonialism, 217, 218 80, 106, 160, 188
Evaluating people, 132–134 Farmers, 6, 8, 40, 158
Exchange Father-son relations, 66, 187, 193,
acts of, 61, 97, 125, 130, 138, 197, 201
148 Fazenda, 8, 209, 210
between Calon, 126, 130, 134, landowners (fazendeiros), 209,
140, 143–145, 155, 176 210
as constitutive of Calon sociality, Fearful (medroso), see Valour
29, 134, 147, 176, 191, 195 (valentia)
and demonstrations of Feira de Santana, 35, 173
masculinity, 125 Ferrari, Florencia, 22, 41, 50, 54, 83,
difference between exchanges 90n1, 94, 95, 100, 101, 116,
between Calon and with 117, 131, 149, 161, 179, 201,
Jurons, 117, 125, 130, 131, 215, 216
134, 144, 184, 190 Feuds, see Revenge (vingança)
as events, 4, 97, 125, 132, 134, Fiado (sale on credit), 15, 163, 221
141, 144, 147–149, 204, 214 changes in the practice, 18
history of, 134, 188 as market integration, 15, 158,
negotiations, 130, 134, 139, 141, 206, 223
144, 148 in the past, 16
variety of, 86, 181, 195 Fighting cockerels, 39, 69, 94, 188
See also Empréstimo; Rolos (deals Financeiras (credit institutions and
among Calon men); Swap(s) financial companies), 12, 14,
18, 162, 205
Financial inclusion, 4, 13, 158, 168,
F 174, 205, 206
Family (família), 4, 5, 8, 9, 13, 16, Financialisation, 3, 14–17, 22, 111,
17, 23–29, 35–40, 42, 43, 46, 158, 206
51–59, 62, 63, 64n3, 64n4, state role in, 3
242 Index
Financial services, official Gajons, 22, 220

