Election 11

Jorge Mattar Villela & Ana Claudia D. R.
Marques 25
MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS: FAVOR, VOTE AND CREDIT IN THE PERNAMBUCAN SERTAO OF BRAZIL Jorge Mattar Villela
Universidade Federal de Siio Carlos
Ana Claudia D. R. Marques

Universidade de Siio Paul0
Translated by Bruce D e a n Willis University of Tulsa
Keywords
Brazil, Pernambuco, politics, elections, reciprocity
Politics is politics, war is Wac an opponent is an opponent. It has to be like that. I like to see the guy on the edge o f the cliff; either to push him off or to save him-then he s mine. (the words of a former vote-getter from Jordbnia)
Introduction
In January 2002, the Rio press reported the Abundance of Health Plans approved by the Ministry of Health and related to the launch of JosC Serras campaign for president of Brazil for the PSDB, the party of then president Fernando Henrique Cardoso (Jornal do Brasil, 20/01/2002: 2). Serra was the Minister of Health at the time. According to the article, the Ministry had retained more than 500 million reais from its 2001 budget, intending to spend them fifteen months after their liquidation, using the old balance to pay trick. Unable to continue on as Minister of Health, the candidate could attend, as an invited guest, the remaining health plan inaugurations through June. After that time, the reporter concluded, any liquidation of funds raises suspicion of machinations. The same report stated that the trick would work like a powerful marketing weapon aimed at the PSDB candidates election. The report makes assumptions about gaining voters through
26 The Latin Americanist Spring 2006

the concession of benefits (public works, purchases of equipment and durable goods, in this specific case) resulting from the approved health plans. From either side of the cries of protest amplified by the different media outlets, it is worth the effort to describe and understand a certain mechanism comprised of the reception of all kinds of resources-at the state level and, mainly, at the municipal level-through politicians as vote-holders who, in turn, correspond to what the higher-level politicians-resource-holders particularly at the federal level-intend to coopt. Phrased schematically, it is desired, as much as possible, to make the concession of resources equivalent to the political affiliations to the electoral campaigns. Such equivalency and reciprocity should not, however, be understood as something beyond the always provisory result of a game whose elements and results are unpredictable, a game that is incessantly broached by the social actors we will endeavor to spotlight. The following article will attempt to show how the emissions and receptions of the flow of votes and resources work, with attention to the electoral bases. Our aim is to verify the ways in which the vote of an individual or a group is obtained for this or that candidate; to investigate the machinations that direct their votes or their efforts to a certain politician, or vote-getter, in exchange for favors, when it is known that electoral practices are full of betrayals and that promises made most often go unfulfilled; and to examine the underpinnings of this interchange of votes and favors. An ethnography of municipal elections reveals that the resources placed at the disposition of the candidates are not exclusively the ones designated for the municipality by the national and state governments. The resources are, for the most part, generated locally by the candidates themselves*.
The Emission of Flux

In the political relationships observed in the municipalities in question, each one of the participants functions as an emitter or receiver of the flux of diverse resources. From the point of view of the mediators in such a process, politics3 is, in essence or above all, the possibility of circulation, retention and distribution of these resources. The latter, in turn, although they are not unlimited, are significantly vast in their variety. Thus, eleitores de voto mliltiplo [multiple vote voter] (Palmeira, 1996: 5 1 ) s u c h as heads of families, community leaders, advisors, vote-getters of all types, doctors, public officials, city councillors, mayors, state and
Jorge Mattar Villela & Ana Claudia D. R. Marques 27

federal representatives, governors, senators and presidents of the Republic-, in other words, those who control more or less rigidly a group of voters, try to transform into political resources all the favors and goods they can access, producing a consubstantiation of resources into votes and vice versa4.Many factors impose themselves, however, between the act of giving benefits, tangible or not, and receiving votes. The resources become votes, the votes become resources, and the votes become votes. To this must be added the transformation of both, votes and resources, into presti& which, in turn, is a producer of votes. Intangible benefits interfere necessarily in the transactions and conversions of votes for tangible benefits: the abyss that separates the votes from the resources would seldom be overcome without such interference. If, on the one hand, there exists recognition of the relationship and identification between politics and gifts-expressed, 0que vale 6 o dinheiro [what for example, in sayings such as matters is the money], and politico que niio d6 nada ao povo n8o se elege [a politician who gives nothing to the people wont be electedl-on the other hand there are certain practices and discourses intended to renounce the excesses of electoral materialism. One of the candidates whose campaign we followed very closely specified his position regarding the deliverance of votes in exchange for favors as follows: My God, dozens of people have gotten themselves ready to vote for me, saying that favors are owed. I say, no [laughing]. I feel like saying (you can even offend the person, leave him all depressed): I dont want you to vote for me, I only want your vote if its conscienr i m . These folks dont even know what that means. Nevertheless, for him as well as for the group of voters, the circulation of resources and the elections are indivisible. This shines through in the pride manifested by the same candidate for those voters who pledged him their votes because they felt they owed something to members of his campaign team, who went around asking for votes on his behalf. Or owed something to the candidate himself, personally, evoking the time when he was the manager at the local branch of the state bank: I gave good service and the people, today, many folks that I dont even remember meeting, God bless em: you did such a huge favor for me there at the bank. And I still dont know exactly what favor he was talking about. Rejection of the vote obtained in direct relation to a service rendered does not preclude that at the end of a campaign visit, to a rancher to whom help had been promised, one of the

team members could say: mark my words: uma m8o lava a outra e as duas lavam o corpo [one hand washes the other and both of them wash the body]. It is noteworthy, therefore, that the relation between the conscientious vote and that which is opposed to it, the buying of votes-the vote resulting from assistencialismo [a system of hand-outs]-is more complex than what is suggested by a simple inversion of meaning (positive and negative)6. Everything happens as if a single group of premises were inherent to the two types, at first antagonistic in their adherence expressed through the vote. The logic behind the conversion of the resource/favor to resource/vote is not exactly rational or calculated but rather an object of constant tactical construction and evaluation. A potential candidate for city councilwoman told me that she planned to strike up a deal with the owner of a pharmacy that had a photocopier, so that the owner would give her a five-cent discount on each copy. In that way, the candidate would obtain the credit of getting lower prices in her name, since the discount would be valid only for those carrying a photocopy order signed by the candidate. The pharmacy owner, as well, would increase her clientele with the copies made by the candidates people7,without hurting her business by the price cut which, in the end, is not an uncommon concession as a way to capture or favor certain clients8. Similarly, it was speculated that the notary at the Civil Registry was charging for birth certificates-although the law requires their gratuity-in order to provide the mayor the concession of certificate permissions: a favor to attract voters. Even though politics, especially in the kpoca da politica [campaignseason], may be the practice of distributingbenefits, the resources placed under disposition are not necessarily of material origin, nor do they demand, as such, a well-off financial position for those who disburse them. Small favors and constant attentions or courtesies are often recognized as gifts that exact, in exchange, a refund in installments, or debt redemption as Palmeira prefers (1996: 47). One candidate, whose team included a Bank of Brazil security guard, said: These folks feel very grateful for these things. They get to the bank and feel lost. It can have to do with their age. You know, its an obligation to let an older person ahead in line, or call her aside to help her. You do it out of obligation, but she feels grateful... like she needs to bring a hen next time, or a bunch of bananas. In his estimation, this type of attention would produce votes
Jorge Mattar villela & Ana Claudia D. R. Marques 29

when the security guard asked these people for their vote. The same thing seems to happen in the estimation of the voters, on a wider political scale. When we asked a rancher if she would vote for a candidate for federal representative-the main politician in that region and whose name was blazoned across the t-shirt the woman was wearing-she responded affirmatively. When we asked why, she justified herself: I have to vote for him. He lets my brother stay at the hospital free of charge. The brother had periodic stays at a mental health clinic, built with funds obtained through one of the several mandates of that politican, and part of the health plan for the Serviqo Unico de Saude (sus). Its a public service, as she knows, but the idea persists of a favor lent, of which she becomes the debtor who has no intention of betraying the pact agreed on by her own design. On a lesser scale, the same logic of adhesion out of gratitude for a mediated benefit (of immeasurable cost) is dispersed under the most varied circumstances: a judge furnishes land for his tenants to work, charging them the traditional quatro urn [four oneI9,as is ordinarily done, but he allows them to use their cacimbas [Amazonian-stylewells]. Frequently, the attenrion and consideration given to an individual or family have their own sufficient value. In innumerable cases, similarly, it is enough to activate the necessary connections in the aid of a voters relative to steal the voter away from ones adversary. Zk Joiio, an elderly gentleman, had tried to obtain his sons release from prison from the politician for whom he had been voting for the past several elections. When his request was denied, the politicians adversaries contacted a Joiio because they already knew about the problem and desired the fathers well-known devotion and loyalty. Once the son was set free, the father transferred his support to the ones who had helped him. Recently, he re-registered in the neighboring municipality, old town Jordlnia, where today his son is a candidate for city council. The favors often identified as the most valuable by the areas popuIation may have no financial expense. In many cases, it is enough to lay out some prestige; grant a post that makes possible the rendering of services; have friendly or, even better, family relations that influence official or bureaucratic decisions or perhaps-the most valuable of favors-in the acquisition of a public paid position. In any case, the prestige attainable through a certain privilege is measured by the rentability that can be obtained, in other words, by the capacity to bestow and even to create resources that can be bestowed.

