Updated March 19, 2025 at 6:00 p.m.*
-OpEd-
BOGOTÁ — It’s the year 2040 and humanity has yet to self-destruct. So let me talk about the 15 years since Shakira’s 2025 Women Don’t Cry Anymore (Las mujeres ya no lloran) tour, the source of the so-called Shakinomics period that kept Latin American economies afloat through the notorious tariffs period. They haven’t been easy times, no, ever since millions of gullible fools let themselves be manipulated like chessboard pieces.
For the latest news & views from every corner of the world, Worldcrunch Today is the only truly international newsletter. Sign up here.
How did it begin? For those who cannot remember, the tour’s concerts were world-class and global in scale, and an emotional display of Colombian flair and essence. Every show would close with Bizarrap’s Sesión 53, Shakira’s post-divorce smash hit, as “banknotes” bearing the Barranquilla-born diva‘s face would rain down on the audience.
Many fans kept them with such devotion that when the crisis began, they actually came to have worth, like real banknotes. They called them wolf dollars and were given an international code, AUU, rather sounding like a howl.
The rise of the wolf dollar
A “curb standard” was established to curb the inflationary pressure of attempts to print more of these Shakira notes. Countries on this side of the world signed a pact whereby every AUU unit must be backed by a piece of the cement curb Shakira sat on momentarily during the Barranquilla carnival. Colombia cut it into pieces that were then bought by regional central banks, which meant that every “wolf dollar” was now equivalent to a gram of that curb.
Crises are better overcome in a pack.
This was now bigger than Shakira. It was out of her hands. She pursued her musical path, constantly reinventing her artistic personage as she always had, and amassing an audience of generations. While teenagers danced to her music at parties, their parents would listen to her older songs.
The world changes but, so far, we can always count on a new album by Shakira La Loba. And boy did it change in those years! The Kingdom of America came into being, as did the United States of Europe. Bogotá finally had a working subway, and Venezuelans found themselves a truly representative president — gym bombshell Sascha Fitness.
The Recording Industry Association of America reported in its 2024 mid-year Latin music revenue report that it was already outpacing the first half of 2023 by 7% with 5 million in revenues. South America’s potential is being recognized with markets prospering in what is now a new normal for the live business.
Shakira’s legacy and strength in unity
We’ve known so many Shakiras. She rocked with Argentina’s Cerati and Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler; was Arabian, Caribbean, did reggaeton, merengue and even Mexican regional. She engaged in philanthropy, advising the White House about educational excellence for Hispanics, or announcing she would open a school in the northeastern district of Tibú right in the middle of the drug violence hitting that region. These were solid personal qualities that inevitably served to boost confidence in the AUU among investors in Latin American securities. And when I refer to our securities or assets, I mean creativity, diversity and resistance.
In fact it was never the curb standard that backed the AUU: rather it was the confidence of all those who saw in it a symbol of the work of millions of Latin American women. It is the coin and currency of all the moms who get up every day to work and feed their families, facing down every obstacle — including heartbreak.
In 2040, 15 years after our she-wolf’s iconic tour, we can say history has shown us one thing: that crises are better overcome in a pack, even if macroeconomic stability is more easily attained than a contented heart.
*Originally published March 13, 2025, this article was updated March 19, 2025 with new information on the music industry in Latin America.
