Had it not been a drama on the verge of tragedy, the episode lived in an incarnacenous store could fit into the category of farce loaded with black humor. It happened last August, in a self-service in the city frequented by Argentine clients.
One morning, a guy with a hood covering his head confronted the business employee and demanded that she hand over all the money she had. The woman, under the threat of a knife resting on her neck, took out a wad of bills and handed it to the marginal, who reacted very annoyed: “I don’t want pesos.” The situation became dangerous as the woman feared a violent reaction from the assailant so, gathering courage, she began to scream loudly. Then his comrades came, who engaged in a hand-to-hand fight, managing to scare off the attacker, but not before receiving some cuts and punctures.
The episode can be read in two ways: no one wants the Argentine peso, something contradictory because the employee herself had tried to get out of trouble by offering the offender Argentine pesos from the sales made that day.
And it is that the flow of pesos to Paraguay is constant and not only to buy things. A kind of revolving door has been established that feeds the conversion of pesos to dollars, an operation that in Argentina has a series of taxes that do not exist in Paraguay. According to a report from the Posadas Chamber of Commerce, the monthly flow of Argentine currency to Encarnación is around 800 million pesos.
To the attraction of buying cheaper dollars, Argentines are adding the brutal rise in the Argentine cost of living in recent months. Last May, the parallel (blue) dollar was quoted at 200 pesos; yesterday, Wednesday, the parity was 359 pesos. Meanwhile, inflation shot up from 60.7% in May to 93% in November with the prospect of closing 2022 at 100%. In such a climate, and during the same period (seven months), the basic food basket rose from 99,000 to 145,000 pesos (Gs. 3.4 million), just to cover a month of a person’s most essential food.
It is understood that the Argentines cross into Encarnación to disperse through local businesses. Before they did it to buy electronics and trinkets. Now they add the dollar and even certain foods, the product of an economy that is exploding to pieces.
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The entrance On a crazy carousel was first published on The Independent.
