In May 1989, shoppers gathered outside the Boerio Supermarket in Rosario, Argentina. A contemporary TIME report begins with the crowd assembling quietly in streets beside the store, where the manager recognised many regular customers. They had come during hyperinflation, when the price of food and other necessities could not be assumed to remain stable.
The report does not prove that every supermarket had the same queue. It preserves one specific scene: people waiting outside a familiar neighbourhood shop to obtain food. In an ordinary checkout line, the uncertainty is whether an item will remain on the shelf. Under hyperinflation, customers also had to wonder whether it would still carry the same price when their turn arrived.