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1 Lempira
| Issuer | Banco de Honduras |
|---|---|
| Year | 1932 |
| Type | Log in to see details |
| Value | 1 Lempira (1 HNL) |
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| Composition | Log in to see details |
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| Obverse description | Log in to see details |
|---|---|
| Obverse lettering | REPÚBLICA DE HONDURAS EL BANCO DE HONDURAS PAGARÁ AL PORTADOR EN MONEDA EFECTIVA 1 SÉRIE A TEGUCIGALPA, 11 DE FEBRERO DE 1932. UN LEMPIRA (Translation: Republic of Honduras The Bank of Honduras Pay to Bearer in currency Series A Tegucigalpa, February 11th., 1932. One Lempira) |
| Reverse description | Printed entirely in blue, the reverse centres on an intaglio vignette of the Banco de Honduras building, rendered in fine detail with arched windows, a colonnaded façade, and trees at right against a mountainous backdrop. The central vignette is flanked on each side by large rosette guilloche medallions bearing the numeral "1", with the bank name inscribed in a decorative cartouche above and the denomination "UN LEMPIRA" in bold lettering below. The printer's imprint "Waterlow & Sons Limited, Londres, Inglaterra" appears at the bottom margin. |
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| Comments |
Banco de Honduras issued this note just as the country was being squeezed between collapsing banana revenues and the broader collapse of commodity prices after 1929. The Lempira had only been introduced as Honduras's national currency in 1931, replacing the Peso, so this 1932 printing came within the currency's first full year of circulation — Waterlow & Sons in London producing the plates before any domestic infrastructure existed to do the work.
Waterlow's contract with Honduran authorities during this period was part of a broader Latin American portfolio the firm managed through the interwar years. The note takes its name from the 16th-century Lenca chieftain who led resistance against Spanish conquest — one of the few cases where a currency denomination and its unit name carry genuine indigenous political weight rather than colonial nomenclature.