1 Sucre

The sucre had been Ecuador's monetary unit since 1884, named for Antonio José de Sucre, the Venezuelan-born general who secured Ecuadorian independence at the Battle of Pichincha in 1822. By the mid-1980s, chronic inflation and a collapse in oil revenues — Ecuador's primary export earner — were eroding the currency's purchasing power steadily. The shift to nickel-clad steel for this denomination reflects the period's fiscal pressures; intrinsic metal costs had made earlier compositions increasingly impractical.

The sucre was ultimately abolished in 2000 when Ecuador dollarized its economy following a catastrophic banking crisis.