For example, during a rural campaign visit, a candidate arranged to be accompanied by three companions, among them a banker and a merchant who, because of his political and family relationships (inseparable one from the other) retained the privilege of issuing ID cards in that municipality. At one of the homes they visited looking for votes, a widow said that she needed her pension from a neighboring state. The banker said he was afriend of the INSS secretary in that city; the widows son was unable to get his ID card and was sent to speak with the owner of the pharmacy. Resources of this type do not automatically require wealth or political influence, but they do assume a network in which family relations and friendships, both necessarily cloaked with prestige, play a fundamental role. The issuer of the ID cards would not retain this privilege only because of his family relationship (relatively distant in a genealogical sense) to the mayor if, also because of family relations, his maternal uncle did not enjoy a certain prestige among the political group of a federal representative, in the city of Monsanto, near Monte Verde, which is the political base for the mayor of this city at the higher political levelsI0. Nonetheless, prestige entails the submission of its bearer to a patriio [boss] and his transformation into a client. Like many other values in operation among the inhabitants of the three municipalities, submission to a patriio or chefe is always up for review and negotiation. Not inserting the issue of voting into a relationship of reciprocity is highly valued. Repeatedly affirmed as the dever sagrado do cidadiio [citizens sacred duty], it is morally condemnable to use ones vote as merchandise. Therefore, when furnishing us with a classification of the types of votes, a married couple approves the conscientious vote, considered to be free. But, at the same time, the couple explains to us that the cabresto [forced] vote comes from those who depend on or follow a leader, a patriio, or a person of presrige who advises or demands loyalty at voting time. Although partially imposed, this vote is strategically well chosen by the voter who utilizes it, since going along with his patriio is, in truth, indirectly helping himself, materially and socially. In moments of necessity it can be embarrassing to not have anyone to turn to. This is equally true for the rich as well as the poor; the urban as well as the rural. The ability to obtain resources is highly valuedl; this equals prestige. Given that the possibility of conveniently providing for ones family passes frequently through political bonds, not having such bonds approximates the failure of such a task. Enjoying prestige

depends on the availabilty of resourcehote and, at a minimum, the ability to accumulate votes, creating a stockpile at the disposition of whomever may need them and who can present resources in exchange. The compensations for one endowed with prestige are difficult to define and not always objectified: a material advantage in commerce, some kind of medical attention, a favor obtained or which can be intermediated, sometimes the simple hypothesis of being able to count on support of whatever kind in case of need, or the vanity of making oneself recognized as the member of some group of prestige. A businessman in one of the municipalities probably transferred his former support for the mayor to the opposition candidate for reasons of his status. Since he owns agricultural processing machinery, as it was explained to us, it is in the best interest of all the candidates to have him on their side. In recompense, there is speculation that for his support the businessman in a situation like this desires that the mayor give him all commissions. Once he has this privilege, the businessman can transfer the benefit to his employees and other people who depend on him. Why should it be, then, that the current mayor has lost the businessmans backing? Has he denied the commissions? The same interviewee believes that the businessman decided it was more important to be the friend of [the opposition candidate], because he is from an important family. He decided that with the friendship of the candidate, who is part of the elite, he could be elite too. Hes crazy about being part of the elite. His wife added that, in this case, the financial aspect wasnt the most important. Prestige, whose usufruct is constantly a matter of debate, is not an essentially individual attribute, but it extends out from the family, the source from which is springs. Prestige and status do not seem to be objects of exclusively individual appropriation, since they can spread to whomever is close to the privileged, family and friends. A political boss in a municipality in the neighboring state of Paraiba explains as follows:
P: Status was a consequence of the value of the family, right? I mean, the outlaws brother could only lose status, but the coronels brother had status: state representative, political boss, with great influence, so, only by being his brother he had status. And today its still the same.
Interviewer: So, do you mean that if a brother in that

family, as an individual, manages to reach a superior status or to reach a certain higher economic level, he automatically raises the status of the whole family?
P: Exactly. Isnt it still like that today? Its still just like that today, isnt it? I mean, the national senator; for example, I was mayor, here, four times already, in Formosa, and naturally I have my amizades [friendships]. My family members threw themselves into that, relatively, you know? Hes the mayors brother and all that, so he already had more cachC, he had, for example, indulgence, and thats very natural. Like today, the mayors son, the mayors brother, brother-in-law, this and that, a friend somewhere, the father, to know him is already a recommendation, and if youre smart, you take advantage of that, for h i m as well as for you and even for someone else.
Many try to avail themselves of a ficticious or questionable proximity in order to appropriate the prestige of a third party. A candidate for city council in Monsanto always referred to himself as the advisor of Dr. Alencar, a federal representative of the region, although he asked that we keep this under our hats, since in case this were to be widely known he would be overwhelmed by requests for favors. At the same time, though, he divulged this information to anyone who wanted to hear it. This prestige was thrown in doubt by his party colleagues indifference when he introduced them personally to one of us (Jorge); but the indifference was replaced by signs of esteem when the advisor let his interlocutor know that he was being introduced to afriend of Clemente Santana, a businessman and party colleague, who was indeed the owner of unquestionableprestige among those people and in those circumstances.Thus is understood Santanas surprise upon being informed that the city council candidate was Alencars advisor12. Prestige may be spoken of as a virtual connection between the flows of votes and favors. The retribution between votes and resources is better described as a possible goal than as a fact. In order for resource flow to unleash vote flow, the interested parties must invest their efforts objectively, with any inattention (denying requests, not greeting people, etc.) risking a motive for rupture. The city councillors, in the situation above, of a neighboring municipality, worked for the state representative from the politically dominant Santana family in Jordinia. During an inaugura-

tion ceremony, the representative was inattentive toward them, not greeting them individually (he didnt speak with them), which spurred them to initiate contact with another representative for the next elections. In the same way, the vice-mayor, who had already broken with the mayor and with an alliance that supported his candidacy, was going to break with the same representative because the latter had slighted a request of his: and it was a very humble request, one of his sons told me: it was just to get an internship for my brother. The extension of prestige to the family members, and the vote control of a family boss or local leaderships greater or lesser group, does not authorize us to conclude that political-electoral affiliations compose a m~nopoly~. The heads of family that collect several votes tend to divide them among various candidates with the goal of pleasing several of them to obtain favors and engage or begin relationships of credit and debit; this has been shown in other research (e.g. Goldman, 2000: 328; Heredia, 1996: 64).In this sense, it is verified that family is not just political capital (cf. Graham, 1997:35,36 and Garrigou, 1992:68) from the candidates point of view. The need for union in political adhesion (Palmeira, 1996: 45 and ss.) sometimes converts itself into a multiplicity of adhesions. The circulation of resources that falls into place as elections approach is oriented, for the most part, by a group of premises concerned with the availability of resources (their diverse natures, material and intangible; their character as controlled product, but also as something produced and changed into a resource) and with the attainable compensations (not always objectively evaluable, they are also extensive, transferrable and transactionable). But the fact that these premises may be seen as persistent, pervasive and isolatable does not let us abandon them in search of highly certain conclusions. What implications will they bring to the voteobtaining process? Politicians and voters are thrown into the fray to dispute resources and votes, trying to produce from what they have available the best possible advantage, with variable and frequently questionable success, not always the desired outcome.
Fluctuation of Votes and Resources

The following dialogue, between a man and his wife, merchants in Monte Verde, highlights the problem of electoral commitment: Wife: Jorge, when I was expecting RC, it was me, Tini-

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nha and God. How could I not vote for her now, Jorge? Lord protect me! And Xavier treats me like a daughter. I cant say that Im not giving him my vote! And besides, the store isnt a good place to be hanging up those candidate leaflets. Sometimes someone comes in and sees them, and gets upset and doesnt buy anything.
Husband: But if a candidate came and said, look, vote for me and then Ill order all the city hall purchases from you, wouldnt you throw out the leaflet?
Wife: But in that case that was someone who was working to give me something. But Im not gonna disgust anybody for anything.
Attached to the material interests are the intangible links of generosity, friendship and loyalty, of power and force, without which the resources would not be capable, alone, of consubstantiating into votes. The same married couple from the dialogue above emphasizes this type of relationship, defining the vote motivated by friendship as:
Husband: ...the vote for someone you grew up with. For someone who helped you out in the past. Just imagine, Jorge, that you grew up with someone. And always one is stronger than the other. And that one helps you out when you need it, when you want to start up a business. Who are you gonna vote for? For that person.
Wife: Im going to vote for a candidate who helped me when I was setting up the store. We have two hands. If when you go to one hand it closes, and the other, when you go, opens...
Without necessarily breaking with the isolated premises, these declarations suggest a legitimation of the instability of loyalties. If friendships and generosities do not get results, it is time to redirect them. As the before-mentioned case of the city councillors and the vice-mayor shows, those who have the power to barter often place their political support up for auction. From the candidates point of view; these voters are the principal traitors in the electoral game. Whenever their requests arent attended to, with their prestige in question, they immediately seek some other politican who will heed them. Xavier is a driver who transports merchants from Monte Verde to the weekly fair at Caru-
Jorge Mattar Villela C ? Ana Claudia D. R. Marques 35

