Venezuelans recycle their worthless bolivar bills into origami and handicrafts
‘We had a lot of cash but nothing to buy, because in Venezuela your money is worth nothing’
A family of Venezuelan immigrants to Colombia are repurposing their virtually worthless bolivars into origami-made paper wallets, belts and even purses as the currency plunges further in value amid four-digit inflation.
Each collector item produced by Richard Segovia fetches between US$10 and US$15 – a huge markup from the pennies that bolivars retrieve on Venezuela’s black market.
Segovia, 24, arrived two months ago to the Colombian border city of Cucuta with his wife and a cousin fleeing a dead-end job at a warehouse in Venezuela, where he made the equivalent of just US$2.50 a month. He came up with the idea to make artwork one night when he and his cousin were back in Caracas staring at a pile of cash.
“We had a lot of cash but nothing to buy, because in Venezuela your money is worth nothing,” he said.
So, he started folding and creasing Venezuela’s colourful bills into trinkets and then larger creations like purses and bags. Each item consists of around 800 to 1,000 mostly 50 and 100-bolivar notes – with a total cash value of less than 50 US cents.