El Norte or Bust!: How Migration Fever and Microcredit Produced a Financial Crash in a Latin American TownDebt is the hidden engine driving undocumented migration to the United States. So argues David Stoll in this powerful chronicle of migrants, moneylenders, and swindlers in the Guatemalan highlands, one of the locales that, collectively, are sending millions of Latin Americans north in search of higher wages. As an anthropologist, Stoll has witnessed the Ixil Mayas of Nebaj grow in numbers, run out of land, and struggle to find employment. Aid agencies have provided microcredits to turn the Nebajenses into entrepreneurs, but credit alone cannot boost productivity in crowded mountain valleys, which is why many recipients have invested the loans in smuggling themselves to the United States. Back home, their remittances have inflated the price of land so high that only migrants can afford to buy it. Thus, more Nebajenses have felt obliged to borrow the large sums needed to go north. So many have done so that, even before the Great Recession hit the U.S. in 2008, many were unable to find enough work to pay back their loans, triggering a financial crash back home. Now migrants and their families are losing the land and homes they have pledged as collateral. Chain migration, moneylending, and large families, Stoll proposes, have turned into pyramid schemes in which the poor transfer risk and loss to their near and dear. |
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Contents
| 3 | |
Chapter Two A Town of Many Projects | 29 |
Chapter Three Nebaj Goes North | 51 |
Chapter Four Indenture Travel | 81 |
Part II THE NEBAJ BUBBLE AND HOW IT BURST | 107 |
Chapter Five Borrowers Moneylenders and Banks | 109 |
Chapter Six Projects and Their PenumbraSwindles | 137 |
Chapter Seven Losing Husbands to El Norte | 163 |
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Common terms and phrases
19905 Since early agricultural aid projects Akateks Almolonga ANECOF anthropologist army arrived asked bank Banrural become benefit border borrowers capital Catholic Chajul collateral contractors Cotoneb coyotes Cuchumatanes cuerda debt difficult Dofia dollars earn economy El Norte Elena employers evangelical Evidalia figure finance financial find first five flow go north Guatemala City Guatemalan guerrillas Huehuetenango Huehuetenango Department human rights husband immigrants indigenous Ixil country Ixil women Juana Baca K’iche labor ladinos land Latin American lawyer leaders lglesia Evangélica living loan officers Maya Mayan Mexican Mexico microcredit Microfinance migrants migration stream Miguel moneylenders month municipio Nebaj Nebajenses neighbors networks never Norte office organizations peasants percent Pista police population Prensa Libre profit pyramid scheme Q’anjob’als quetzals Quetzaltenango Quiche remittances social Spanish Thomas Dichter tion told town trip United victims village wages wife woman workers zahorin
Bibliographic information
| Title | El Norte or Bust!: How Migration Fever and Microcredit Produced a Financial Crash in a Latin American Town |
| Author | David Stoll |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2012 |
| ISBN | 1442220694, 9781442220690 |
| Length | 296 pages |
| Subjects | › › Business & Economics / International / Economics & Trade Political Science / World / Caribbean & Latin American Social Science / Anthropology / Cultural & Social Social Science / Regional Studies |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |