Foreign exchange black markets in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Jamaica and Peru were studied during the period 1990-93. This group of case studies presents a broad view of the phenomenon in Latin America at the beginning of the 1990s. This is not a traditional economic analysis of foreign exchange markets, for many reasons. Most importantly, since black markets are illegal by definition, they are not recorded in offical statistics and the participants are not easily identified. Nevertheless, these markets are often widely used and well known to people living in the Latin American countries, so it is possible to paint a reasonably accurate picture of them.

The work is based largely on interviews with black market participants in each country. This primary means of collecting information was desirable because of the general lack of published sources of data or other records; though published information was also used when available. The book discusses foreign exchange black markets from a variety of perspectives, looking at who participates in them, how they function, and what impacts they have on local economies.