Ariel Wilkis, The Moral Power of Money: Morality and Economy in the Life of the Poor

Abstract

MARY IS A FIFTY- EIGHT- YEAR- OLD WOMAN who lives in Villa Olimpia, a villa mise- ria (slum) in greater Buenos Aires, west of the country’s capital city. The first slums in Buenos Aires— neglected areas to which the urban poor have his- torically been relegated— date back to the 1930s. With each passing decade, they expanded as migrants flooded the city, first from provinces across Ar- gentina and later from other South American countries, particularly Para- guay, Bolivia, and Peru. Like so many of these migrants, Mary and her four children arrived from Paraguay twenty- five years ago.