expansion of, 4, 12, 13, 16 Gambling, 9, 26, 48, 84, 97, 138,
link to unofficial forms of credit, 140, 141, 146
16, 17 Gambling loans, 140
Food Garantia, see Collateral
hosting as a sign of equality, 145 Gardner, George, 37
husband’s responsibility, 90n2, Gender, 118, 123, 135, 197
143, 192 Generations, 15, 25, 57, 58, 62, 89,
Form of economic integration, 64, 111, 148, 215
142, 181, 187 Gilroy, Paul, 217
See also Householding Girlfriends, 69, 71, 116
Freyre, Gilberto, 177n3, 213, 214, Graeber, David, 125, 130, 145
216 Gregory, Chris, 5, 30, 185–187, 192,
Fridge, 28, 84, 114, 134–139, 141, 198, 214
144, 145, 198 See also Householding
Friends, 1, 2, 10, 16, 17, 23, 35, 54, Gringo(s), 5, 123
69, 70, 76, 79, 81, 117, 160, Gropper, Rena, 119n2, 153, 184, 185
163, 164, 166, 217, 219, 220 Guerra, Miriam, 85
Furniture Guns, 36, 44, 72, 78, 79, 81, 98,
associated with wives, 70, 71, 78, 104–106
83, 86 See also Violence
in Calon tents and houses, 26, 81, Gypsy economy, 216
84 Gypsy life (Vida do Cigano), 149, 153
destruction of, 87, 203
Future (futuro)
being without, 92, 97 H
blocking of, 147 Hart, Keith, 4, 19, 164, 220
and death, 88, 101, 211 Help, 17, 29, 41, 50, 60, 65, 67, 79,
and detachment from Jurons, 101, 81, 84, 86, 88, 100, 108, 112,
117, 167 126, 131, 133, 140, 141, 191,
as fate, 118, 148 193, 194, 197, 200, 210
making of, 18, 19, 50, 54, 69, 83, as loan modality, 29
90, 96–100, 102, 110, 117, Herzfeld, Michael, 97
118, 147, 148, 154, 201, 215 Hierarchy, 26, 41, 110, 125, 161,
183, 213, 222
Hire purchase, 135
G Home range, 4, 39, 49, 52, 59, 79,
Gabori Roma, 206n2 139, 140, 169, 198
Gajão/gajões, 22, 167, 210 See also Spatiality of Calon
Index 243
Honour, 26, 68, 109, 133, 140, 144, See also Tupinambá
172 Informal lenders (agiotas)
House (casa), 88, 89, 191 Ciganos, 9
increased inhabitation of houses, 50 non-Gypsy, 9, 194
See also Sedentarisation; Tent(s) Ingold, Tim, 54
Household Inheritance, 87, 111, 184, 193, 203
their centrality in Calon sociality, Inimigos, see Enemies
66, 89, 147 Intensive presence, 62–64
and economic activities, 116 Interest (juros)
and exchanges, 83, 139, 187–188 in banks, 1, 11, 12, 174
as a husband-wife project, 81, 83, among Calon, 124, 126, 130,
85, 187, 191 131, 141
and lifecycle, 29, 37, 89 discount on, 130, 154, 166, 220
mobility, 30, 58, 153 See also Loan; Principal
as a process, 19, 29, 65–90, 118, Itinerant trade
167 demise of, 5–9, 38, 211
Householding and moneylending, 38
as a form of economic integration, See also Itinerant trader (mascate)
64, 142, 181–188, 215 Itinerant trader (mascate), 5–9
values of, 195–201 and authorities, 113
See also Ethics
Hungarian Rom, 97, 99, 182, 183,
186 J
Husband–wife relationship James, Deborah, 3
as cohabitation, 80, 187 Jews, 8, 217
collaboration in moneylending, Jogo do bicho, 104, 106, 119n1
46, 197, 214 Juntar se, see Weddings
downplayed in negotiations, 118, Juron(s)
184 as bestas, 98, 116–118
love, 71, 210 Calon difference from, 4, 22, 95,
See also Household; Separation; 100
Weddings; Wife Calon relationships with, 30, 38,
125, 153, 154
category, 41, 133, 149
I fear of, 59, 77, 153
Iberian Romanies, 57 girlfriends, 94
Impersonalism, 15, 167, 219, 220 loans to, 19, 29, 95, 125, 155,
and exchanges, 219 163–167, 171, 176, 181, 190,
Indebtedness, 209, 221, 223 203
Indigenous people, 216, 217 perceptions of, 20
244 Index
K from banks, 14, 209

