“Antigua and Bananuda”: the Internet is flooded with memes with mockery about Javier Milei’s proposal to dollarize Argentina

The replacement of the national peso with the US currency is one of the key proposals of the ultraliberal who won the August primaries.

The plans of the candidate for the presidency of Argentina for the La Libertad Avanza party (LLA), Javier Milei, of dollarize the country’s economy Given the acute economic situation, they have given rise to a series of memes on the Internet, where users mock the ultraliberal proposal and suggest that the nation could become a ‘banana republic’.

The cascade of ironies Regarding the proposal of Milei, who surprisingly won the primary elections in August, he started with a message that contained names of imaginary countries. “I don’t understand why they don’t want to dollarize if it worked great in these countries: Bananaland, Banana Island, Banana Republic, the banana triangle“, He said the publication.

One of the most popular answers, which gained a million viewswas that of a user who mentioned more fictitious names of Caribbean countries. “You don’t understand, skinny, dollarization has already been tried and was a resounding success in Banama, Las Banahamas, San Vicente and the Bananinas, Antigua and Bananuda, and Puerto Ronaldo, to name a few examples,” he stated. Among other names, that of Antigua and Bananuda became a trend on X (previously known as Twitter), with the banana as the protagonist in the avalanche of memes.

Some joke that once dollarized, Argentina would have banana-shaped houses, while a temple that exalts this fruit would replace the Obelisk, the iconic monument of Buenos Aires. Others fantasized that ‘central bank’ reserves from Antigua and Bananuda would also be composed of bananas.

In general, Internet users scoffed at the idea, which would involve give up monetary sovereignty and would leave the country dependent on the fluctuations of the dollar and the decisions of the US Federal Reserve.

• The expression ‘banana republic’ dates back to the year 1904when the American writer O.Henry I coin the term for refer to Honduraswhere he took refuge after being accused of embezzlement.
• As time went by, the expression began to be used to speak disparagingly on any poor, politically unstable nation, with an economy dependent on a single product of little added value, such as bananas, and governed by a corrupt Government.