aru. Xavier likes running for office from time to time, he likes to be involved in political action. When not running himself, he works for some other candidate, always a lifelong supporter of Dr. Gusmiio. One day, because of a malfunction, he took his car to a mechanic who refused to give an estimate unless Xavier could find an evaluator. Evidently, he resorted to the aid of Gusmilo, who refused to help. Xavier spoke with Gusmiios opponent: you can go back there and see what well pay, responded the current mayor of V6rzea Grande. Xavier reversed his longstanding support for Gusmiio, shocked at the politicians ingratitude. He was a city council candidate with 100 vote^"'^. As a follower of Gusmiio, he adored the party to the point of grabbing a weapon to fire if anyone here spoke poorly of the party. On the day he crossed over to the side of Juca Coelho, they killed two oxen at his ranch to commemorate it. Another example of the fluctuation of support is that of the political history of the current mayor of Monte Verde, elected by a vast majority in the last municipal elections. According to his own account as well as to those of others, he returned to his city as a recently graduated doctor, having finished a residency in Silo Paulo. His father was mayor at the time of the sons return, and the father immediately turned over his position to the candidate to whom he lent his political support for the subsequent elections. Nonetheless the young doctor had a hard time setting up a base professionally in the small municipality, whose clientele was divided among some long established doctors in the area. The mayor himself-the one who had been supported by the doctors father-also had received his degree in medicine and would later build a clinic in the city. However, during his mandate, the disagreements between them multiplied. Erivelto, the young doctor, thus sought out the Garcia de Monsanto family, where he was well received, finding a job at the Pronto Socorro hospital, property of Zuza Medeiros, a Garcia of unquestionable prestige in spite of his different surname. It was there, too, attending to the people, that he became known and received gratitude. During the state and federal elections, the mayor of Monte Verde allied himself with a state representative named Paul0 Roberto who was linked to the most popular federal representative in the region, Dr. Alencar, a native of Monsanto. Severiano, another state representative, exmayor of Monsanto, is the son of Zuza Medeiros and opponent of Alencar there and in all Pernambuco. Paulo Roberto became, then, the direct and indirect opponent of Severiano, contesting him for a seat in the state congress and the votes of support for the

candidates for federal representative. Because of these circumstances, said the narrators of this part of the story, when the mayor of Monte Verde, an ally of Dr. Alencar, went to ask the young doctor Erivelto if he would work for Paul0 Roberto, he replied: look Lisandro, excuse me but Im going to work for Severiano. Now, if when he was in need, they gave him everything, what was he gonna do? Right, Jorge? Recently, Erivelto succeeded Lisandro as mayor of Monte Verde, with a stunning victory over the ex-mayors candidate. The consequences of such a falling-out are not exclusively local. Eriveltos father was a vote-getter for Alencar for more than twenty years. In virtue of the support received by his son, but also-according to parallel information-due to intrigue fabricated by Dr. Lisandro, the father, too, abandoned his affiliation with that group. We glimpse here how an entire realignment of candidacies in the proportional elections-in the municipal sphere and its links to the state and federal levels, which made possible the participation of other congressional members of the region-resulted from resource flows offered by one faction and blocked by another. In contrast to the prestigious voters, those who have no prestige are frequently unfit to furnish votes for the politicians, either because they do not keep control over their resource-as-votes (of a family or a neighborhood community, for example) or because, for whatever reason, they fail to convince candidates regarding this control or regarding their exclusive loyalty. There are also, certainly, conscientious voters who allege that they do not want or need to vote. Or, on the other hand, they refuse to participate in politics as a circulation of resources: We dont need city hall. Its just for paying taxes. We dont want a mayor for anything in the world. Only for public upkeep and other things, which are obligatory services. But we arent capable of buscar um caix2o [burying our hopes] not me or anybody in my family. Lots of people go, good people. Its demoralizing for a Garcia to do that. Ave Maria! Its a shame. In general the conscientious voters as much as the ones without prestige silence their vote, keeping it a secret even after the elections. Their connections to the candidates may be too distant, or perhaps very close to more than one candidate. Both reasons often impede commitment to a sole candidate because of the risk of upsetting the others. Plus, the conscientious voters run the additional risk of being mistaken for some voter with no prestige, since, if on the one hand its shameful to solicit, on the other its

a sign of no prestige to not have someone to solicit from and thus place oneself on the side of the no-prestige voters who sell their votes.
Voters and Politicians Through the Looking Glass

The inverted aspects of voters with prestige and those bereft of prestige, both, can coincide with what is called voters in availability (Palmeira, 1996: 51-52). But, in contrast to the prestigious voters, those who promise their votes to various candidates, looking only to obtain resources from several of them, become the target of severe moral reprimand, especially on the part of the candidates. On election day, the vote-getters are advised how to police this type of voters. It is affirmed that they are capable of switching, for a ten-real bill, their chupu [candidates leaflet] or shirt with the candidatesname to whom they are committed, when approached skillfully by someone in the service of a different candidate on the way to the polls. In these cases, it is necessary to amarrur o eleitor [to tie up the voter], in other words, accompany i m from him along the entire way to the polling place, to protect h the opponents affronts. The wife of a city council candidate in Jordhia explains the dangers of abandoning the voters:
P: In my opinion, you have to come, you have to have people here to receive them and you have to have someone here to receive, so they cant slip away or get lost. Oh, the danger, oh the danger [laughter]. But its no joke. Its a big investment.
Interviewer: No, clearly, I just wanted to know how it works.
P: It works like this: generally they come in cars or busses, however they can. Whoever gets to where they are, someone from the majority comes to take care of the group. When they get here, the people who have their votes all lined up with these newcomers are also there to receive them. And when they arrive (go ahead and laugh, it really is funny. The fight for votes is ugly, my friend. You have to get out of the way.) So, when they get here, each campaign team, to verify where the voting places are, is gonna have one person who coordinates, for example that young lady who was here. She could have been a coordinator. These folks that

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come from the ... Caraibas project, over near Petrolina, those people are coming. Fifteen voters. I think thats why she went there, to find out if they still voted here. I knew that town was there since the days of my father. Thats why I sent her there, because she has relatives who live in that group over there. So she went there, checked, and saw that those folks still vote here and theres a bus from Petrolina that picks them up from the project. They come on the highway. They come to vote. That same person, her mom is coming on the bus, like she said, right?
Interviewer: That bus was sent by the mayor. P: Right. Theyre the candidates. And the majority rents it. And so the service is part of the campaign, see? And that woman, whose mom is on her way with those folks, should be here with two or three more people to see, with the list of polling places, where they all vote, to go with them, and also to guarantee that theres breakfast ready, or if they arrived without breakfast, then to make sure they get lunch and a return ticket. Interviewer: Because they wont go back until nightfall. P: Thats right. Exactly. Its interesting. Interviewer: So you all feed them. Before, and then they arrive and go directly to vote?
P: No, they come, have breakfast and go vote.

Interviewer:: What is the danger in that set-up?
P: The breakfast. Within our own coalition, the fighting over votes is a big deal. The majority is always respected, of course. But the proportional vote is highly disputed. So, at the breakfast there are people who ... whoever is there has been trained to respect everybody and is going to have the table set up with all the candidate leaflets, just in case someone forgot his, or someone didnt bring the leaflet, or lost it, or someone else took it. But everybody knows that its very confusing. Because, frequently, who knows which leaflet gets
Jorge Mattar Wllela & Ana Claudia D. R. Marques 39

handed out to which person? At times, someone will actually ask for the correct one. If hes not confusedi5.
Interviewer: So how exactly is this leaflet-switching business done?
P Ah! Thats something else we really have to watch

out for. That happens in the street. A bunch of toughs, you know? Its like theyre demons, they accost anyone they can find who might be alone, and rough him up and take the list and confuse him and give another list... We really have to watch out for them. People cant even.. . yeah, and there are the inspectors, accredited by the law. Each party turns in its version of the events, its tally. In the Viva Jordhia coalition were going to have two inspectors in each line. The inspector comes into the voting room, checks to see if theyre leaving something, if the urn is working out alright. Hes got a voice and a turn. Hes someone who fulfills his duty in the election. And well have two inspectors. In Monte Verde, on an election day, the team of a city council candidate, who had the same name as another candidate from the same coalition, was in a frenzy picking up the rivals candidate leaflets off the floor where, the team alleged, they had been dropped to confuse the homonymous rivals voters. The stories and methods of robbing voters at the eleventh hour are as old as they are current and they are based as much on vote-buying as on leaflet-switchingI6.From these practices is derived the regional image of a voluble voter, in need of extreme caution, possibly due to his ignorance regarding political procedures. Or, on the other hand, the voters disloyalty, deliberate or otherwise, may reflect the fact that a non-commitment of ones vote can also yield gains for the voter, although hardly comparable in any way with the gains made by the votes of the more committed voters. In the following dialogue, the same candidates wife (see above) tries to calm down a woman who was working in her husbands campaign and was frustrated by all the requests that had come her way:
C.A: Eh, comadre, the people ask too much!
P: Look comadre, you should be happy that people

are provoking you so. As we speak, things are going really poorly for the candidates who dont have people knocking down the door. The crazier they make us,

ready to pull our hair out, running to... comadre its the season, it doesnt help that politics in Jordhia has been like this for a long time ... I dont think its just Jordilnia. Its the whole world. Campaign requests can assume the characteristics of a direct vote negotation, when a certain number of them is offered in exchange for some special favor. Electric company payments, or some late loan payment and other requests of low monetary value are abundant, especially in the days leading up to the elections; in this case, the favor as compensation for the vote usually does not amount to much more than a not very reliable suggestion.The campaign period is a time of relative abundance. Vote bartering is not, however, a necessary consequence. As mentioned above, the silent vote-an electoral peculiarity of Monte Verde-is not only a matter of the unprestiged. Various inhabitants of the city, intending to be indepentent of political practices, even admit to receiving vote requests. When these citizens receive politicians visits, they immediately start asking: Is it campaign time already? What are you doing here?. This kind of attitude intimidates the candidates who, usually, prefer a stealth campaign, sliding their leaflets under the voters doors in the still of the night. This voterkandidate relationship is exclusively urban. The candidatesbehavior in relation to the rural electorate is different: much more distinctly-although not exclusively-territorial. The candidates territories are tacitly accepted, homes displaying the photo of a certain candidate are not visited by other candidates, and votes are not solicited from voters who are known to be committed to opponents. Nevertheless, these rules, like so many others, should not be carried out to the level of paroxysm. Candidates who respect the rules too much are ridiculed. On a trip through the rural area of Monsanto, the daughter of the then vice-mayor ( and city council candidate for the next term) always celebrated when someone confirmed a vote for her father, judging that it was a vote less for Anabal. Anabal would kill us if he knew we were in his area. Anabal will be forced to a stop. And she and her cousin conclude:
Daughter: This area has been left alone. There was never any politician here, no way no how. Cousin: Nanfi comes to help every four years. [Your dad] only comes now.