Kale Romanies, 217 between Calon, 28, 130, 140, 144
See also Iberian Romanies between friends, 17, 54, 219, 220
King João V, 211 to Jurons, 28, 29, 44, 95
King Pedro I, 62 payment, 1, 159
Kinship, 41–43, 45, 55, 57, 81, 123, seen as swaps, 97, 140, 183
159, 187, 188, 195, 197, 200 temporality of, 142, 148, 149
See also Family (família); variety of modalities in Bahia
Patrigroups; Relatives (parentes) today, 158, 217
Knowledge Local oligarch (coronel), 209, 222
as acquired, 99, 118 Luck, 25, 26, 91, 98–100, 102, 112,
Juron lack of, 61, 153, 216 153
as relatedness, 86 Lula, see Silva, Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’
types of, 99
M
L Man (homem), 1, 17, 25, 26, 29, 41,
Laje, see Shame (vergonha) 56, 57, 61, 65, 66, 68, 73, 75,
Landowners, see Fazenda, landowners 79, 81, 84–86, 92–97, 99,
(fazendeiros) 100, 102, 104, 106, 107, 109,
Lavinas, Lena, 10, 12–14, 16 110, 112, 113, 125, 129,
Lenders, formal, 3, 9–12, 23, 169 132–139, 143, 147, 151–157,
See also Informal lenders (agiotas) 162, 165–167, 173–175, 180,
Lending 183, 187, 189, 190, 192,
Calon, in the past, 73 197–199, 201–205, 220, 222,
involvement of other men in, 223
201, 202 See also Masculinity; Person, male
mother lending for son, 53 Marital conflict, 51, 53, 56–58, 70,
specificities of Calon, 41 73, 78, 79, 81, 112, 113, 153,
thrill of, 128 154, 187, 191, 194, 196, 197,
women’s involvement in, 24, 65, 200
68, 94 intervention of relatives in, 46,
Letras, see Promissory notes 51, 53, 56–58, 70, 73, 76, 78,
Linger, Daniel, 101 79, 112, 113, 153, 154, 187,
Living in the moment, 147–149 191, 194, 196, 197, 200
See also Present moment, See also Separation
extending of Marriage negotiations, 66, 70, 80, 94
Loan Masculinity
from agiotas, 15, 159 and age, 99
Index 245
demonstrations of, 97, 99 Morton, Duff, 16, 87, 88, 90, 148,
evaluations of, 203 217
Mayblin, Maya, 118 Mourning, 60, 81, 187, 221
Microfinance, 159 growing beards during, 82
Middle class Movement
lower middle class/‘C,’ 10, 30, causes for, 49
158 and fixity, 148, 212
new/emerging, 11, 13, 14, 158 importance for Calon, 61, 63, 85
Middleman, 68, 74, 155, 157, 171, in the past, 46, 112, 198–199,
193 223
Middleman minorities, 4 stability in movement, 46, 54,
See also Ethnic niche 100
Minas Gerais, 8, 105, 179 variety of, 49, 59, 61
Mintz, Sidney, 15, 217 and violence, 55, 60, 187, 217
Miscegenation, racial, 218 as vitality, 50, 101
Money as a way to change positionality,
earmarking dowry money, 83–86, 106
202 See also Nomadism
‘eating’ of, 75, 86 Mulon, see Dead
as means of pricing, 130 Municipal elections, 40, 160, 222
as ‘memory bank,’ 19 Mutuality, 130, 141, 155, 219
as a mechanism of transgression, See also Help
84, 130
as a tool of making the future, 19,
96–98, 117 N
to run after (correr atrás do Name (nome), 4, 9, 11, 15, 18, 21,
dinheiro), 172 23, 25, 38, 40, 47, 60, 62, 65,
Money on the street, 95, 132, 203 68, 74, 85, 91, 93, 95, 96,
as an inalienable personal hoard, 102, 111, 112, 114, 119, 132,
86, 132 133, 139, 146, 149, 159, 162,
and position of individual 175, 181, 189, 197, 198, 203
households, 88, 114, 201–206, dirty, 11
220 Neto, Euclides, 210–213, 221–223,
Moraes Filho, Alexandre José de 224n2
Melo, 7 Nomadism, 5, 50, 100
Morality, 20, 61, 86, 94, 110, 119, Northeastern Brazil, 7
167, 185 Notas promisória, see Promissory
Morto, see Dead notes
246 Index
O Pierson, Donald, 15
Okely, Judith, 18, 42, 50, 64n3, 87, Places associated with Ciganos, 57,
