Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

Final Report/Synopsis of Research Results:

This research project is an ethnographic investigation of a microcredit-based development initiative in Ciudad del Este, a commercial “special customs zone” on Paraguay’s triple-frontier with Brazil and Argentina.  As a border town, much of the economic activity in Ciudad del Este is based on cross-border trade.  I began this project with an interest in how development projects that aim at financial inclusion operate in a city already configured by extensive commercial activity: even marginal neighborhoods in Ciudad del Este are caught up in the financial flows of cross-border trade and petty arbitrage.  If the microfinance Non-Government Organization (NGO)— Fundación Paraguaya —is working through solidarity loans to foster entrepreneurship in its  committees of women entrepreneurs,  how is the institutional notion of entrepreneurship similar to or different from the lived-experience of commerce in the ‘special customs zone?’  How does microcredit-based development fit into the many small-scale credit options available in Ciudad del Este?