Una moneda de confianza (a trustworthy currency): Dollarization, debt, and everyday economic organization in Ecuador

The official adoption of the U.S. dollar in Ecuador represented as profound a transformation in the everyday lives, shared social experience, and cultural memory of Ecuadorians as in national monetary and fiscal policy. Replacing the very yardstick by which Ecuadorians measured, stored, and transacted the value of the world around them with a foreign currency with unfamiliar dimensions and denominations, dollarization changed the way Ecuadorians live day to day, as well as how Ecuadorians were and are able to understand those changes. Ten years later, Ecuadorians widely support dollarization—primarily because the dollar is said to be “de confianza,” a trustworthy currency. Some suggest, however, that the long-term sustainability of dollarization is threatened by the extensive public investments and expansionary fiscal policy, funded in large part by loans from the Chinese government and high oil prices, of President Rafael Correa’s administration. This paper will examine the discourse of confianza that surrounds the dollar and its uses among middle-class Ecuadorians who have organized informal, family-based savings and credit cooperatives. Specifically, this paper will investigate how “confidence” or “trust” plays into the everyday economic practices of these Ecuadorians and their co-ops, while reflecting on the diversity of practices of debt and indebtedness in public and private budgeting. It will suggest that one of dollarization’s social effects includes the generation of a “popular monetarism,” through which the dollar is widely understood to provide a stable store of value over time. It will also suggest a parallel between this “popular monetarism” in Ecuador and academic approaches to money-as-debt, which risk eliding the diverse functions and uses of both money and debt.