Catalog
1 Quetzal
| Issuer | Banco Central de Guatemala |
|---|---|
| Year | 1934-1945 |
| Type | Standard circulation banknote |
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| Obverse description | A quetzal bird perched on a column appears at left and right, flanking a central vignette of a hacienda set against a hilly landscape. The date is printed vertically along the left margin. The design is executed in intaglio with fine guilloche underprint patterns framing the central composition. |
|---|---|
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| Reverse lettering | BANCO CENTRAL DE GUATEMALA UN QUETZAL (Translation: Central Bank of Guatemala One Quetzal) |
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| Comments |
Waterlow & Sons printed this series for Guatemala throughout the mid-1930s and into the war years, a period when the Banco Central was itself a relatively new institution — it had only been established in 1926 following U.S.-advised monetary reforms under Lázaro Chacón that dismantled the old commercial bank note system. The Quetzal as a currency unit dated only to 1925, pegged at par with the U.S. dollar, and these notes were central to enforcing that discipline during years of considerable political turbulence, including the long Ubico dictatorship.
Waterlow's relationship with Guatemalan note production extended across multiple denominations in this period, though the firm's reputation would later be severely damaged by the Artur Virgílio Alves Reis forgery scandal — by the time this series was printing, Waterlow had already lost the Bank of Portugal litigation in 1932.