Case Studies

Update on trade exchanges (trueque clubs) in Argentina, 2012
Taken from: http://taoaproject.org/index.php/2012/04/21/el-trueque-argentine/
posted by Thomas Greco

The phenomenon of the trueque in Argentina is undoubtedly the most important experience by its scale (the number of participants and beneficiaries) in the contemporary history of social currencies.

The first barter club was born in 1995, in Bernal, province of Buenos Aires. This initiative is quickly duplicated throughout the country and the barter dynamics is becoming a true parallel economy. This informal system of production and exchange of goods and services is designed to be open to all, including the many excluded or disappointed in the traditional economy. The middle of 2002 marks the peak of Argentine barter with 5,000 clubs for about 2.5 million active participants, perhaps some 6 million beneficiaries. But a few months later, everything collapses ...
We investigated during 3 months to trace the history of the trueque, and especially to discover what one does not read in the publications on the subject ...
All our articles on barter clubs in Argentina
summary of articles
• History of barter clubs in Argentina
• The barter club, beyond barter
• Live in the paradigm of abundance
• The reverse of the scene and the fall of barter
• 6 good practices for bartering
• Logbook of the TAOA survey in Argentina
• Discover our film: True, an answer to the crisis
• Portrait Beatriz Tela - micro entrepreneur
• Journey "in the heart" of Argentina
• Marcelo, the credit collector
• How were the barter clubs born in Argentina?
• Historical landmarks

• The fourth on the above list, The reverse of the scene and the fall of barter, is of special importance. I've also posted this as a Google doc at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xf_GR_la7Licu9XbYvlT5mloovidsJZ0Kw1ER2B7UtI/edit?usp=sharing. --t.h.g.

Thanks for this. An instructive read indeed. It is easy, of course, to think - 'oh, but we aren't doing anything like that - we're not pyramid marketers, we are about bottom-up mutual credit with clear localities', etc etc.
However, if we assume that we will be successful, the fact that the founders had good intentions and perhaps a little wisdom will be beside the point. We are not building something to address an emergency - only to last five years until something else is done - but something we wish to have long-term relevance.
If we take this seriously, we must consider ourselves to be laying the foundations for a persistent, self-sustaining system that has significant economic impact.
To attain power and control within such a system will be an attractive prospect for self-interested persons. We must design, to the extent to which we are capable, systems which are resistant and resilient in the face of such attempts.
This cannot be achieved by rigidity or absolutes. The history of monetary systems shows that the capacity to adapt and evolve in the face of a wide variety of real changes - whether natural (earthquake, famine, climate change) or human-made (war, social collapse, class warfare - is crucial.