Like so many other people around the world, in 2020, when the coronavirus quarantine started, Argentines Antonella Spampinato and Mariano Agüero decided they wanted to leave their apartment in the city and move with their 4-year-old son to the green suburbs of Buenos Aires.
For years they had been converting their savings to dollars, the currency used for real estate transactions in Argentina due to the weakness of the local currency, the peso, which suffers constant devaluations.
It was not easy to find a place in the coveted northern area of the Buenos Aires suburbs.
But when they finally found it and it was time to pay for their new property, they encountered an unexpected problem .
“Some of our savings in dollars they had a small face and they did not accept them “, he told BBC Mundo Antonella.
” We had to give some to my sister na, who was traveling abroad and was able to exchange them for new bills. And the others we deposited in my mother’s dollar account, and we asked her to ask for large-sided bills when she picked them up, “he said.
This problem with the so-called” small-sided “dollars or “small head” has become a real headache for many Argentines.
The curious description refers to the oldest US banknotes currently in circulation: those that were printed in that country between and 1996.
They are known as with a face or a small head because what distinguishes them is that in the center of the bill there is a small effigy of an American hero , within an oval frame.
In the case of the most emblematic banknote, the US $ 100, it is a drawing of Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers United States.
In the series of dollars printed between 1996 Y 2003, the portraits are much larger and the oval frame extends to the margins of the banknote.
And in dollars created from 2020 (informally known as “the blue ones”, because those of US $ 100 are crossed by a security band of that color) there is no longer frame and the image, which includes face and shoulders, appears even more large.
Although the three types of banknotes are legal currency , valid and accepted both in the US and in any bank outside that country, including Argentina, for carry out private transactions -such as buying a house, a car or sometimes even a cell phone or computer- most Argentines only accept the last two , those baptized from “Big face or head”.
The same happens in most real estate agencies, concessionaires, tourism agencies or any business that accepts dollars.
And especially in the so-called “financial caves”, which buy and sell dollars illegally, where many Argentine savers go due to strong restrictions – or “stocks” – on the official dollar.
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In these illegal markets, those who have “small head” dollars receive a price between 1% and 5% less than the value of the “big face” banknotes, even though, in reality, they are all worth the same.
Why does it happen
A money changer who works in one of these caves (and asked to be identified only as “Gonzalo”) explained to BBC Mundo that the rejection of the oldest series of American banknotes started about six or seven years ago.
And as he recounted, it all came about due to a misunderstanding.
“A note was published in a US economic newspaper where an official of the Federal Reserve said that this institution has not printed expensive bills for many years. girl “, he recalled.
” So people assumed that the Federal Reserve was going to take them out of circulation “.
Despite the fact that the entity that directs US monetary policy has reiterated in many statements that It is not in their plans to remove from circulation any of the three types of banknotes used today, doubts have persisted.
Gonzalo clarified that the rejection of old bills did not start in Argentina.
tourist destinations such as Aruba and the Philippines ”, he pointed out.
But in recent years, these tickets have lost their value in almost all of Latin America, he assured.
The reason why this is a particularly troublesome problem in Argentina is that it is considered one of the most “dollarized” nations in the world, due to the distrust of locals in the constantly undervalued peso , which has led the dollar to be the reserve currency.
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Many of those who have the possibility to save, go on buying dollars and saving them, either at home or in safe deposit boxes.
As this practice has been around for decades, It is very common that among these savings there are several small-sided bills , as happened to Antonella and Mariano.
The challenge of getting the from “big face”
Given this scenario, Argentines have three options.
One -as Antonella said- is to take advantage of a trip of your own or from an acquaintance abroad, either to the US or to a country that accepts all greenbacks, to get rid of those small face dollars or exchange them for new ones.
Another option, which she and her partner also used, is to deposit them in a dollar account at a bank and then withdraw the money, assuming that the withdrawn bills are from newer series.
This alternative is not available for the approximately 40% of Argentines who work in black .
But even for workers in the formal sector it is not a safe bet.
The problem is that, given the enormous demand for banknotes of “big head” or “blue”, banks do not always have enough stock , and they have had to publish notices explaining to their clients that all dollars are valid.
BBC Mundo contacted the largest banks in the country, both in the public sector ico as private, to find out how they handle these inconveniences, but did not get a response from anyone.
However, although the banks clarify that customers must accept any ticket , some people do not lower their arms until they get the kind of dollar they want.
Carolina, a woman from Buenos Aires who wanted to move closer to her children’s school, signed a contract last November for a house where it was clarified that the price was in dollars and that “they could not be small-faced.”
“I went to the bank and asked my account executive to give me big-face dollars. I clarified to him that if he gave me the old ones, I was going to deposit them again and again until he gave me the newest ones ”, he told BBC Mundo.
Those who do not want to take the trouble to do this or they have undeclared savings that they do not want to bank, and they also do not plan to travel abroad, they have the third option: go to the caves .
There they can exchange their old bills for new ones, in exchange for a rate of 1% to 5%.
This has generated a new business illegal : the money changers buy the dollars “small head” to a lower price and exchange them for newer bills with the complicity of tellers or other bank employees, who receive a commission.
Gonzalo recognizes that the caves are benefiting from this generalized rejection of the Argentineans to the oldest series of dollars.
But it denies the journalistic versions that blame the money changers for having started this problem, by rejecting the older banknotes because they have fewer security measures.
“In my entire career I have never seen a fake dollar expensive boy,” he said.
“It is simply a question of the market … nobody wants those dollars “.
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