Arriving at Jorge Newbery International Airport, the closest airport to Buenos Aires, in March, it soon becomes clear anything and everything is justified in the hunt for the dollar.
One taxi driver tries to charge the ‘official exchange rate’, which he puts at 200 pesos; another, making me get into his car, tells me that the black exchange rate – known as the blue dollar – is 300 pesos (the real rate was 400 at the time). At the taxi counter inside the airport, one man says nobody in the city will accept notes of less than $100 dollars. The last driver speaks of a formidable sum of 700 pesos to the dollar but says he has no change. In the end, realising that I am not easy prey, a man who appears to be the boss orders one of his subordinates to take me to my hotel for 20 dollars.
This open war for the dollar is being reproduced across Argentina and has become one of the central battles of the presidential elections. It appears likely to deliver Javier Milei, a far-right eccentric anarcho-capitalist, to power – possibly even in the first-round run-off on Sunday. His election would break the political chessboard, with unforeseeable consequences.