Daughter: Dad never comes. Its easy to get in here. Anabal was the one who messed it all up.
They are complaining that her father respected Anabals region and thus left it alone. The cousin says that his father, highly esteemed vote-getter in Jorddnia and the author of this articles epigraph, used to say that a vote is no ones property and you could not respect regional boundaries. Even so, the declaration of a commitment detains the bartering process for some candidates; this is an attitude that does not seek to interrupt the flux of favors among politicians and voters, but does imply a more rigid orientation. Without losing sight of the fact that trust can always be betrayed, the declared vote binds the voter when it comes to asking for favors. A voter asked the politican he had voted for to repair a wet road. The politician suggested to his loyal constituent that he ask the mayor of another municipality, to which the voters lands pertained. Look me in the eye and tell me what you see: a man or a raging goat? How is it that Im going to vote in Jordhia and ask for help in Curi6polis?. Yet the shame that falls on those who go about things this way does not rein in such procedures for a l l voters. Many politicans complain constantly about disloyal voters who ask for favors anyway. On the other hand, there are those who like to be surrounded by voters unsatisfied with their elected officials and who, as a result, come looking for favors elsewhere. The declared vote should bind its beneficiary, under the risk of losing that voter to an opponent. The failure of the pact, in this case, is a frequent breach into which another candidate can step. Oto, the candidate with the most proportional votes in Monte Verde (633 votes in an electoral college of 12,269 voters with 12% abstention in that election), told several stories involving other candidates. In one anecdote, Oto went to a family of ranchers to solicit their votes and the head of thefamily told him that he had already committed to another city council candidate. Unperturbed, Oto asked if the man was in need of anything, but the rancher rejected any kind of favor at that time. A few days later, a friend of Otos-the same guy who had led his campaign to that particular ranch-arrived with the news that that very rancher was having great difficulty paying an electric bill. Oto asked the friend to bring him the bill, and to tell the rancher that Oto had paid it. Some time later, the rancher called Oto to talk something over. Oto went to his house, ate, drank, talked, without mentioning either politics or the electric bill. After a few hours, the ranchers wife asked her husband to tell the candidate what he had

to say. The rancher told him that he would divide the votes in his family, giving Oto four votes. Oto thanked him. A few days more passed and the friend came to say that one of the ranchers grandsons had a temble cough and had received a prescription five days earlier, but that the ranchers candidate still had not purchased the medicine. Since the friend had not brought the prescription, Oto went to the ranch, without talking about politics-an omission the candidate considers essential when campaigning-and obtained it from the sick boys grandmother, wife of the rancher, without the husbands knowledge. Still that same day, he had the prescription filled and brought the medicine to the boy. As always, he said nothing of politics. He ate and drank. And when the host was quite tipsy, Oto heard that he was going to receive all the votes in the house, except the ranchers own vote. Oto narrated another story about a losing candidate named Oliveira. Oto did not mention the candidates name, but Oliveira inadvertently identified himself when he later narrated the same story in the first person. A guy went to Oliveira to ask for bags of cement. Oliveira told him that he did not do that kind of politics, and that the man should go look for Oto. Oto immediately gave the man the order (generally a paper signed by the candidate that specifies the favor to be done) to pick up the bags of cement, sand and iron bars. In possession of the order, the voter ran into Oliveira, who asked him if he had obtained what he was looking for from Oto. When he heard the mans affirmative reply, Oliveira told the man to accept the other candidates offer but to keep his vote with him and not his benefactor. At this point the two versions of the narrative diverge, because both Oto and Oliveira claim to have received the mans vote. Conscientious, forced, assisted, out of friendship, bought: taken alone, its impossible to categorize this vote beforehand. Yet Oliveiras vote tally (100) in comparison to that of Oto (633) helps to evaluate the suitability of each electoral strategy. Oto told a third story, in the home of the mayoral candidate and in front of several other city council candidates, involving a candidate who was not present called lieutenant TomC. This Tom6 had arrived at a ranch home to solicit votes. The people there said that there were twelve votes among them and that they all belonged to another candidate. Tom6 suggested that there were many votes and that they could divide them. They said no. He went to his car and got his mala preta [black briefcase] (a metonymic expression that designates money used as a means for obtaining favors). He pulled out an envelope and asked, So, how many

votes will I have? They said: Here we have a lot of votes, so we can give you four. He pulled out another envelope and asked the same question. The number of votes increased to eight, and it went on like that until they reached twelve. Then he asked to see their documents, and wrote down all the pertinent information. He slapped the owners side and said, in a provocative tone, now lets see you not vote for me! Whether true or not, Otos stories reveal the flexibility of the evaluation of attitudes according to the tacit rules of conduct. The third story presents the possibility of using the most radical of vote-getting methods: cash. Pure form of electoral materialism, producer of votes without connections, money, in its pure state, receives the most severe critique. The entire opposition campaign against the federal representative candidate Alencar Silvestre was built on the slogan 0tostHo contra o milhtio [one red cent against a million]. The jingle alluded to the briefcase that the representative would bring full of money and to the prison term of his wife, accused of making twenty-real bill sandwiches in the previous elections. Neither voters nor candidates spare those who abuse the use of money to buy votes, and yet both sides do it at the same time that they justlfy it. Hence its not about discourses versus practices, but rather antagonistic practices and discourses, and discursive practices, getting along in greater or lesser harmony, stretching the available social values to their limits. The same who condemn, desire: now, if that mulu pretu came my way... some sigh. Now its the money, others affirm, when, in the final days of the campaign, they identify it as the only way to hang on to declared constituents and win over new ones. The ambiguity of this evaluation is weakened, however, at the end of the electoral process, when the unelected complain about rising monetarism. Our friend the advisor of Dr. Alencar, looking at his scarce 400 votes, said to one of us, that is money alone. Others, still, refuse to recognize the large quantities unloosed during the campaign that they were so proud to spend. All of them, before and after the elections, complain about electoral materialism, some of them recalling nostalgically the time in which the people voted out of friendship, obedience and loyalty, all of these values having disappeared. Many judge their obsolescence to be unequivocal today. In the memory of the people, there was a time in which things were like this, but their own stories attest to the antiquity of contemporary electoral practices. Resource production-flows emitted from diverse sourcesyesterday and today has been aided by hostile social conditions.

The specialized literature has amply documented the absences that exist in the inland cities in general, and those of the Northeast especially, chief among them the absence of justice. The intersection between justice and electoral politics would deserve a separate study, in which the specific circumstances of this practice in the municipalities under observation would be reported. It is enough for now to remember the case of gaining the release of someone from jail as a resource that can be used to obtain votes, and also as a policitians recognition of a voters loyalty. In a generic sense, the absences generate bonds or relationships. According to one the members of Jordhias dominant political faction act historically and customarily to create difficultiesfor their opponentsvoters, such that they are obligated to seek them out for help and, thus, enter into debts which will be redeemed at election time. The production of hostile living conditions has been heavily debated as much in the specialized literature as in the press and, in the case of the Northeastern sertgo, given the specific title of indlistria da seca [the drought industry]. However, the water problem seems to be secondary in the practices and discourses of the participants when it comes down to the electoral process. Although water is always a problem brought up in trivial conversations, it was rarely mentioned when speaking about votes. Asking for water or wells is rare. The poor rural proprietors or the moradores [farmhands living on rural property] tend to request other, more immediate, benefits in exchange for their votes. Nor is the problem of agricultural credits, for example, raised that often. Even though the politicans have the means to resolve collective problems or greatly ameliorate the suffering of the populace, such subjects are rarely the urgent local issues to be resolved by means of votes. But this form of politics only ostensibly reflects the depoliticization of the peoplela. In reality, it highlights the close proximity to electoral politics, the profound understanding of its quotidian procedures and the true ability-variable according to the available electoral capital for each individual or group-of extracting from it only what can be withdrawn from it. For this reason, it is necessary to acklowledge that the dissipation of wealth and the dispensation of favors, not the ideology propagated by the politicians, are efficient instruments for producing voter loyalty and committing the politicians at the same time. One of the contumatious city council candidates in Monte Verde is wont to declare publicly that he annually spends, on politics, an amount much greater than the sum of his pension plus

