Painted by Default: Public Shaming and Graffiti on the Homefront

Abstract

ABSTRACTAcross El Alto, Bolivia, a particular kind of graffiti stands out on the walls of household compounds: startling letters proclaiming deudor moroso (defaulting debtor). These public accusations of insolvency join other expressions of households in crisis, disrupting any imagined public/private boundary between city streets and homes that are charged moral, material, and social configurations. As I show, defaulting debtor graffiti spatializes loan recovery efforts by implicating a broader constellation of relationships connected through the physical structure of the home and, in that implication, often fractures bonds of relatedness in the process. Yet the graffiti's ambiguous authorship enables those branded to challenge any singular reading of its scrawl. As deudor moroso graffiti enters into the struggle over urban space's inscriptions, it illuminates the ways home space is entangled with public space as a battleground over economic ruin and its meanings. [urban anthropology, graffiti, kinship, debt, microfinance, Bolivia]