The Silver Coinage of Zapata, 1914-1915

T HE MEXICAN REVOLUTION caused enormous economic dislocation, of which one aspect was the collapse of the money system. The Mexico City mint, which had suspended gold coinage in 191o, ceased to strike the pesos fuertes in March, 1914, and the subsidiary silver in September. Federal gold and silver coin presently disappeared from circulation. Throughout the country masses of paper money were issued, of irregular circulation and precarious value; it was widely counterfeited, and even the genuine paper might be declared invalid overnight. Some coins were produced locally and unofficially-as far as the Federal government was concerned-in an attempt to stabilize values and provide small change. These coinages exist in great quantity and disparity, differing from the Federal and from each other in alloy, weight, types, legends and denomination. This material is by now well arranged,' yet historians have largely ignored its potential for studying monetary policies at the time. The Zapatista coinage is particularly useful, since it is the richest of all the revolutionary coinages; it issued from at least ten mints which produced an abundance of silver and bronze over a period of four years. Many of these coins still exist, and upon examination reveal some otherwise unknown aspects of (and problems within) this revolutionary regime. They also corroborate in an interesting way how conventional was the Zapatista attitude toward property. Zapata's silver $1 and $2 pieces, the subject of this paper, were first struck in Guerrero in 1914; fractional bronze did not appear until the following year. The two silver denominations were proportionately smaller, and contained less silver, than the Federal coinage, but their acceptance was encouraged by the announced presence of an amount of gold in each. The peso bears the legend ORO: 0,300 [grams], the

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Cuban History and Society · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Mexican Socioeconomic and Environmental Dynamics

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