“As We Forgive Our Debtors”: Mexico'sEl BarzónMovement, Bankruptcy Policy in the United States, and the Ethnography of Neoliberal Logic and Practice

Chronicle of a debt foretold

“…Indeed, as Williams ( 2001) suggests, Mexican 'folk wisdom' proved more attuned to the reality of the crisis than the official government discourse. More than half the defaulted debt derived from only 605 loans and 2,000 debtors accounted for 80 per cent of the total liabilities absorbed through FOBAPROA (Kingsolver, 2008). Accordingly, many Mexicans concluded that the bailout was designed to serve the interests of those who had created the crisis, rather than homeowners and consumers who would ultimately bear the burden of repaying not only their own debts, but also those of corrupt politicians and wealthy investors who had bankrupted the fi nancial system.…”

“…The use of the credit system and promotion of massive debt by means of fraud and predation represent the most radical form of this process of 'accumulation by dispossession.' As Kingsolver (2008) notes, the imposition of this debt regime is readily apparent in the restructuring of US bankruptcy laws in 2005, which restricted the ability of households to free themselves from the shackles of indebtedness while continuing to allow corporations to wipe the debt slate clean. Furthermore, the role of debt in the creation of wealth, as highlighted by ephemeral gains in housing values and the explosion of consumer credit, becomes particularly insidious due to the reality of wage stagnation under the neoliberal regime (Strauss, 2009).…”

“…Since the global economy, as currently structured, requires new sources of debt in order to create profi t for investors, the global system can only generate wealth if we fail to acknowledge our shared plight as consumers of debt and overlook our potential to contest and subvert the processes of accumulation by dispossession. As Kingsolver (2008) reveals, the debt regime is sustained by justifying indebtedness as an individual moral shortcoming, which ignores the structural forces promoting exploitation; through the myth of the middle class, which dismisses true class differences and solidarity; and by means of increased surveillance and disciplining of debtors, exemplifi ed by the recent restructuring of US bankruptcy laws. If Mexico's tequila crisis serves as a prelude to the current financial debacle, the Barzón movement undoubtedly offers important insights into how civil society in the United States might contest imposition of the debt regime.…”