The US dollar is sewn into the economy and culture of Argentina | New

Buenos Aires, Argentina – Lorenza Romero's shop on Monroe Avenue is painted red on the outside, with a wide window and a glass counter filled with banknotes from around the world. It's his son's collection, and all but one of the currencies are out of circulation – the one dollar bill of the United States.

"It's the one that makes people crazy here," she says. "Their own currency does not count for them."

The observation of the 72-year-old grandmother reveals what is a raw nerve for many Argentines. The country's official currency, the sovereign, is the peso – people earn and spend with it – but the US dollar is what defines value here.

The peso-dollar exchange rate is quoted daily by the media, along with the weather and road bulletins. Ask anyone, in any sector and in all strata of Argentine society, and they can probably tell you how much pesos it takes to buy a dollar every day (about 56 at the last count).

The strong influence of the greenback has become even more important this year, thanks to a severe economic crisis that has brought down the value of the peso in the run-up to next month's presidential election.

"Our brains are completely dollarized"

The dollar plays a formal role in the economy. This is the currency in which real estate transactions are made, some debts are carried and savings, if possible, are accumulated.

But it's also part of the culture, like the slogan of the jokes, the theme of the memes, the silent protagonist in the movies. And it has become a shortcut to a changing economic landscape, ranging from what to expect in the grocery aisle to who will become president.

"Our brains are completely dollarized," Alejandra Covello, president of Covello Propiedades, a real estate developer based in Buenos Aires, told Al Jazeera.

The coming and go of this bi-monetary system accelerated in the weeks following the August 11 presidential primaries, which served as a litmus test for the October 27 general election.

President Mauricio Macri, whose neoliberal agenda had canceled grants and opened the market, was defeated at the polls, losing 15 points to the main opponent of Alberto Fernandez and former President Cristina Fernandez from Kirchner.

The political rout triggered an economic crisis, with the peso losing more than 25% of its value in the days following the primaries. Screaming headlines followed the "theft" of the American currency out of the country, as if it were a person fleeing to save his life.

"The dollar is in the DNA of the Argentines"

The title of a new book by Argentine sociologists Mariana Luzzi and Ariel Wilkis summarizes the magnitude and duration during which the dollar has threatened Argentina: The dollar: history of an Argentine currency (1930)–2019).

The book highlights a turning point at the end of 1958, following the coup that overthrew Juan Domingo Peron. The then president, Arturo Frondizi, implemented a "stabilization plan" that liberated the market and included Argentina's first agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The plan sent the peso in free fall. The government has announced a holiday for the Argentine currency market, which means that no currency could be exchanged for 12 days. When operations resumed in January 1959, the masses rushed to the exchange offices of San Martin Street in Buenos Aires, demanding information on the value of the currency that would bring them fortune or famine.

"This is an important step for us as it marks the moment when the dollar has become this object of attention," said Mariana Luzzi to Al Jazeera.

The news on the dollar has gone from technical and perennial to vital and dynamic, with photos and daily stories that have created a new way of describing the economy in Argentina.

The dollar became the goal through which people learned to evaluate what was going on around them, Luzzi said. Analogies such as "the price of beef loin is in the clouds – it costs as much as the dollar" have helped to reinforce this understanding, added Luzzi. to protect their economies.

This model persists until today.

When Macri announced at the end of August that the country needed more time to repay its debts and then imposed capital controls to help calm the markets, the number of people who went to buy and withdraw their money from the market strongly increases. banks, fearing a repeat of the "corralito" of 2001 in which US funds have been frozen and for many lost.

Luzzi says that this idea of ​​the dollar as a "refuge" has been cultivated over the years. "It's like when people say, well, the dollar is in the DNA of the Argentines," she says. "It's a phrase that repeats itself."

"The dollar is like a poison"

What is clear is that the history of the Argentine dollar is closely linked to that of inflation. Its value affects the cost of imported products, but also domestically produced products that use raw materials that Argentina sells in the international market because their price is expressed in dollars. Thus, a can of milk can go up in price because local farmers feed cows with cereals that they buy in dollars.

The power of speculation is also at stake. The economist Gabriel Rubinstein of Gabriel Rubinstein & Associados, of Buenos Aires, explains that dollar fluctuations technically represent only a fraction of the rise in prices in pesos. The rest, he says, is speculative – producers raise their prices just in case.

"It's not just about trying to gain an advantage, it's more of an instinct of preservation," he told Al Jazeera, adding that it provoked a chain reaction. which ended up harming consumers.

"The daily gymnastics we perform in Argentina is not the same as in a country where inflation is low," he adds.

It all comes down to Daniel Estudillo, owner of a newsstand on Avenida de Mayo, in the heart of Buenos Aires.

"The dollar is like a poison," said the 65-year-old Al Jazeera. "Because the dollar is rising and all products are rising."

Romero, the trader on Monroe Avenue, sees the same thing. As the dollar rose and people's purchasing power declined, they had to use up their savings to keep their business afloat.

"I think if you're here, you have to use the currency of this country," she says leaning over the counter with the dollar bill. "Everything is in peso, workers earn in pesos, they do not have enough to survive, how will they buy dollars?"

The idea of ​​making the dollar the official currency of Argentina – like other countries in Latin America – has been published periodically, most recently this month in the Wall Street Journal.

In the 1990s, the government of incumbent President Carlos Menem pegged the peso on the dollar to try to curb inflation. It was far from painless. The dollar has wiped out exports, forcing the government to take on more debt to keep it afloat as the economic crisis worsens.

In 2001, fearing a defeat on the banks, the government of former President Fernando de la Rua imposed the famous "corralito". The indignation that resulted forced the resignation of De la Rua.

The dollar again played a central role in 2011, when the current vice presidential candidate and former president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, has put in place a strict control of the purchase of greenbacks. The controls were not lifted until the entry into function of Macri in 2015.

"We can not look at him as a [bi-monetary] system that we choose. We must see this as a reality, "said Rubinstein, a former representative of the Central Bank of Argentina.

For Carlos Eduardo Gonzalez, 28, a recent migrant from Venezuela, saving dollars is common sense. He has been doing this since 2015, first as protection against the free falling currency of his own country, and now as the owner of a shop selling Venezuelan goods in the Belgrano district of Buenos Aires.

"You can say that people no longer believe in the peso," he told Al Jazeera.

The 30-year-old father Simone Tejada, who sells souvenir pins in front of Casa Rosada's presidential palace, does not consider that one currency is more important than the other. But the value of both is constantly weighing him, while he wonders how he will afford to buy milk and bread for his young daughter.

"The dollar is our daily life, because it concerns us every minute, in everything," he says. "If I could save in dollars, I would do it."