On 5 August 2002, Uruguay's banks reopened after a temporary closure imposed during a financial crisis. Reuters reported the following day that several hundred people waited outside banks to reach their savings. An elderly woman standing in line outside a Montevideo bank said that she intended to empty her account and keep the money at home because she no longer trusted the banking system. The authorities had closed the banks to halt a run and approved a freeze of up to three years on some deposits.
A balance can remain visible on an account while becoming difficult to turn into cash when it is needed. A bank that had ordinarily protected savings became a place where depositors went to discover whether those savings could still be retrieved. The people in the queue faced the same national crisis, though their households and reasons for withdrawing money differed. What they shared was the wait for an open counter—and for their turn to reach funds they already considered their own.