102, 131, 182 105, 180
Olivera, Martin, 5, 117, 182, 206n2, Plano Real, 28
214 Polanyi, Karl, 30, 185, 186, 206n3
Opportunities, 4, 8, 16–19, 28, 29, Politicians, 10, 37, 117, 159, 160,
37, 50, 52, 54, 60, 67, 70, 79, 169
89, 90, 96, 97, 99, 102, 111, Portugal, 6, 8
112, 114, 117, 118, 127, 137, deportation of Ciganos from, 8
141, 147, 149, 153, 167, 181, Portuguese maritime empire, 7
195, 206, 212, 213, 216 Povo (the people), 187, 213, 222
creation of, 16, 50, 90, 111, 117, Praça Tiradentes, 62
118, 127, 137 Pratik, 15
Original, 17, 46, 125–127, 129, Present moment, extending of, 127,
153, 155, 218, 219 132, 202
vs. paraguaio (fake), 126, 129 See also Enchainments; Living in
the moment
Price, 8, 28, 99, 127, 129–131, 133,
P 136, 209, 210, 221
Palmreading, 39, 62, 84, 108, 139, Principal, 17, 129, 155, 171, 172,
211 175, 176, 177n2
Patrigroups, 46, 57, 106, 112, 135, See also Interest (juros)
187, 188, 192, 197 Prison visits, 74, 77
Patronage, 18, 63, 159, 163, 220 Progress, 213, 218–224
Pensions, 10–13, 16, 158, 176n2, associated with the state, 219,
212 223–224
Personalised relationships, 15, 16, Promessa, see Votive promise
58, 79, 82, 219 (promessa)
Person, male Promissory notes, 65, 151, 154
attributes of, 29, 42, 87, 132, and trust, 133, 155, 164, 167
176, 214 as used among Calon, 18, 133,
and creation of one’s world, 13, 141, 147, 154, 167, 168
67, 103, 115, 143, 147, 186, as used by shopkeepers, 133,
216 163
gendered, 103, 117, 118, 148 Puro
and uncertainty, 54, 220 vs. rico, 110
Piasere, Leonardo, 20, 22, 161, 169, as a temporary state of being
182–184 without money, 133, 138
Index 247
R S
Race (raça), 104, 216 Salaries, 10, 13, 14, 16, 18, 156,
Raffle, 98, 124, 126, 135, 137, 141 159, 212
Rancho, 41, 89, 142–147, 188, 195, Salvador, 23, 62, 70, 123–126, 130,
215 189, 218
centric organisation of Calon, 42, São Paulo, 7, 8, 15, 57, 83, 179
46, 82, 142, 195, 215 Scales of valuation, 129, 132, 201
Relational practices, 103 Sedentarisation, 38, 218
Relatives (parentes), 57, 187 Sedentarism, a non-Gypsy ideology,
See also Family (família) 59, 63
Reputation Segmentarity, 55–59
as based on existing and past Separation, 22, 53, 104, 130, 163,
deals, 134, 175 218
and the centrality of community, See also Marital conflict
131, 181, 197–198, Sergipe, 5
203–204 Sertão (hinterland), 6, 35, 111, 114
Respect, 20, 26, 61, 68, 81–83, 94, Settlements
95, 103–107, 140, 143, 146, abandonment, 47, 53, 111, 203
183, 184, 190 and importance of good
Retirement benefits, see Pensions relationships with non-
Revenge (vingança) Gypsies, 38, 112
and Calon identity, 106, 193 made of tents, 1
and social organisation, 59 and ranchos, 195
Rio de Janeiro, 6, 7, 62, 161 and relationships of kinship, 43,
Ciganos in, 7 195
Risk, in moneylending, 97 as temporary assemblages, 59–61,
Rolos (deals among Calon men), 30, 195
114, 139, 176, 184, 197, 212 Shame (Vergonha), 95, 143
as a way to show skills, 139, 184, of men, 93, 94, 132
212 of women, 144
Romani butji, 182 Shopkeepers, 9, 15, 16, 18, 114,
Romanies, 2, 5, 21, 22, 42, 57, 131, 133, 162, 163, 221
182, 185, 215–218 as lenders, 9, 16
Romani language, 22 Silva, Luiz Inácio ‘Lula,’ 9
Rousseff, Dilma, 12 Simmel, Georg, 18, 19, 63, 162,
Rua do Cigano (‘Gypsy Street’), 24, 205, 213, 214, 216, 219, 221,
38, 40, 42, 47, 52, 53, 59, 62, 223, 224n2
63, 65, 103, 108 Slavery, 7, 37, 161, 177n3, 213, 216,
Rua, see Street (rua) 217
248 Index
Slovensko Roma, 182 and money, 19, 44

