14 THENEWYORKER,M AY 9, 2022
CURRENCYDEPT.
DEADSTOCK
C
arla Zaccagnini was seated on a
bench the other day, riffling through
a pile of cash. “I’ve been collecting
money that’s not in circulation any-
more,” she said, looking up from stacks
of bills sheathed in cellophane. “So, cur-
rencies that are dead.” It was five days
before Zaccagnini’s first solo exhibition
in the United States would open, at
Amant, a nonprofit art space in Brook-
lyn, and three days before the U.S. Bu-
reau of Labor Statistics would announce
that consumer prices had risen 8.5 per
cent in the past year, sparking panic
about the cost of broccoli and gasoline.
Zaccagnini’s show, “Cuentos de cuen-
tas /Accounts of Accounting,” is based
on her childhood in Argentina and Bra-
zil in the nineteen-seventies and eight-
ies, when hyperinflation drove people
to hoard U.S. dollars. Zaccagnini re-
called that grocery workers spent hours
walking the aisles, replacing price tags
throughout the day as prices went up.
In Brazil, for example, where annual
inflation rates in the late eighties shot
up above a thousand per cent, the cur-
rency declined so quickly that the gov-
ernment kept devaluing and renaming
it. Before 1986, the Brazilian dollar was
called the cruzeiro (a reference to the
Southern Cross constellation); then it
was renamed the cruzado (“crusader”),
and existing bills were stamped with a
new value until fresh bills could be
printed. In 1989, the currency was de-
valued again, and a thousand cruzados
became one cruzado novo. And on and
on. (A publication accompanying the
exhibit estimates that one of today’s Bra-
zilian reals, as the currency is now called,
would be worth 2,750,000,000,000,000,
of the original reals used when Brazil
became an independent country, in 1822.)
Each time there was a change, money
in circulation had to be traded in for
new bills, and the old ones were retired.
A few years ago, Zaccagnini started
buying them, on Mercado Libre, the
Latin American eBay. “The first idea I
had was to just make a list, printed on
the wall, of all the dead currencies since
I was born,” she said. “Currency is one
of the identities of a country, like the
national anthem. Can you imagine if
we had a new anthem every three years?”
She picked up a bluish-white bill worth
five thousand cruzados, which featured
a portrait of Candido Portinari, a fa-
mous Brazilian artist. “Then I came up
with the idea of little boats.”
She folded the bill in half and pressed
the corners down, before folding it again
into quarters. “It’s the first thing you
learn to do with paper,” she went on.
“It’s something I kind of do when I’m
bored and I have a paper in my hand.
I make little boats.” After a few more
folds, she stuck her fingers into the
center and popped the sides out, re-
vealing a trim vessel.
Carla Zaccagnini
Democrats don’t stand up and fight back,
the Republicans are going to put for-
ward people who may not support our
having free and fair elections ever again.”
In fact, they’re already doing that. A re-
sumption of Trumpism is an invitation
to an increasingly authoritarian Amer-
ica, a nation contemptuous of the rule
of law, the disadvantaged, and the planet
itself. The effect on national security is
a misery to contemplate. Imagine if
Trump had won in 2020. Imagine his in-
evitable indulgence of Vladimir Putin,
his expressions of disdain for nato, for
Ukraine, for Volodymyr Zelensky, whom
he once tried to extort for political gain.
At a moment of wanton killing in
Ukraine, Trump has shown scant con-
cern. His only interest in the region seems
to be whether he can cajole Putin to dig
up dirt on Hunter Biden.
But, while alarm is appropriate, par-
alyzing despair is not. After fifteen
months in office, Biden is polling at
around forty per cent. At the same point,
so was Ronald Reagan—then, as infla-
tion receded, he ran for reëlection against
Walter Mondale and won forty-nine
states. Trump is making a tremendous
noise as he travels the country, endors-
ing J. D. Vance and other obedient can-
didates, but his popularity has declined.
His miserable handling of the pandemic
and his starring role in the January 6th
insurrection have eroded his standing
among at least some Republican voters.
His near future is hardly promising. The
select committee investigating the in-
surrection will hold hearings in June,
and Representative Jamie Raskin, of
Maryland, predicts that the revelations
will “blow the roof off the House.” The
former President also faces ongoing legal
scrutiny in cases in New York and Geor-
gia, and from journalists everywhere.
The analysts who keep flogging Biden
for his inability to pass more ambitious
legislation through Rooseveltian persua-
sion and Johnsonian party discipline
tend to ignore the fact that F.D.R. and
L.B.J. enjoyed immense congressional
majorities. Biden has Joe Manchin and
Kyrsten Sinema. His stimulus bill, a sig-
nificant achievement, attracted zero Re-
publican support. The members of the
political class of the G.O.P., with rare
exceptions, have determined that their
voters are with Trump, and so they must
be, too. These men and women have all
the political independence and moral
courage of the trembling members of
Putin’s national-security council. They
have traded the principles of a liberal
democracy for a job. Does the future be-
long to them?
“We have to let go of the idea that
this is politics as usual,” Mallory Mc-
Morrow said. She did a heroic thing in
the Michigan State Senate. The coun-
try is in real need of many such acts,
many such heroes.
—David Remnick
