The line starts forming outside the central bank in downtown La Paz in the dead of the night. Hunkered down under blankets and sipping hot chocolate to fend off the chill at 12,000 feet up in the Andes, they wait for hours and hours for a chance to get their hands on what has perhaps become the hardest thing to find in all of Bolivia: dollars.
There are few, if any, at commercial banks or currency-exchange houses or even in the black market, where traders ply their trade from corner kiosks in the shadow of the central bank.
