IBM

When asked about the motivations to send money to fund religious or festive events, both migrants and non-migrants placed devotion at the core of their collective financial behaviour.

‘Out of devotion’ acquired the category of a leitmotif, as can be seen from the following quotes.

Everything is based on the faith of each one, for devotion [talking about the reasons to send money for the Xarbán fiesta].

(Xarbán, 32 year-old female migrant in Queens since 2005)

Youngsters here, the priostes from Xarbán make devotion through the game of escaramuza, horse-riding. [...]

-Do they play for a prize?

No. It is for devotion. To give thanks for some miracle, they play the escaramuza.

They spend the whole day horse riding from 8am to 6pm, only resting to attend the mass.

(Xarbán, male in his forties, non-migrant and prioste)

Migrants have invested ever since I am here, around $40,000 [to refurbish the church building].

-Why do you think migrants send the money, if they cannot attend mass in Xarbán?

They have faith. They do it for the Lord of the Miracles, for him to help them in the US with their health, work, in everything...in their lives. It is sheer devotion.

(Xarbán, male in his fifties, non-migrant and religious trustee-síndico of the Xarbán church)

Money undergoes a process of purification, becoming ‘devout’ in the meanwhile. Gallo has also acknowledged a similar pattern of money purification in Kerala where ‘gold becomes god’

(Gallo, 2011). It means that it cannot be criticized as it is not socially appropriate in Xarbán to criticize sending money or any other behaviour which takes place because of devotion to a saint. Non-migrants may argue if devotion is the true reason to send money, although this criticism needs to be more sophisticated and becomes less efficient. Nevertheless, migrants’

devotion is not only a discursive tool to counterbalance criticisms towards their collective remittances-expenditure practices. Migrants do see their devotion enhanced as a consequence of migration (for a wonderful account of the role of religion in the migratory process see Hagan and Ebaugh, 2003).

Migration inserts uncertainty into migrants’ lives which increases their previous and ambiguous devotion: the journey and the hard living conditions abroad generally increase migrants’ religiosity. The dangerous journey to the US clearly impacts on migrants’ religiosity, as seen in next quote:

My father used to send money for the fiestas. He must have forgotten about the saints by now. My husband does not send, he has never sent. He is rather non-devout [indevoto]. Only in the journey [as an irregular migrant to the US], there he did need the saints [she laughs].

(Xarbán, 34 year-old female, daughter and wife of migrants in the US)

Many migrants send money or visit sanctuaries upon their return to show their gratitude for the protection awarded by the gods in their journey, either to the US or to Europe. The photographs in Figure 6.3 were taken in the sanctuary of the Virgin of the Swan in the province of Loja.

Figure 6.3: Gratitude plaques of migrants to the Virgin of the Swan (Loja)

Thanks to the Blessed Virgin of the Swan for having granted me the miracle of arriving in New York without problems.

Source: photographs by the author

Once in the US, migrants’ precarious social incorporation restricts them to moving within the limits of the Xarbán social group. Religious gatherings, to pray and raise money to send to Ecuador, provide a unique framework of sociability where migrants enact their group

membership and de-centre their lives from work and the ever-present obligation of sending remittances to the family (Mata-Codesal, 2011b).

Collective remittances not only must be understood within a framework of negotiations between migrants and non-migrants. There are also power negotiations between migrants and the local catholic hierarchies, which tried to capture collective remittances obtaining the power of decision over them. Although most Xarbán villagers are catholic and there is no religious conflict in the village, relations with the official catholic hierarchies are not straightforward. Villagers show an ambiguous relationship towards catholic rituals, appropriating and reworking some of them while keeping at bay the priests’ demands for

‘purer’ and more restrained rituals.

The new priest does not want us to hire bands, nothing. He says we are wasting the money [gastando en vano]. He thinks we should instead give him the money to do charity. For the poor families in Gualaceo [...] He says that if we do not listen to him, then he will not celebrate the mass.

(Xarbán, male in his forties, non-migrant and prioste)

Remaining money after the fiesta is handed in to the síndico (the person in charge of the church building maintenance) who saves it for repairs. In 2004, the church building underwent an expensive refurbishment which was fully funded by migrants in the US:

We refurbished the church building five years ago. [...] it cost around 27,000 dollars.

-Where did the money come from?

From the migrants who live in New York. There are many villagers there, and a group of priostes of the Lord of the Miracles, our patron saint. They gave the money. They hold meetings there, gather money.

(Xarbán, male in his fifties, non-migrant and religious trustee-síndico of the Xarbán church)

The church building is property of the Catholic Church, not of the village authorities. The more money is spent on fiesta, the less there is remaining for church repairs. These repairs enhance the Catholic Church patrimony. Hence migrants must balance the discourse of devotion to

block criticism from non-migrants but also tailor their behaviour to the demands of the local catholic hierarchies.

