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Newly arrived can bank
on ‘cundinas’ It’s called a “cundina” a Spanish slang term that translates
roughly in English as “a good quantity.”
For Hispanic
immigrants such as Jose Antonio Valencia, 29, this system of pooling funds
is a good way to save money and get a periodic infusion of cash.
It works like
this: Ten people, usually co-workers, form a group and contribute $100
apiece every week to the cundina. Every week, a different person in the
group receives the $1,000 pool. The money is used to pay overdue bills,
to put down payments on furniture and cars, to send gifts to family in
Mexico. Cundinas vary, depending on the number of people involved and
the quantity of cash, but the reasons for participating are universal.
In a community where banks and checking accounts are as foreign as the
English language, this system provides immigrants with a practical way
to save their money. It also is a means of forced savings for people who
are constantly strapped for cash. Valencia, a paint-factory worker, used
his cundina payoff in October to pay part of a $1,500 fine for drunken
driving. He was the second person in the cundina group to get the payoff,
and for the next eight weeks, he struggled to make the weekly $100 payments
_ sometimes risking having his phone and electricity cut off for not paying
the bills. Did he consider reneging on his cundina responsibilities? “Never,”
he said. “I would rather go without eating than renege on my responsibility
to my friends.” This loyalty and friendship among newly arrived immigrants
is the chief reason cundinas work. “People never skip out on cundinas,”
said Valencia, who has been involved in the money pools since he arrived
in Santa Ana four years ago. “The rule is, you pay the cundina first,
even before you buy food for your children.”
Staff writer
Jeordan Legon immigrated from Cuba with his family in 1979. He lived for
most of last year in the Courtyard Apartments in the predominantly Hispanic
neighborhood near 15th and Spurgeon streets in Santa Ana.
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