Moneda hijacking

I, along with millions of other people in this city, were blessed with free subway rides this past weekend. The occasion? No, not Dia de la Raza - which is basically Columbus day, but sometimes thought of as a counter to it: a resistance to the white man's arrival in the Americas. Okay, sorry, back to the free ride! It was actually due to a lack of monedas. Since the subway did not have enough coins to provide change to customers, they let everyone ride for free.

The direct cause of this? According to Clarin, the Gendarmeria or Justicia Federal (national guard, or some internal part of the government) decided to sequester 5,000,000 in pesos in order to... count it? Okay, so I'm not 100% sure since the articles were in Spanish, but that's what I can gather. They took the monedas from Maco, a wealth transport company that acquires monedas (probably from the bus companies) and sells them to companies, at a mark-up of 8 - 10%. Their main customers include the subway and the biggest pharmacy chain, which resulted in free train service and Farmacity turning customers away.

There are almost 5 billion coins of varying values (from .05 to 1.00) in circulation, and the 5 million pesos that were removed are estimated at a mere .42% of the total supply. However, this had a huge (and "unforeseen") effect on daily life here. When they sequestered Maco's supply, the government was searching for false monedas in an attempt to counter the underground business .

Luckily, the monedas were returned safely and the subway is no longer free.

from our trip to Rosario last weekend