Traversing the margins of corruption amidst informal economies in Amazonia

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on local idioms of extra-legal economic activity among indigenous Amazonians in eastern Peru. I argue that these idioms are part of a broader context in which indigenous people are compelled by a variety of factors to act in ways that are perceived as corrupt by other non-indigenous actors. I suggest that within such a context these idioms are not solely confined to the informal economy but are also used to refer to activities that fall within the formal economy, thus providing an indication for how the orthodox economy is imagined. I further argue that corruption within Amazonian economies is commonly perceived by non-indigenous people as contrasting with the workings of the orthodox economy without proper consideration of the economic conditions and bureaucratic structures that give rise to it. Lastly, I offer a morally based rather than legally based analysis of corruption and argue that, in the case examined here, corruption can contravene bureaucracy by restoring the humanity that bureaucracy rejects through its acts of indifference toward individuals.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to all of the individuals I interviewed and to all of the communities that have welcomed me in the Peruvian Amazon. I would especially like to thank Miguel Alexiades for his comments. This article benefitted from the inspiration and feedback received at the Languages of Informality Workshop organised by David Henig, University of Kent, and Nicolette Makovicky, University of Oxford and the Centre for European Language Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) in 2013. Various grants have supported the long term fieldwork that spans the timeframe covered by this chapter: the British Academy Small Research Grant, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Social Science Research Council, Fulbright and American Women in Science. I would also like to thank the FENAMAD and Donna Goldstein and Kristen Drybread, the editors of this special issue on corruption in Latin America.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Daniela Peluso is a Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Kent. She received her PhD from Columbia University. Over the last three decades, she has worked in Lowland South America, mostly with indigenous communities in the Peruvian and Bolivian Amazon, and in close collaboration with indigenous federations. She has also been involved in various local efforts on issues relating to health, gender and land-rights. Her most recent publications have focused on indigenous urbanisation and relatedness in Lowland South America. She serves on the Board of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA) and is an associate researcher for People and Plants International (PPI).

ORCID

Daniela Peluso http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6276-3247

Notes

1 Based on readings of Castells and Portes (1989) and Hart (2009), my definition of ‘informal economy’ modifies and extends the one used by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (Chen 2005).

2 My fieldwork in Amazonia spans across three decades and is based on participant observation, events and bureaucratic processes. In this article I have chosen to not name the indigenous Amazonian groups I draw my material from. This choice to anonymise is due to the sensitive discussions of alleged corruption. The use of the term ‘indigenous’ here refers to Amerindian peoples who use ethnic identity in Amazonia predate European colonisation, and whose ethnic identity and takes into account the contested conceptual history of indigeneity (Kuper 2003; Canessa 2007).

3 My use of the term ‘moral economy’ is derived from Thompson (1971) and Scott (1976); see also Fassin (2005).

4 The Amazon is known for its strong cattle and agricultural economies (including large-scale soya production), timber, forest products, gold, oil and gas and the cocaine trade (Veiga et al. 2002). There are regional differences in the importance of these economic activities (Bunker 2003).

5 De Soto’s work is also available in English translation (De Soto 1986) and has also been widely criticised, see, for instance Manders (2004).

6 Hereafter, when speaking of ‘indigenous Amazonians’ I am referring to indigenous ethnic populations of the Madre de Dios region.

7 See Andrien (1984) for a discussion of rampant corruption and inefficiency in the seventeenth-century viceroyalty of Peru.

8 Although declining to give a ‘top up’ may appear to be bad business practice, it is most common when a seller has minimal competition.

9 Peonage is also known as habilitación in Spanish and aviamiento in Portuguese. An examination of corruption within colonial patronage systems is beyond the scope of this article.

10 Brazil-nut cooperatives are an example.

11 Human/non-human relationships are complex and assume shifting positions of predators prey and allies, and therefore need to be treated with care (Peluso 2007).

12 This play on words uses two words with the same origin: pagando and apagando both derive from the Latin pacare, meaning ‘to calm or alleviate’.

13 The meat of domesticated pigs is typically seen as unhealthy.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by British Academy [grant number SG: 45119].