Provisional Government 5 Pesos Note

The civil war is etched into monetary history as a proliferation of banknotes. Carranza's Constitutionalists, Villa's faction, and Zapata's faction each printed their own banknotes. It was not just the factions. States, cities, and even mining companies issued their own paper, and the total number of issuing authorities is said to differ depending on the catalogue. The piece shown here is a 5 Pesos note of the Provisional Government, issued in Veracruz on December 1, 1914. The interior of a country that had long supplied the world with silver coins became filled with paper money whose issuers did not recognize one another. By 1916, twenty-one different types of banknotes were in circulation.