the income from his elected position. Where does the rest of the amount expended come from? The question is rhetorical and it is asked by politicians and voters alike: Raimundo showed up on the day of the domino tournament, over there in Bairro da Saudade in a little bar called Sebastiana, banged on the counter and said: I earn 18 thousand reais a year and I spend 42. Where did he get the rest from? Well, Ive got my military police pension. But hes not going to die of hunger, is he? That pension salary doesnt free up two thousand a month. Raimundo lodges a complaint common among politicians: everything he earns is for the public, he works only for the public, never for his own benefit. Capable of anything in his abnegation, he alleges earning less than what he spends on the public. At the same time that this is singled out as an evident index of corruption, and thus negatively appraised, that corruption is positively valued because when the end of the month came, he had enough money to buy a bottle of Pitii [a brand of sugarcane licor]. And that is how the money was spent, since the bottle was shared with his friends. Captain Raimundo has been pensioned off by the MP (military police) for many years and he has no home of his own, so he rents. There is no one, so they said, who seeks him out without being attended to. If some guy shows up asking for a hundred bucks hell produce ten, but at least hes helping. In fact this image of the politician as public servant indeed exists. A young rancher affirmed that she did not want to be a politician, since she would have to give everything she earned to the public. Such a perspective could be interpreted as ingenuous, if it were not for the fact that she is a station representative for Sindicato dos Trabalhadores Rurais [Rural Workers Union], a community leader on her ranch that places her on the porous border between the politician and the voter. The politician is thus seen simultaneouslyas source and drain of goods: source, since he makes available a plethora of material resources to the people; drain, since he gathers for his own benefit what should be distributed to the populace. Indissociable from the accusations of corruption is the recognition of the politicians generosity and disinterestedness, apparent in his very attitude when he declares that he spends more than he earns, as well as in his humble living conditions. In contrast, greed is one of the worst qualities of the candidate. Soliciting votes for the then vice-mayor of Monsanto, his daughter heard from a cousin the justification

for the difficulty of their work: 0 velho C muito amarrado [your old man is really tied up (stingy)]. Contrast this with the behavior of their distant cousin, a candidate who is shameless (ngo tem pena), meaning he gives everything the public asks for. Besides, corruption (much like nepotism), is not a problem considered to be serious in politics since it is assumed to be part of the nature of the activity. Some people feel insulted not by the embezzlement of public funds, but by the ostentation of wealth. Once again, however, this should not be understood in absolute terms. Luxury exhibited also attracts reverence, admiration or respect. If dishonesty and familial protection can be negatively valued, so can the disproportionate honesty of one who has the possibility of bettering his conditions, and those of his family, but does not do it. If ujeitur ([arranging], in other words doling out goods and services) for family members is reproachable, much more so is he who se nem pelos sew faz, que dirai pelos outros [if he doesnt do anything for his own, what will he say for the others]. Apparently, it is of greater concern to the voters that some slice of the resources obtained makes it their way; for this reason, they have to make use of tactics and create secure alliances so that this happens consistently. Oto is all four years, affirmed a rancher, justifying his vote and his loyalty to the candidate that lends prestige to his ranchI9 by conferring benefits to him. And we werent going to commit some cowardice against him now, were we? A lack of recognition-regarding friendship, hierarchies, debts of gratitude-is the object of the voters moral condemnation. Likewise, the voters receive from the politicians the same evaluations that they give. Youll hear the voter promise his vote, but of every twenty that you solicit the vote from, youll get only five. The people are awful, you know! The people are just awful! said a Monsanto candidate. The people make me sick, declared the daughter of the ex-vice mayor, then city council candidate in the same municipality. She complains about the false voters, those who say they are going to vote for the candidate, but in the end vote for someone else. They benefit from the situation by saying that they are? committed to anyone, trying in this way to exploit the candidates. Theyre just exploiters. In the politicadconstituent relationship, dominated by the resourcefavorhesource-votecycle, adjectiveslike false, lying, exploitative, and slick are valid on both sides of the political activity. Politicans as much as voters apply them against each other.

The reciprocity of perspective between voter and candidate can be better understood if we remember that this separation is in fact hard to detect, although it pertains to the participants very own analysis. This is because there is a constant interchange of positions. The city councilman, politician in the municipal elections, becomes a voter in the state and national elections. The head of family, voter in various elections, becomes a politician together with the morudores on his land and the members of his family. All of them, in their own ways, collect and deliver resource-favor, obtain and return the resource-vote, everything depending on local negotiations and tactics for conquering presfige and resources. Thus, when a city councilman calls a politician false, he puts himself in the voters position, which he seeks only at election time and then abandons immediately during the rest of his term. The same applies to the city council candidates wife, when she declares that she will retire her support from the federal representative who ignored her husbands candidacy, even after the latter had obtained many votes for the former in the town where the majority of his numerous family lives. Nevertheless, the husband recognizes that this relationship yielded support for his own candidacy, since it was through this same representative that he was able to get electric power for the rural properties in his region. Certainly the complex relationship between candidates and voters possesses, as its common denominator, the resource flows derived from small sections of the federal budget, obtained in a political game wrought among the flux of votes and favors generated by the federal congress, as Bezerra (1999) has shown so well. But one must also acknowledge that resources-as-favors spring up all over the place, the fruit of the candidates creativity and the voters needs, promoting the negotations necessary to bind voters and candidates. The flow of resources emitted from the federal government to the states and municipalities, whose heft cannot be neglected, is the object of indisguisable electoral extortion. On election eve and facing the imminent defeat of his candidate, a mayor declared publicly in a bar that the governor had told him, on the phone, that Monte Verde would not be able to count on his support. The same coalitions sound-wagon announced: Monte Verde has langoured years and years without the governors prestige. You think about it, analyze well. What it means for the city to stay down and out, without the state governments support at a time when the resources from CELPE sales were reserved for invest-

ments and Monte Verde is benefitting from the prestige of the Rodrigo and Lisa Vilna group. Esteemed citizen, our candidates group, supported by governor Jarbas Vasconcelos, federal representatives Alencar Silvestre, Armando Monteiro, state representative Paul0 Roberto, mayor Lisandro Lima, humbly shows the recognition of a great municipal government by the entire state of Pernambuco2. From the inevitable alternation of the positions controlling vote and resource flows, it derives that the relation resource-vote/ resource-favor is not limited to voters and politicians, but rather extends out to the relation politicians/politicians,since these latter assume the functions of voters all the time. An informant with deep knowledge regarding the political history of his family, presented in this way-at the same time as he stereotyped them-the longstanding relations among the municipal and state powers in his municipality, where a marked bipartisanism prevails, showing how the politicians were voters pursued by the governor: that was politics: I wont do it, but you dont do it either. To gain neither prestige nor force. That battle was joined in the intersection of local and state politics, involving local politicians, state representatives in the municipality and the governors: There were two representatives in Jordinia and one of them would go tell the governor: if you give this to So-and-so Im going to break with you. The governor: now this is screwed up. Lord! What am I gonna do, if I need both of their votes? Freeing up resources, as is known, is a way of collecting votes. Its an ancient story, excessively related in the specialized literature and tiringly repeated in political machinations. Liberating the resource-favor would produce the resource-vote and vice versa. To give favors, give presrige, to one faction would mean losing voters from the other.
Votes and Power

It can be noted, then, that the vote, among other things, breaks power down through social relations22. The Lpocu du politicu is when power penetrates more deeply into the capillarity of social relations, when people invest themselves in this power and express their feelings verbally: quando o povo niio quer, nIo tem bom [when the people dont want it, there is no good], exactly because power is a practice that results from the variable relations among the forces that confront each other. This is why the temporal limitations of such power are known: j f i perdeu o prestigio?

[have you already lost your prestige?], voters ask each other on election day, meaning, have you gone to vote yet? A teacher in Monsanto compares the voter to a hen ready to lay an egg: the hens owner flatters her and makes a fuss over her. Thats until she lays the egg, then he gives her the boot and keeps her away from the egg. One of her students wrote in a school essay: my neighbor, semi-literate but with a very realistic outlook, said: I wont vote until dusk, because Im loving all this attention theyre giving me. None of this, however, implies any reduction in the weight of the bonds of domination that are continually reinforced by the electoral process. This power which momentarily passes through the voters, nevertheless, is described in terms more strictly related to the interchange of possible relations with the candidates. A candidates wife tells her campaign co-worker, who had come to offer her votes but despises the electorates habit of asking for favors: But its the peoples time to ask, comadre! Let the poor people make their requests, comadre, there are some who can only manage during campaign season, comadre. There are others, not like them-friendship and consideration above everything else and they dont have time. But there are others, comadre, who only during campaign season. Disgraced people, wild, shameless people. That live out there somewhere one with the other, who can only manage during this time of year. This declaration, besides demonstrating an understanding of the process, shows the type of people who only get resources during the politica because the politicians do not judge them worthy of any credit. The denial of credit to a voter reduces the process of circulation between resource-favors and resource-votes to a mere exchange or vote purchase, repudiated, and simultaneously accepted, by the candidates wife. Having no way to prolong the circulation of resources between themselves and the men of prestige, and having become debtors to an untrusting lender, the voters who sell their votes seem condemned to receive little tokens such as medicine, clinical exams, cement, tiles, dentures, doors, watertanks etc., disconnected from term, promise and timeline, and confined to the campaign seasonz3.Thus, paradoxically, a relationship that is emminently about exchange seems to reduce the power which the discredited voters suddenly enjoy when they are invited to give their votes to someone from whom they probably expect no other benefit until he needs them again. Seen this

