1 Peso

Guatemala's peso coinage of this period was struck under the liberal reform government of Justo Rufino Barrios, who had overhauled the nation's monetary system in the late 1870s to align it with the Latin American metric standard. The peso replaced the older real-based system, and these large silver coins were intended to project fiscal credibility for a government aggressively courting foreign investment in coffee infrastructure and railway concessions.

Production ran across the Guatemala City mint through a politically turbulent stretch that included Barrios's death at the Battle of Chalchuapa in 1885 — killed while attempting to forcibly reunify Central America.