March 10, 2021
The new Mexican 500 peso notes came out last year. They’re not the old dull brown colour, but an attractive blue, exactly like the 20 peso bills. And, most confusingly, 500s no longer feature a surprisingly bad engraving of Diego Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo, but a good likeness of Benito Juarez, a 19th Century Mexican President. The problem is, Juarez is the featured Mexican on the current 20 peso bill as well.
Who, the TV pundits as well as people buying food in the market all ask, was the genius who came up with this idea? No-one is claiming credit, but presumably it was the same genius who came up with the new 100 peso bills, launched in November.
These new bills feature Sor Juana (1649-1695) a nun who was a proto-feminist of her times, and who, predictably, ran afoul of the Catholic Church. That would be great, except for the fact that the same Sor Juana is found on the old 200 peso bills. On the new 200s, she has been replaced by two martyrs of the first Mexican Revolution, Miguel Hidalgo and Jose Maria Morelos. Morelos, you will find, if you visit Mexico is also on the current 50-pesos bill, though alone.
The new 100s have been scarce, and I don’t see a lot of the new 500s, either. I’m wondering if perhaps someone in the National Bank of Mexico had second thoughts, but I doubt it. Most things in Mexico are moving slowly during the pandemic, and it’s somehow unMexican to admit you goofed and retract a dumb decision, particularly in government.
What several people have said to me is that it frustrates them that Mexico couldn’t find any other national heroes to put on its currency. Most of the recent Presidents have been iffy, excepting perhaps Lazaro Cardenas (in office 1934-1940), but it has had numerous fine painters, and people still legendary in the realm of film, such as Dolores Del Rio or Maria Felix. Or, there’s a Nobel Prizewinner, the author and diplomat Octavio Paz, or the composer Manuel Ponce. These are all people I knew of before I came to Mexico, and there are scores more who are famous here.
But no, none of this seems to have occurred to those who design the currrency. Somebody in Mexico City just shuffled the old safe set of faces, so now we need to check our money carefully, especially the 500s. Beyond that, we all just mutter and shake our heads. Or, more meanly, hope we accidentally get what someone thinks is a 20 peso bill, but isn’t.
Mexed Messages 