way, the very compra de votos [vote-buying] can be placed at the service of a politics based on the more durable relationships of credit and debit, in which the majority of voters do not participate. In any case, the power lent to the people cannot be reduced completely to the campaign period, even though outside the campaign season it remains only a virtuality noted in the behavior that a politician feels tormented to assume after the fact. We had the opportunity to observe how city council members, because they feared disappointing people, held off on making decisions and assuming leadership positions. Without a doubt, these constraints become more marked when they are added to a more consolidated and permanent relationship of credit and debit; the politicians become, then, effectively, a polyvalent resource for times of indecision, called on to ajeitar [arrange] relations among the police, at the hospital, in the halls of justice, in married life. These are extreme situations that hardly illustrate the price they have to pay, a little bit for everyone, for the highest reaches of prestige24.The good politician, the one who forges the most bonds of trust with his constituents, does not consider his debt with the voter liquidated by means of his gifts during the electoral process. Many voters are criticized for commiting the strategic error of accepting gifts during the campaign, since by doing so they deny, in an exchange relationship, the future possibilities-of obtaining resources-that could arise because of the debt assumed by the politician when he received the vote (Villela 2005).
Additional Questions
Based on these observations, is local political life spun only from economic orientations-to which all relationships can be reduced-or are there moral guidelines as well? Where could we draw the line between giving and marketing, in this field in which flows of resources, votes and prestige circulate? The following question is thus appropriate: Do the voters in fact sell their votes? The first answer could be yes, but it could also be no, depending on the sense of the question. If what is meant is that what captures the vote is money, favors or goods in exchange, then the answer is negative. As Veyne has shown (1976: 400) regarding the Roman electorate, they sold themselves, but not to just anybody. For Veyne, the voters were more comparable to courtesans than to prostitutes. The same is true for the particular case studied here. Most of the time, the voters do not cast their vote in the plaza,

putting in play a significant variability of factors that contribute vigorously to the determination of 10yalties.~~ And what is consistently condemned, morally and logically, is not said practice, but rather that of the prostitute who offers herself to anyone but surrenders herself to none. A second way of answering the same question is to allude to the value conceeded to representative democracy in the communities we studied, which oscillates between derision, the frank recognition of its ineffectiveness, and the sudden belief in its ideals. The refutations of theories based on depoliticization (cf. Veyne, 1995; Goldman, 1996) give importance to the dispersion of the electoral interests of the voters, helping to better understand the processes of loyalties in a population in which the vote is generally considered to be clientist, but also of an exchange nature. Perhaps we should in fact dedicate attention to a specific politicization-that of the voters-that leads to a true politics of the electorate. Electoral indecision and volubility could rather be the product of a complexification of political interests and not, as proposed by Gaxie (1978: 228), of the weakening of politicization. Rosanvallon (1992: 13-14) sustains that elections have contributed to the historic constitution of the individual, condition of possibility for the universal suffrage that demands a desocialized citizen-voter, at least as an abstract figure. And Garrigou specifies: Artificially cut off from his lifestyle, from his social solidarities, the voter represented the complete figure of individualism (Rosanvallon 1992: 12), and the retainer of his individual will, one individual, one opinion, one voice (Garrigou 1992: 277). However, according to our ethnography, the voter appears rather to be a collection of voices and an agglomerate of wills. Not quite an individual, not quite a collective, his profile resembles the features of a map, made up of lines (Deleuze and Parnet 1977: 151-152 and Deleuze and Guattari 1980: 271-272) that are political, economic, familial, etc., each one of these lines traced by several others. Along the side of each of these lines runs another, totalizing in appearance: designated locally as prestige, it crosses all the other lines. The flows of prestige obey rules similar to those of the flows of resources, and the former move along parallel to the latter. Resource and prestige, although not the same thing, do not exist separately either, since one produces the other, and both cover the entire social scale, reaching, with the same potency, small (quotidian) politics as well as big politics, involving the great

electoral contests, without solution of continuation. Furthermore, the emission of resource flows is broken down, so that the prestige flow can be distributed instead of concentrated. A doctor-politician prescribes for free, but sends the patient to a city council candidate to get the order for the prescription. At election time, the pharmaceutical needs of the mayors offices are transferred to the city council members in the mayors party who, in turn, acquire prestige along with the voters; but, at the same time, they know themselves to be prestiged by the mayor, the state representative and the national representative who support the politics of their group, only because they have received resources to be distributed to the voters, from whom they will be able to continue soliciting votes. If this chain of resource and prestige flux is what constitutes political life, it will always be necessary to create and keep open the channels through which they flow. For votes and favor to reach all political levels, some contained within others, many politicans and many voters, in their always relative and mutable positions, must make their resources available to the benefit of all, not just their own profit. This perhaps mechanical condition has its moral aspect. Arrangements of the concentration of power and prestige are, in contrast to what is customarily emphasized, actively disputed at the very heart of the political game. In various circumstances, displeasure for someone who does not make his resources available is expressed, as noted above. In addition to protestations regarding favors and those who concentrate prestige, this very concentration is an object of distrust, perhaps considered dangerous precisely for its potential for interrupting, by absorption, the smaller resource circulation channels. One of the motives for justifying voting for the opposition candidate in Monte Verde was worry caused by the then-mayors evident and very rapid rise to power. Competition for prestige supposedly forces the availability of resources. But it also checks, without impeding entirely, power concentration processes. The oft-mentioned political clientelism of the sertiio region can be read, paradoxically, as the art of breaking down power along the entire social scale.26 Within the conceptualizationof politics observed in the case we have researched here, it is not shameful, therefore, at certain levels of discourse, to recognize that politics is arrangingfriendships and benefitting your opponents is a tough way to win votes. Politics is a game that involves the emission and retention of resources, a game in which politicians and voters take an active part and set their own course, according to or in spite of their
Jorge Mattar villela & Ana Claudia D. R. Marques 53

wishes, inevitably referenced to a certain code of values, to which they always, to some extent, constrain themselves. Here is the response of a state representative, interrogated by the members of the Comissiio Parlamentar de hqudrito [Congressionalhvestigation Committee] about the nature of his relationship to a certain individual: I can speak to a political relationship. Which is what a small city lives by. Understanding politics as submerged in a heterogeneous pool of all kinds of relationships, this way of life can always be seen in a new and creative way, to which-more than a merely elusive answer-the policitians response alludes. If we seek to highlight some of the premises that dictate political life in the communities we have studied, we do so for the opportunity to emphasize its complexity and heterogeneity, and even its paradoxical aspect; to lend some intelligibility to its description, to the very extent with which we coin it. Our intent is to consider political life in its compromises and its inconsistencies. Consequentially, with these premises we cannot produce a formula of political life, distanced from its functions, that displaces it, for example, from an entire and eventual non-political life. Analyzing politics in the terms in which it is produced by its participants demands that we be attent to any and all orientations that may be pragmatically pertinent, those that derive from relationships among voters, candidates, relatives, politicians, clients, bosses, employees, all those who take part in a community, no matter what its dimensions.
End Notes
As far as political contests are concerned, reciprocal relationships have been studied by several Brazilian authors, for example Leal (1949), Graham (1997) and, specifically regarding polticial anthropology, Heredia ( 1996), who perceived the politiciardvoter relationship as the development of a creditoddebtor relationship. Also worthy of mention is Palmeira (1996), who saw in the vote/favor relation a kind of amortization, by the voter, of a debt assumed along with the candidate. In contrast Goldman (2000) has criticized the use of principios gerais [general principles], like reciprocity, in the analysis of political articulations, alluding to the segmental character through which we can conceive of these relationships of alliances and ruptures in their apparent inconsistencies. Bezerra (1999) has described the circulation of votes against the circulation of resources at the national political level, the modes of clientele production, the favor exchanges between congress and the executive branch, seeking to fulfill the

needs of resources demanded by federal representatives in the attempt to supply the demands from their congressional regions. On a much wider plane, the literature regarding relationships of patronage and clientelism is vast and will be mentioned at the end of this article. The data in this article were obtained through fieldwork divided in three phases of different durations. The first, six months long, was concluded eight months before municipal elections in 2000. We initiated the second phase one month before those elections, and it lasted until ten days afterward. Upcoming elections promote significant changes in everyday life the world over (cf. Palmeira and Heredia, 1993; Gaxie and Lehinge, 1984: 1l),especially for the large group of people closely related (by family or friendship) to candidates and vote-getters active in the campaigns. For this reason, it was not necessary to objectify the elections as the focus of our observations and dialogues with locals, because the effects of the elections would always come up, even when our objective was some different topic. The third phase of fieldwork to which we refer in this article was commenced thirteen months before the national and state elections in 2002, and lasted two months. This fieldwork was carried out in two municipalitiesin the Vale do Pajeli microregion and one in the Itaparica microregion, all in the mesoregion of the Pernambucan Sertiio, which we will call, respectively, Monte Verde (ca. 15,000 inhab. and 12,000 voters) , Monsanto (ca. 70,000 inhab. and 47,000 voters) and Jordhia (ca. 25,000 inhab. and 17,OOOvoters, data from IBGE and TEFUPE for the year 2000). The fieldwork was subventioned by the Program for Social Anthropology of the Museu Nacional-UFRJ and by the Projeto Nlicleo de Excelencia (PRONEX) N6cleo de Antropologia da Politica (NuAP). In an effort to protect the identities of the individuals quoted here, all the personal names, as well as place names, have been altered. This investigation sparked two theses that were later published (Marques 2002 and Villela 2004). All italicized words are native terms, in other words, terms or phrases used by the informants during the research process. Phrases set off by quotation marks are informant quotes, except when followed by an authorldate reference, in which case they refer to quotes from other writers. Such relationships are not exclusive to the Northeast nor to the interior region. Gay (1992) demonstrated, in a case study in Rio de Janeiro, the function of similar clientist relationships. Jankowski (1991) describes analogous processes, involving urban

