Communal Strategies for Controlling Microfinance in Chuimeq'ena' Guatemala

Can the presence of indebtedness and microfinance policies in communal lands in Guatemala be understood and characterized only as a form of domination and exploitation from above? No, they cannot. They cannot, firstly, because in communal lands, life is organized through pluralistic political formats that function in overlapping relational webs in order to guarantee the reproduction of life. Those policies are presented as a series of obstacles preventing the full unfolding of the communal webs. They cannot, secondly, because policies of entrepreneurship do not function as a sort of domination without resistance: communal webs invent a number of ways of constraining and transforming such policies, and communal authorities protect families when financial agencies want to extract late fees by dispossessing people of their land or housing. These communal webs have a particular space and geography in Chuimeq'ena' (Totonicapán), and from there they deploy a series of strategies for controlling microfinance institutions. How then can we understand the role of credit for families who organize their lives on communal lands?