Sociability, 6, 59, 112, 145, 163, See also Weak (fraco)
187, 200, 201 Strongmen, 73
Social developmentalism, 12–14 their centrality to settlements, 42,
Social wayfaring, 52–56, 61, 79, 96 112
Spanish Gitanos, 58 and força, 112, 118
Spatiality of Calon Subsistence loans, 29, 44, 60, 113,
and exchanges, 149 139, 196
and violence, 56 Suffering, 36, 75, 109, 119, 127, 210
See also Home range; Movement; as associated with previous
Settlements generations, 105, 119
Spatiotemporal control, 86, 111, 147 Sugar plantations, 209, 214, 216,
See also Strength (força); Viver 217
apoiado (to live a supported life) Support, 53, 73, 75, 81, 113, 126,
Speculation, 6, 128, 134, 209 140, 142, 187, 192, 195, 196,
Spell (feitiço), 136 198, 209, 220, 221
Stability of the Calon social world, 61 showing one’s support, 166, 197,
State 203
and ambiguity of Cigano postion, Sutherland, Ann, 23
17 Swap(s), 97, 126, 128, 130, 131,
recognition of Ciganos, 21 137, 139, 140, 179, 183, 184,
role in financialisation, 3, 15 197
and the stranger, 209–224 logic of, 130
Stewart, Michael, 97, 99, 130, 141, See aslo Exchange
182, 183, 186, 217
Stillness
as problematic, 50 T
See also Movement; Still, without Teacher(s), 1, 3, 11, 23, 158,
movement (parado) 171–173
Still, without movement (parado), Tent(s), 1, 3, 23, 24, 26–28, 36–38,
101 40–50, 52, 53, 56, 59–62, 64,
Stranger, 63, 165, 169, 185, 64n2, 67, 68, 73, 78, 80, 81,
209–224 83, 85, 87, 89, 102, 105,
Gypsies as‚’the stranger,’ 216 107–110, 113–116, 126, 127,
See also Simmel, Georg 135–138, 141, 143, 151, 152,
Street (rua), 19, 154 160, 191, 195, 199, 203, 211,
Strength (Força), 66 215
as actualised in space, 19, 112, 113 Tesăr, Cătălina, 80, 109
give one’s, 112, 203 Thiele, Elisabeth, 5, 41
Index 249
Third party, importance of, 190 Vida do Cigano (Gypsy life), 4, 51,
Time 66, 181, 215
interval created through loans and definition of, 4, 216, 218
deferred exchanges, 125 Vingança, see Revenge (vingança)
manipulation in transactions, 213 Violence, 79
punctuated, 148 between Ciganos and Jurons, 18,
Tiradentes, 62 59, 105, 130, 219
Trabalhar, see Work intracommunity, 59, 61, 105
Traditional peoples and involved in moneylending, 18,
communities, 21 155, 162, 164, 166, 171, 174
Trato (agreement to marry), 67–72, and spatiality, 55–60
74, 77, 80, 81, 114, 116 See also Conflicts; Vingança
Trickery, 210 Virilocality, 42, 55
Trickster, 161, 170 Viver apoiado (to live a supported life),
Trust, 15, 16, 25, 63, 133, 149, 155, 19, 27, 51, 66, 67, 111, 203
158, 167, 168, 171, 173, 183, See also Established, being
196, 220 Votive promise (promessa), 173
and mistrust, 130
Truthful performance, 131
Tupinambá, 224n2 W
See also Indigenous people Wages, see Salaries
Turma (households that camp/travel Walsh, Robert, 7
together), 35–37, 44, 46, 49, Weak (fraco), 112, 171, 195
56, 61, 82, 141, 153, 187, Wealth
188, 198 as an attribute of masculinity, 87,
97
and marriages, 71
U and strength, 112, 114
Uncertainty, 54, 73, 77, 96, 97, 114, Weddings
220 as demonstrations of efficacy, 82,
Unknown Ciganos, 30, 41, 59, 60, 99, 191
105, 196, 199 expenses paid by bride’s families,
Usura, 7, 8 83, 85, 135
and groom’s family movement,
37, 68, 81
V intensification of exchanges after,
Valour (valentia), 201 144
singularisation through, 201 and introversion of moral
See also Honour; Masculinity orientation, 94
250 Index
Widows, 10, 28, 35, 43–45, 48, 52, Witches’ broom disease, 210, 221
73, 87, 90n2, 113–115, 117, See also Cocoa
135, 138, 210 Women’s efficacy, 144
Wife Work, 3, 4, 30, 35, 66, 82, 87, 89,
economic activities of, 116, 139 99, 131, 141, 148, 159, 170,
her role in moneylending, 141, 176n1, 179–181, 183, 185
144, 156, 165, 176, 190 Romani opposition to waged
as lenders, 25, 65, 141 work, 182
Wife’s money, 85 See also Autonomous economic
Williams, Patrick, 22, 63, 81, 82, 87, activities, preference for
101, 115, 117, 153, 216 Workers’ Party, 8, 12, 160, 222

