No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
An introductory framework for ‘Habilito: Debt for Life’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2024
Abstract
Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.
The documentary film Habilito: Debt for Life provides a case study of the conflicts and tensions that arise at the point of contact between highland migrants and Mosetenes, members of an indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon. It focuses particularly on a system of debt peonage known locally as ‘habilito’. This system is used throughout the Bolivian lowlands, and much of the rest of the Amazon basin, to secure labor in remote areas. Timber merchants advance market goods to Mosetenes at inflated prices, in exchange for tropical hardwood timber. When it comes time to settle accounts, the indebted person often finds that the wood he has cut does not meet his debt obligation, and he has to borrow more money to return to the forest to continue logging. This permanent cycle of debt permits actors from outside these indigenous communities to maintain control over the extraction of wood and provides them with a free source of labor in the exploitation of timber resources. This system is practiced especially in remote areas where systems of patronage predominate, and where colonists with a market-based economic logic come into contact with Amazonian indigenous peoples who, historically, have not employed an economic logic of saving or hoarding.
- Type
- Essay
- Information
- Creative Commons
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.- Copyright
- © 2016 The Author(s)
References
References
Bedoya, E. and Bedoya, A. (2004) Enganche y Servidumbre por Deudas en Bolivia. Geneva: International Labour Organization.Google Scholar
Bedoya, E. and Bedoya, A. (2005) El Trabajo Forzoso en la Extracción de Madera en la Amazonia Peruana. Geneva: International Labour Organization.Google Scholar
Block, D. (1994) Mission Culture on the Upper Amazon: Native Tradition, Jesuit enterprise, and Secular Policy in Moxos, 1660-1880. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Burling, R. (1962) Maximization theories and the study of economic anthropology. American Anthropologist, 64(4): 802–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garcia Jordán, P. (ed.) (1998) Fronteras, Colonización y Mano de Obra Indígena, Amazonia Andina (Siglo XIX-XX): La Construcción del Espacio Socio-Económico Amazónico en Ecuador, Perú y Bolivia (1792-1948). Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.Google Scholar
Godelier, M. (1974) Economía Fetichismo y Religión en las Sociedades Primitivas. Madrid: Siglo XXI.Google Scholar
Gow, P. (1991) Of Mixed Blood: Kinship and History in Peruvian Amazonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granovetter, M. (1985) Economic action and social structure: The problem of embeddedness. American Journal of Sociology, 91(3): 481–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gudeman, S. (1986) Economics as Culture: Models and Metaphors of Livelihood. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Herrera, E., Cárdena, C. and Terceros, E. (2005) Identidad y Territorios Indígenas. Estrategias Identitarias de los Tacanas y Ayoreo Frente a la Ley INRA. La Paz: PIEB.Google Scholar
Killick, E. (2008) Godparents and trading partners: Social and economic relations in the Peruvian Amazonia. Journal of Latin American Studies, 40(2): 303–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Killick, E. (2011) The debts that bind us: A comparison of Amazonian debt-peonage and U.S. mortgage practices. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 53(2): 344–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, T.M. (2014) Land's End: Capitalist Relations on an Indigenous Frontier. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Polanyi, K. (1944) The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Ricco Quiroga, D. (2010) Los “Dueños” del Monte: Las Relaciones Sociales que se Tejen en la Actualidad en Torno a la Extracción de Madera en la TCO Mosetén [Licenciatura]. La Paz: Universidad Mayor de San Andrés.Google Scholar
Santos-Granero, F. and Barclay, F. (1995) Ordenes y Desórdenes en la Selva Central: Historia y Economia de un Espacio Regional. Lima: IEP.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Santos-Granero, F. and Barclay, F. (2000) Tamed Frontiers: Economy, Society, and Civil Rights in Upper Amazonia. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.Google Scholar
Taussig, M.T. (1987) Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man: A Study in Terror and Healing. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Films cited
Habilito: Debt for Life (2016) Dir. Chuck Sturtevant and Daniela Ricco Quiroga. Finance and Society, 2(1). Available at: <http://financeandsociety.ed.ac.uk/article/view/1668/2116/>..>Google Scholar
You have
Access
Open access