gangs in large U.S. cities.
Prestige is a native category that would require a separate discussion beyond the scope of the present study. It is enough to state here that prestige generates resources, in and of itself; it produces debt and attracts favors as much as it obtains them. Jobs, internships, burials, ambulances, transfenals, positions of trust, market for commercial enterprise, etc.: all this can be obtained with prestige. A Monte Verde mechanic was complaining to an opposition candidate that, in spite of having worked for the mayor, it had not conferred upon him any prestige. A multiple vote voter explained to us that participation in the political group at the time lent prestige; for him it was not a matter of corruption. The large commercial interests, for example, when supporting one candidate or another, were only hoping to gain the mayors offices as a client at their stores. Moreover, they intended to have the capacity to obtain favors for family members and dependents: an internship, a telephone antenna, Amazonian-style wells, electricity. The attainment of these gains equals a stock of votes, but also a stock of prestige.
The conscientious vote should not be confused with the vote given for ideological or party-line reasons. As is oft said in the interior, ones political party is not as important there as it is in the capital. Rarely is the supported candidates affiliation known, and party changes are common there as well. In Jordsnia, particularly, one votes for afurniliu; in all cases, one votes for friends or people one knows, more than individuals or parties. Nonetheless, party relationships cannot be as irrelevant as one might believe. An ethnography of such party relationshipscould reveal the forces that interfere in the political life of certain communities, even in relationships within families. Photocopies, as well as the emission of certain personal documents, are important for the rural population, since they depend on them in order to obtain, for example, benefits from the INSS, such as pensions and maternal aid. Commercial transactions also provide a social space very conducive to the production of prestige, through concessions or acquisition of credit in different establishments (cf. Garcia, 1984: 69-78; Johnson, 1971: 116-118, regarding the case of rural workers, especially morudores [farmhands living on rural property]). It is important to pay attention to the resulting effects, especially during the tempo du politica, so as to discern the constraints and possibilities generated by electoral contests. They are

precisely the ambiguities between what is and what is not the market, between what is or what is not in relation to Veynes critiques (1995) and Polanyis typologies. Our case, for example, constantly weaves between reciprocity and redistribution,between the market and the absence of a market.
l l he produces on a given lot, the morudor reserves one Of a fourth for the landowner.
l o This same uncle explained to me what having prestige means, at the same time as he described his belonging to the group that controls the mayors office. If someone offers help to a certain political group, he expects of that group that once elected it will consider and attend to his requests. In the same way that resource generates vote and vote generates resource and vote, prestige generates vote and also more prestige.
I Heredia (1979: 78-104) understands success as a family provider to be a greater reference value for the head of a rural family.
l 2 Another indication of the city council candidates little prestige in relation to Alencar was the latters neglect of the formers candidacy. His vote tallies were not very impressive, either: 415 votes for an electoral college of 47,432 voters and a turn-out of 35,183. Nonetheless, this sum of votes will empower him, possibly, to contest future duties, since it makes him attractive to candidates for higher level political positions. l 3 In my analysis as much as in other research, the incidences of unanimous votes are rare. For an analysis regarding this topic in eighteenth-century France, see Garrigou, (1992), although sometimes the absence of unanimity corresponds to the communal vote (as in the case of votes originating from a sole familial group).
l4 Although involved in politics in Vfirzea Grande, Xaviers candidacy is in Monte Verde.
Is This last passage is noteworthy for showing the political segmentation within a sole political coalition (Goldman 2000; 2001; Herzfeld 1985; 1987). In the specific case of the municipality of Jordhia, there is an overlapping of political and familial segmentation. Families tend to align themselves according to the alliances and ruptures born of the political process, while these same alliances and ruptures tend to obey the ramifications deriving from genealogical selection. Through a process of successive adhesions and ruptures, part of a family may transfer to the opposition. In Jordlnia, the two most important political factions

are identified by two families. Thus parts of a family can be adherents of another, from which they are genealogically distinct, and end up opposing their own relatives. The correspondencebetween political group and familial group is much less consistent in Monsanto, and practically null in Monte Verde. Even when the correspondence is quite marked, as in Jordhia, it can be noted, from this passage, that genealogical divisions and party divisions are not the same. These cleavages, in continual variation, determine, in turn,the sense of the flows of resources at the service of voter determination and the creation of new sources of votes.
l 6 The chupas are just little leaflets that include the photo, name and electoral number of the candidate. Starting in 2002, elections in all municipalities are carried out in electronic urns in which voters are registered digitally, so the chupas really only serve as aide mkmoire for the city council candidates number. During municipal elections with the electronic urns, each voter should first enter the number of the mayoral candidate, wait for this candidatesphoto to appear, click on confirm and then carry out the same process to vote for the city council candidate. The mayoral candidate elect wins by simple majority in just one round of voting, in cities with an electoral college of less than 200,000 voters. The winning city council candidates are elected by proportional majority, according to the following equation: the sum of the total valid votes (all except null or blank) is divided by the number of seats in the legislative house. The result is the Electoral Quotient. Then the total of valid votes for each party or coalition is divided by the Electoral Quotient, which yields the Party Quotient. All candidates who obtained a total vote tally equal to or greater than the Party Quotient are elected, with the entry order following the number of votes that each candidate earned. In this way, some candidates receiving fewer votes are elected in place of other candidates (also less popular) if their parties or coalitions obtain a higher Party Quotient.
This informants political position is worth highlighting here. His family contended the political sovereignty of Jordhia until the mid-l910s, when it was dethroned by another, which had been up to that point a client of the Santanafamily, their opposition.
l 8 For a discussion on depoliticization, although in a different context, see Veyne (1 995).
IYIn the case of Monte Verde, the word sitio (ranch) corresponds to a group of minifundidrias (microlandholdings),called

terrenos, each one the property of a cusu ([house] in the material sense as well as the kinship sense).
2o Goldman (2000: 3 18) presents a native conception drawn from his research universe which could very well apply here. According to his affirmation, politics is understood as an activity and not a dominion. Hence the possibility of fluctuation between the activities of politician and voter, barely distinguishable in an analytical sense, since, of the same nature, they are gradations in constant displacement along the same continuous line.
Our research gave witness to this type of blackmailing in two of the three municipalities studied. The electoral results help make relative the weight of the budget resources vis-a-vis the voters because, in the two municipalities, the situation-which arrogated favors from the state and federal governments-was defeated.
22 As Deleuze diagnosed (1986: 32-7 and passim) regarding Foucaults work (cf. 1977), power is not the property of one class. It has no localization, it is not incarnate in the State apparatus, nor is it the attribute of a dominant class or the product of the law.
23 Time is an element frequently stressed by numerous anthropologists who reflected on systems of reciprocity, from Mauss (1993) to Bourdieu (1980, 1996), by way of Malinowski (1978), Lefort (1979), Sahlins (1976a and b), Karsenti (1994), LCvi-Strauss (1971, 1993) and Weiner (1992), to name a few examples.
24 This perhaps remits us to one of those counter-state mechanisms that Goldman (2000: 328) appropriated from Pierre Clastres for electoral practices.
25 From the variability of factors is derived an unpredictable multiplicity of voting motivations, as shown by Goldman and Santanna (1996: 25-26) regarding the dispersal of the voters interests. Since the identity-related sense of belonging courses along genealogical lines, it can wander among political-familial segments (cf. Marques, 2001 and 2002). They are mutable identities (cf. Martin, 1992: 583; Goldman, 2001). 26 This is paradoxical because most of the literature regarding patrodclient relations has emphasized exactly this monopolization of resources and power. Patrodclient relationships have received various definitions, all under dispute. However, perhaps there is no great risk in presenting them here under the rubric of the following common denominator: a dyadic alliance (Foster

1967; LandC 1977) between persons of unequal social status, power and financial resources. In this relationship each one of the parties gains: one receives resources, both material and intangible, which would not be available to him but for the informal channels that his patrons protection provides. The other receives political support through the form of votes and his clients debt of gratitude. Some writers (Boissevan 1966, Silverman 1970, Weingrod 1968, 1977) have argued that clientelism was a symptom of the transition from traditional political systems to modem systems. It was a stage of political development. By means of clientelism and patronage, the peripheral isolation in which certain groups would have been enclosed was eliminated, instead bringing to these groups, due to the patrons mediations, political conscience and participation. Informal social networks, according to Weingrod (1977), would have the merit of becoming channels through which people could accede positions of decision-makingand cultivate their objectives. Other authors distinguish clientelism from democracy and modernization. For these writers, clientelism detained the advance of universalist and impersonal politics, and impeded the participation of voters as autonomous, independent citizens. Gilsenan (1986), for example, shows that in Lebanon the ruling class (landowners whose relation to production restricted them to expecting, without any investment, the fruits of labor of the landless workers) maintained a system of underdevelopment with the aim of keeping the rural population in a state of dependence. Nonetheless, it was at the very core of some seminal works (LandC 1977) that patrodclient relationships, excentric to social values (addenda) and thus marginal, were not a distinctive,fundamental quality of specific political cultures, but could be present in all political organizations.For still other writers (Gunnes-Ayata 1997), clientelism derives from the encounter with modernity imposed on traditional or developing societies. It would thus be a reaction to private power, local, born from the tension between the public and private spheres. Studies on clientelism also emphasize scrutiny of local politics, in other words, politics in which political relations are incomplete in the sense that the actors and groups outside the local context are vital and directly involved in the political process, whose group constituency is not necessarily political (Swartz 1968: 1 and 5 ) , where relationships are multiplex (Gluckman 1955; Bailey 1971) and in which political behavior is linked to non-political ends that can only be disentailed from them analytically (Barnes 1968: 107-108). In fact, in the literature specific to clientelism in developed, democrati-