6.3 Conclusion

This chapter has analysed the most frequent ways of spending financial remittances in the two villages after daily expenses are covered: specifically I have looked in turn at education, health, housing, vehicles, land acquisition, agriculture and livestock. I would like to make two final clarifications regarding the uses of financial remittances. First of all, pessimistic or critical accounts of their impact tend to be partial and ignore the overall context in which utilization decisions are taken. In economic terms, both in Xarbán and Pindo, as well as in many rural areas of Latin America, the lack of a reliable financial system, the presence of a poor communication infrastructure, the lack of understanding of basic market management, lack of transparency and information in dealings with the public sector (including the presence of petty corruption), and an unstable political and economic national environment are not the best breeding ground for any entrepreneurial initiative. Given this context, using remittances in ‘traditional’ ventures of productive investment is more an economic suicide than an economically rational decision.

Secondly, it is important to clarify the scale of the analysis, as remittances’ effects can be different at different geographical and social scales. This thesis examines financial remittances’

uses and their consequences at the village level. I do not reckon these effects scale up to the regional or national level. As such there is an imperative need not to confuse levels of impact.

At the macro-level remittances may or may not foster a country’s development. At this point, we are obliged to ask about what kind of development are we talking about (economic, human development, etc.) and also about the responsibility of migrants (compared to other groups) in the development of their countries of origin. As the ECLAC put it, the ‘so-called productive use of remittances has been a mirage created by migrants’ countries of origin. These countries’

policies want to treat as captive agents those who are beyond their scope and demand behaviours and commitments of migrants that they do not demand of the rest of the society’

(ECLAC, 1998 cited in Mahler, 2000: 33). I will reflect on this in the final chapter of this thesis.

At the family level, though, international remittances have become a substantial part of the life strategies of relatively vulnerable groups. As such, agency must be central to any discussion of remittances’ uses and effects. Analysis of remittances’ uses must be cognisant of

the ways decisions are taken and negotiated in the context of changing environments and priorities. This research cannot provide accurate data of changing usage patterns over time.

Nonetheless, I acknowledge the presence of such changes in remittance usage patterns over time based on changing context variables (both in origin and new places of residence) and priorities over the life cycle of senders and receivers. With Conway and Cohen, I also conceptualize decisions over remittances’ uses as ‘resistance actions of people attempting to survive in a crisis-ridden structure of dependent capitalist relationships [...] Such purposive action even by those with little space to manoeuvre is empowering. Vulnerable they may remain, but not totally bereft of options’ (1998: 33). This approach looks at remittance uses as an inherent and important part of the life strategies of those who decide

.

This chapter has also covered the sixth remaining material transfer of the typology presented in previous chapter. Both in Xarbán and Pindo migrants send money for collective purposes, mainly to improve the village’s church building, and to fund religious festive events, and occasional development projects. As seen, collective remittances can create their own collective transfer mechanisms (as in Xarbán), or they can be transferred through family members (as in Pindo). Due to different migrants’ features (irregular legal status abroad, dangerous journeys, precarious social incorporation in migrants’ new places of residence), Xarbán migrants have more incentive to send collective remittances than their Pindo counterparts.

In Xarbán collective remittances fund the village patron saint festivities every year as well as maintaining and improving the church building. Sending money for the fiesta or to rebuild physical structures of the church is a non-controversial way for migrants to become visible. US-located priostes are very aware that sending money to the church avoids problems in Xarbán as it is a pious activity that no one would dare to criticize. Giving money for other sorts of project (such as investment or development projects) is very risky because of gossiping, misunderstandings and previous tensions between families. Collective remittances are then presented by migrants within a framework of exacerbated devotion. This devotion, in some cases already present before migrating, is accentuated by the dangers and uncertainties of the expensive journey to the US and by migrants’ very precarious social position there. These collective remittances, always within the ‘devotion discourse’, enable migrants to maintain and reinforce their membership from abroad within the social and symbolic structures of Xarbán. The collective sending of the money takes place within the traditional Andean institution of the priostazgo, which has been transnationalized.

Neither in Xarbán nor in Pindo has money ever been sent for the village civil authorities.

Everyone agrees that they have their own (public) sources of funding. In Xarbán any attempt to link local village authorities with the fiesta is quickly dismissed as a way to politicize the fiesta and the priostazgo system. In the case of Xarbán, US-located priostes also want to limit local priest involvement. It results in an ongoing tension between the current priest and the priostes who are unwilling to give up decision power over their collective remittances.

Collective remittances for religious and festive events are the only socially accepted routes for migrants’ collective expenditure practices. As for family remittances, there are no true investment options for collective remittances in Xarbán and Pindo. In the case of collective remittances it is even more complicated because migrants’ control and monitoring is very difficult to exert. Nonetheless, collective remittances for festive events create strong economic multiplier effects (Durand et al., 1996) in the businesses surrounding fiestas such as stationery, flowers, hairdressers, fashion, musicians, photographers, catering, or pyrotechnics.

After this extensive coverage of material remittances, I move now to unpack social remittances. I will deal with the processes of creation of social remittances in chapter seven, and with the content of the social remittances themselves in chapter eight.

Chapter 7: