Hayden Abroad

Dispatches from Somewhere in the World

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

The Dollarization of El Salvador

The first thing that I noticed when I arrived in El Salvador is that I didn´t need to exchange dollars for the local currency. A few years ago, the government of El Salvador became the third country (after Ecuador) in the world to make the U.S. dollar its official currency. They have even made the word ¨quarter¨ a Spanish word: Indeed peddlers give prices in quarters: An item might cost three quarters instead of seventy-five cents.

This switch to the dollar seems to make sense given how closely the Salvadorian economy is tied into the U.S. (and clearly illustrates the power structure of our neo-imperialism in the process). But such a decision, while perhaps controlling inflation and reducing transaction costs, the adoption of the dollar undoubtedly threatens the national sovereignty of a country that for so many years has suffered at the hands of ¨the Almighty Dollar.¨

As a traveler, paying in dollars added a new wrinkle to my journey. There´s really no escaping the understanding of how much stuff costs: the prices are written neatly before me in my home currency. Rather, during my time here, I´ve found myself translating prices back into Nicaraguan cordobas in order to assess the comparative value of a good or service.


Furthermore, the appearance of dollars and cents in our wallets again allows me to teach Kamilla a few things about my own country. I´ve taught her the words for ¨dime,¨ ¨nickel,¨ and ¨penny¨ (which she never had to learn before) and given her mini-lectures on the Founding Fathers whose heads grace these coins.

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