“As we forgive our debtors”: Mexico's el barzón movement, bankruptcy policy in the United States, and the ethnography of neoliberal logic and practice

This article considers the question whether, in the face of rising indebtedness, there might be a social movement in the United States similar to El Barzón, a debtors’ movement in Mexico particularly visible during and after the neoliberal financial crisis of 1994. The importance of middle-class consumer debt to the global economy (thus the powerful potential for debtors to organize) is mediated in the United States by increasing domestic surveillance and the links between neoliberal policy and neoconservative Christian logic in state administration. Historical, ethnographic, comparative, and collaborative possibilities for investigating social movements’ potential to respond to increasing political and economic repression are discussed.