1/4 Real 'Quarto/Quartilla'

Guanajuato issued these brass quartos during the mid-1850s under its own state authority, a practice that survived well into the Reform War period precisely because the federal government in Mexico City was too fractured to enforce monetary uniformity. State-issued copper and brass fractional coinage filled a genuine vacuum — silver was hoarded or exported, and small transactions required something tangible. Guanajuato, as one of the wealthiest mining states in the republic, had both the infrastructure and the political will to act independently.

The 1856–1857 date range coincides almost exactly with the promulgation of the Reform Laws under Comonfort, a period of acute institutional instability that made locally issued coinage not just tolerated but necessary.