A brand new currency makes its debut in La Rioja, Argentina.
Photographer: Natalia Favre/BloombergCurrencies
New Argentine Currency Launched to Offset Milei’s Shock Therapy
The remote province of La Rioja has created its own currency, the chacho, to try to revive its moribund economy.
There are few places in all of Argentina as poor as La Rioja, a sleepy, desolate province carved out of the red-clay highlands that form the country’s northwestern border with Chile.
And it is here, in La Rioja, that the financial toll of President Javier Milei’s shock economic therapy — a high-stakes bid to tame chronic inflation — can best be observed. When Milei slashed the monthly cash transfers from the federal government to the provinces, La Rioja went broke. In February, it fell into default. And soon the local economy had sunk into a deep recession.