Mumbuca: Reclaiming the Economy from Both Above and Below
If you walk through the sunny streets of Maricá, a town 60 kilometers east of Rio de Janeiro, you will notice something unique. Banners, posters and stickers in shops, supermarkets, and services like dentists and taxi drivers, announce that they accept Mumbuca E-dinheiro as payment. This isn’t a gimmick, a points scheme or a niche experiment. Mumbuca is Maricá’s local community currency, and E-dinheiro (E-money) is the digital platform used to carry out the transactions made through the Mumbuca Bank. The currency has been actively used by the local population for over ten years, becoming an integral part of the town’s economic landscape.
This isn’t a solitary experience. Mumbuca is a community development bank (CDB), a type of financial institution that’s part of a growing movement that seeks to promote social and economic access to those that live at the edge of the formal economy. More so, banks such as Mumbuca operate by circulating resources within the community, fostering local power, and encouraging more solidarity-based practices that challenge traditional capitalist frameworks through local currencies – which yes, are all real money.
In Brazil specifically, this has been a strategy for local development, with over 160 community banks having been created since 1998, bringing financial services to both rural and urban neighborhoods, towns and cities. Through education and microcredit, these community-led, self-managed institutions seek to superimpose more humane relations in the economy – a dynamic that, in itself, makes possible a type of development that seeks to be more sustainable, just and focused on human well-being, rather than profit and individual gain. In this, these practices also become a matter of reasserting social control over the economy and relinking it with society, while also actively patching structural inequalities.
This shift is not merely symbolic – it also gives us a practical example at how these initiatives generate other possibilities and ways of living, and precisely ones where decision-making (and power) is not restricted solely to the state or the market, but rather, the people. In sum, it creates tangible alternatives and the tools for communities to shape their own futures, even if they are seemingly small and localized. This is one of the first points where Mumbuca stands out when compared to other banks in the country – its scale –, making it a unique case study which I will explore during my time at the ICDE. Two other distinguishing factors, which I will also examine during my fellowship, are its (pioneering) status as a municipal bank, and the specific requirements to access its eleven microcredit lines. As we will see, these elements set Mumbuca apart, making it somewhat of a hybrid “anomaly”.
Mumbuca was created in 2013 by then (and recently re-elected) mayor of Maricá, Washington Siqueira (also known as Washington Quaquá), who, inspired by a visit to the Palmas Bank (Brazil’s first CDB), implemented a series of policies for poverty alleviation and socio-economic development, all based on the social and solidarity economy. At the time, Brazil had already accumulated a decade of experience with solidarity-based policies, fostered through the National Secretary of Solidarity Economy (Senaes), which was instrumental in promoting these models of community development. Senaes provided technical support, facilitated partnerships between CDBs and public authorities, and encouraged the dissemination of alternative financial practices across the country.
Even so, Maricá’s approach went beyond existing methods. Through its own policies, Maricá had managed to advance beyond the “normal” scope of community banks, partly by defining that the main instrument for implementing the newly established policies would be done through the mumbuca, also created (and regulated) through the city’s new law. This created a new dynamic, as the government didn’t merely support a community bank but rather had its role institutionalized, ensuring its long-term sustainability – and legitimacy.
As of such, Mumbuca currently holds several innovative projects in partnership with City Hall, as, for instance, a Universal Basic Income program (Renda Básica de Cidadania), that supports over 94.000 people, and is paid exclusively with the digital currency; making it the largest UBI program in Latin America. The bank also offers training and support for the development of solidarity enterprises, and provides eleven microcredit lines (Mumbucred) exclusively for them – as eligibility for these loans requires forming “solidarity groups” of three to ten people. More “individual” credit lines, such as those directed towards housing, also maintain the same requirement to form a group.
In this, Mumbuca employs a distinct credit granting model based on collective guarantees, and inherently creates an incentive towards more cooperative and solidary logics. This is another major difference when looking at other community banks in Brazil. In my previous work, done with banks in Chapada Gaúcha, Teófilo Otoni and, most recently, Vitória, I’ve come to find slight shifts in the local population’s perceptions around value (including self-value), democracy, and bigger structural frameworks such as the economy. While they do foster the principles of the solidarity economy, the credit lines still hold the “aura” of entrepreneurship – therefore still utilizing a capitalist and neoliberal logic, which are normally the main critique these banks receive.
It’s difficult not to wonder though, how these dynamics would play out in a “purer” setting, one such as Maricá, where a more collective mindset has been “officialized” through legislation for over a decade. This is another key question I would like to explore at the ICDE: if this specific setting and requirement of “solidarity groups” shift the perceptions normally held on things like capitalism and labor. This question becomes even more intriguing when considering that this collective dynamic extends beyond the bank, permeating other aspects of everyday life in the city.
Maricá has a strong history of rearranging public funds, showing that, in politics, “basta ter vontade” (you just need to be willing). For instance, in a bold move to improve public transport, city officials analyzed City Hall’s expenditures and saw that the cost of transport vouchers (vale transporte) for municipal employees could be reallocated to fund a free public transportation system. The money was then redirected to the implementation of nine free-fare buses (known as vermelhinhos, or “little red ones”), which circulated throughout Maricá to guarantee its residents a “right to mobility”. Like Mumbuca, this also was passed through legislation in 2014, with the creation of EPT (Public Transport Company) and, currently, a total of 135 buses, with 39 lines, circulate everyday.
Other projects developed by the city are scholarship programs, food baskets (called “citizenship baskets”), and sustainable energy initiatives, such as installing solar panels in public housing and community centers. The city also expanded on federal programs like Farmácia Popular (free medication) and Minha Casa, Minha Vida, financing the construction of thousands of affordable housing units – all through municipal resources.
In this sense, and in all above, Maricá presents a fascinating case for examining the potential of solidarity-based finance systems, rescaled through public policy. It also invites an inquiry into whether these new municipal CDBs strengthen the emancipatory potential of these initiatives or, paradoxically, constrains them by embedding them in formal structures that risk mimicking the very systems they aim to resist.
What we do know is that in Maricá, solidarity finance is more than an abstract ideal – it’s a lived reality that shapes how people experience and interact with the economy daily. By exploring this unique (digital) ecosystem, I would like to therefore understand if Mumbuca indeed fuels a profound and amplified shift in perceptions of value and cooperation or, conversely, reinforces existing structures. Either way, Mumbuca offers a compelling glimpse into a reshaping of the economy – from both above and below.