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.

So the governor, an outspoken critic of Milei by the name of Ricardo Quintela, dialed up a radical plan of his own. He created the province's own currency, the chacho, had sheets of it printed up and started doling it out in wads of 50,000 to all government employees. It was a little bonus payment, Quintela said, to help people buy more of the essentials they'd been skimping on. Shop owners weren't outright forced, but rather strongly encouraged, to accept chachos just like they would pesos. One chacho equals one peso.

On a chilly morning in late August, the province's workers bundled up in heavy jackets and hurried to get into line to collect their new currency. There was some grumbling as morning turned to afternoon and the line crawled along at a glacial pace - "seven hours to collect 50,000 filthy chachos," one groused - but the mood was generally light. They made small talk and sipped mate. The payment they were due, equal to some US$40, was a lot of money in a province where the average monthly salary is just US$240.

Chachos finally in hand, they wasted no time in spending them.

At Refinor, a gas station in the provincial capital city, business jumped 10 percent that morning.

Quintela has pointed merchants eager to get rid of their chachos to the two government offices in the capital city that will, after a 48-hour mandatory wait, exchange them for pesos. Wait all the way till December, Quintela has told them, and the provincial government will pay them 1.17 pesos for each chacho, effectively an interest rate of 17 percent in pesos that, when annualised, comes to over 50 percent.

Ángel Vicente 'Chacho' Peñaloza is a legend around here. Monuments to him dot the landscape. In most of them, Chacho, a fierce local caudillo who, fittingly, made his name fighting against forces from Buenos Aires during the 19th-century civil wars, strikes a menacing pose, spear slung over his shoulder, as he commands his troops.

This is the rugged image that adorns the new bills. There's also a QR code on each bill which, when scanned, displays a sharply worded message blasting the Milei government for starving the province of the federal funds it's due.

The chachos come in denominations of 1,000 to 50,000.

To read the complete article, see:
'Los chachos': La Rioja launches currency to offset Milei's shock therapy(https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/economy/los-chachos-la-rioja-launches-currency-to-offset-mileis-shock-therapy.phtml)