9
cally mature countries (Linz and Montero 1986; Tourrain 1991; Zuckerman 1977; Cazorla 1992) one finds attitudes labeled by some of these writers as party clientelism or institutional clientelism, whose relationships no longer depend on dyadic links, much less personal links, two of the diacritic traits of patronage according to the characterizationof its traditional modes of political action. Patronage and clientelism, as vertical power relationships, are considered an integral part of the systems of representative democracy in diverse nations.Yet it is noteworthy that anthropological studies have been more frequently developed in those areas where democracy was considered to be poorly implemented or in a state of consolidation. It follows that patronage and clientelism are considered to be defects, or the result of defects, in the democratic systems of those countries that, due to an ensemble of reasons varying according to context, do not manage to concretize the ideals of representativedemocracy. These ideals would demand some guarantees, among which can be highlighted the following: for each voter, one vote; independentjudicial branch; free press; free or capitalist economy; a constitution; multiple political parties and, evidently, regular and fair elections. Each one of these items varies in degree of perfection according to international observers, such that one can speak authoritatively of terms of gradation for this or that country, where there is more or less democracy. It is worth stressing that patronage and clientelism come on to the explanatory scene as the result-and, just as often, as the cause-of the defects on this list that guarantees good democratic functioning. Democracy, according to several authors, is not to be considered well implemented in a certain country if there are clientalistic relationships built into its cultural system and its political tradition that undermine its more universal institutions. On the other hand, clientalistic relationships are understood as the corollary of some imperfections in the implementation of a democratic regime onto a social foundation that is inadequate to the task.
Works Cited
Bailey, E G. (1971) Gzfts and Poison. The Politics of Reputation. Oxford: Basin Blackwell. Bezerra, Marcos 0. (1999) Em Nome das Bases -politica favor e dependgncia pessoal. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumarh. Barnes (1968) Networks and Political Process. In Local-level Politics. Social and Cultural Perspectives. M. J. Swartz (ed).

Chicago: Aldine. Boissevan, J. (1966) Patronage in Sicily. Man 1/4. Bourdieu, Pierre (1980) Le Sens Pratique. Paris: Minuit. .-----(1996) Marginalia. Algumas notas adicionais sobre o dom. Mana Vo12 (2): 7-20. Cazorla, J. ( 1992) Del Clientelismo Tradicional al Clientelismo de Partido: evoluci6n y caracteristicas. Working Paper n. 55 Deleuze, Gilles (1986) Foucault. Paris: Minuit. Deleuze Gilles and Parnet, Claire (1977) Dialogues. Paris: Flammarion. Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix (1980) Mille Plateaux - capitalisme et schizophrenie 2. Paris: Minuit. Foster, G. (1967) The Dyadic Contract: a model for the social structure of a Mexican peasant village. In: J. M. (ed) Peasant Society: A Reader. Boston: Little, Brown. Foucault, Michel (1977) [1975] Vigiar e Punir. Petr6polis: Vozes. Garcia, Marie France (1984) Feira e Trabalhadores Rurais - as freiras do Brejo e do Agreste paraibano. Tese de Doutorado em Antropologia Social. Museu NacionaVUFRJ. Garrigou, Alain (1992) Le Vote et la Vertu - comment les FranGais sont devenus klecteurs. Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale. Gay, Robert ( 1990) Community Organization and Clientelist Politics in Contemporary Brazil: a case study from suburban Rio de Janeiro. Znternational Journal o f Urban and Regional Research 14 (4): 648-666. Gaxie, Daniel (1978) Le Cens Cache - inegalitks culturelles et skgrkgation politique. Paris: Editions du Seuil. Gaxie, Daniel and Patrick Lehinge (1984) Enjeu Municipaux - la constituition des enjeux politiques duns une election municipale. Paris: PUF. Gluckman, M. (1955) Judicial Process Among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Graham, Richard (1997) [1990] Clientelismo e Politica no Brasil do Skculo XIX. Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ. Goldman, Marcio (2000) Uma Teoria Etnogrhfica da Democracia: a politica do ponto de vista do movimento negro de IlhCus, Bahia, Brasil. Etnogrdjica 4 (2): 31 1-332. ----- (2001) Segmentaridade e Movimentos Negros nas Eleiq6es de IlhCus.Mana-estudos de antropologia social 7(2): 57-93.

Goldman, Marcio and Ronald0 Santanna (1996) Elementos para uma Anhlise Antropol6gica do Voto. In Goldman and Palmeira, eds. Antropologia, Voto e Representaqcio: 13-40. Goldman, Marcio and Moacir Palmeira (1996) Apresentaqiio. In Goldman and Palmeira, eds. Antropologia, Voto e Representaqiio: 1 - 12. Gunnes-Ayata, A. ( 1997) Clientelismo: Premoderno, Moderno, Posmoderno. In Favores por votos? Heredia, Beatriz M. A. de (1979) A Morada da Vida. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. .-----(1996) Politica, F m l i a , Comunidade. In Goldman and Palmeira, eds. Antropologia, Voto e Representapio: 57-7 1. Herzfeld, Michael (1985) The Poetics of Manhood: Contest and Identity in a Cretan Mountain Village. Princeton University Press .-----(1987) Anthropology Through the Looking Glass - Critical Ethnography in the Margins of Europe. Cambridge University Press. Jankowski, Martin S. (1991) Islands in the Streets. Gangs and American Urban Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Johnson, Allen W. (197 1 ) Sharecroppers of the Sertcio. Economics and Dependence on a Brazilian Plantation. Stanford University Press. Karsenti, Bruno (1994) Marcel Mauss: le fait social total. Paris: PUF. Landt, C. (1977) Introduction:The dyadic basis of Clientelism. In S. W. Schmidt, L. Guasti, C. LandC, and J. Scott, eds. Friends, Followers and Factions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lefort, Claude (1979) [ 19511 A troca e a Luta dos Homens. In As F o m s da Histdria - ensaio de antropologia. Siio Paulo: Brasiliense. Ltvi-Strauss, Claude (197 1) [ 19661 Les Structures Elementaires de la Parent&.Paris: Moutoun. Segunda ediGiio. .-----(1993) [ 19501 Introduction h lOeuvre de Marcel Mauss. In Sociologie et Anthropologie. Paris: PUF. Linz, J. and J. Montero, eds. (1986) Crisis y Cambio: electores y partidos en la Espaiia de 10s aiios ochenta. Madnd: CEC Malinowski, Bronislaw (1978) [ 19221 Argonautas do Pac$co Ocidental. SHo Paulo: Abril. Martin, Denis-Constant (1992) Le Choix dIdentit6. Revue Franqaise de Science Politique 42 (4): 582-593.

Marques, Ana Claudia (2001) Intrigas e Questces - tramas sociais no SertZo de Pernambuco. Tese de Doutorado em Antropologia Social. Museu N a c i o n a W . .-----(2002) Intrigas e Quest6es. VinganGa de familia e tramas sociais no SertZo de Pernambuco. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumari. Mauss, Marcel (1993) [ 19251 Essai sur le Don. Forme et raison de lechange dans les soci6tCs archdiches. In Sociologie et Anthropologie. Paris: PUF. Palmeira, Moacir (1996) Politica, FacG6es e Voto. In Goldrnan and Palmeira, eds. Antropologia, Voto e RepresentagZoio:4 156. Palrneira, Moacir and Beatriz Heredia (1993) Le Temps de la Politique. Etudes Rurales 131-132: 73-87. Rosanvallon, Pierre (1992) Le Sacre du Citoyen - historie du suffrage universe1 en France. Paris: Gdlimard. Sahlins, Marshall (1976a) [1965] De la Sociologie de 1Echange Primitif. In Age de Pierre, Age dAbondance. Paris: Gallimard. .-----( 1976b )I19681 LEsprit du Don. In Age de Pierre, Age d A bondance. Silverman, S. (1970) Patronage as Myth. In Clients in Mediterranean Societies. Swartz, M., V. Turner and A. Tuden (1968) Political Anthropology. Chicago: Aldine Tourrain, A. (1991) El Ciudadano, un Cliente. El Pais, June 27, 1991, p. 9. Veyne, Paul (1995) [ 19761 Le Pain et le Cirque - sociologie dun pluralisme politique. Paris: Editions du Seuil. e Politica Villela, Jorge Mattar (2004) 0 Povo em Annas. Viole^ncia no SertZo de Pernambuco. Rio de Janeiro: Relurne Dumarh. .-----(2005) 0-Dinheir0 e suas Diversas Faces nas Eleiq6es Municipais em Pernarnbuco. Mana. Estudos de Antropologia Social 1 1(1). Weiner, Anette (1992) tnalienable Possessions. The paradox of Keeping- While-Giving. Berkeley: University of California Press. Weingrod, A. (1968) Patrons, Patronage and Political Parties. Comparative Studies in Society and History 19. .----(1977) Patronage and Power. In Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies. Zuckerman, A. (1977) Clientelist Politics in Italy. In Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Societies.

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Jorge Mattar Villela & Ana Claudia D. R.

Ana Claudia D. R. Marques

Translated by Bruce D e a n Willis University of Tulsa

26 The Latin Americanist Spring 2006

The Emission of Flux

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Interviewer: So, do you mean that if a brother in that

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Fluctuation of Votes and Resources

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Voters and Politicians Through the Looking Glass

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P: No, they come, have breakfast and go vote.

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Interviewer: So how exactly is this leaflet-switching business done?

P Ah! Thats something else we really have to watch

C.A: Eh, comadre, the people ask too much!

P: Look comadre, you should be happy that people

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Votes and Power

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l4 Although involved in politics in Vfirzea Grande, Xaviers candidacy is in Monte Verde.

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