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FROM ITINERANT

From Itinerant Trade

ISBN 978-3-319-96408-9 ISBN 978-3-319-96409-6 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952363

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

Cover illustration: Zoonar GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo

Dantas, Helena Dolabela, Aderino Dourado, Florencia Ferrari, Mirriam

Part I Settlements, Personhood, and the Centrality of

Chapter 1 ‘There Are Ciganos in the Town’ 35

Chapter 2 Household Fixity As a Process 65

Chapter 3 Makers of Their Futures 91

Part II Calon Assimilation of the Local Economic

Chapter 4 Deferred Payments and the Expanding Moment

Chapter 5 Lending Money to Jurons 151

Chapter 6 Moneylending Niche As Householding 179

Epilogue: The Crisis, the Stranger, and the State 209

Introduction: Consolidation of the Cigano Moneylending Niche in the

Image 1.1 A Calon camp in a small town in a coastal region of Bahia;

The Teacher and the Moneylender

© The Author(s) 2018 1

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

From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending

Rio de Janeiro, such moneymaking activities were also connected with

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

‘Gypsies Are Not the Only Moneylenders’

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

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

 xpansion of Credit Under Social

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

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

F inancialisation of Daily Life in Small-Town

O fiado me da penas Credit brings me worry

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

Cigano Moneylending Niche

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

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

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

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

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

 apping the Network, or Chronicles

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

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

Two Decades in the Life of a Calon Family

© The Author(s) 2018 35

The newlyweds lived in a neighbouring town alongside Claudio’s fam-

This narrative is reconstructed from several conversations I had with

Volta Redonda Bomfim

Alto de Bela Vista

strength or força, a Calon concept discussed later in the book. As an attri-

of the households of sisters and their married children, although, signifi-

VII New still uninhabited houses of

people’s capability to ‘attract’ things (money, people, and objects) towards

Early September 2008: The camp around Djalma has 24 people and 10

drinking and gambling a lot recently, and a few

gives the Calon 30 days to vacate the area of the

Although changes in other nearby settlements were somewhat less fre-

ownership, movement can still be achieved by changing the place where

would provide some protection to Kiko once he moved there, since

Behind the temporary alignments realised in settlements lie households’

Social wayfaring requires effort, since the environment—the absolute

ance between—affinally related families, while later, a violent incident in

killing, kin, overcome with emotion, resort to revenge and a general

tial characteristics relate to ways in which stability is fabricated through a

Part I Settlements, Personhood, and the Centrality of

Chapter 1 ‘There Are Ciganos in the Town’ 35

Chapter 2 Household Fixity As a Process 65

Chapter 3 Makers of Their Futures 91

Part II Calon Assimilation of the Local Economic

Chapter 5 Lending Money to Jurons 151

Chapter 6 Moneylending Niche As Householding 179

Epilogue: The Crisis, the Stranger, and the State 209

The Teacher and the Moneylender

From Itinerant Trade to Moneylending

‘Gypsies Are Not the Only Moneylenders’

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

xpansion of Credit Under Social

F inancialisation of Daily Life in Small-Town

Cigano Moneylending Niche

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

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

apping the Network, or Chronicles

Two Decades in the Life of a Calon Family

Intensive Presence, Abrupt Absence

To Lead a Supported Life

The Family Together

Negotiating the Relational Grid

Households Against Proletarianisation

when a man is seen as lazy, addicted to gambling, or somewhat thick-witted

reconstruct relationships between one another, demonstrate their a bilities,

Making Money with Money

Between One’s Rancho and the Street

How Beto Misjudged a Client

A Calon’s Juron Clientele

‘Ciganos Have Many People in Hand’

How Calon Manage Loans to Jurons

out of the conversation; or calling a client gajão/gajin, a term non-Gypsies

‘Running After the Money’

‘Ciganos Do Not Work’

Householding Mode of Integration