10 Pesos Alexander von Humboldt

Cuba issued this piece in 1989 as part of a broader hard-currency program targeting foreign collectors and investors — gold coins Cuba could not afford to keep but desperately needed to sell. Humboldt spent 1800–1801 in Cuba, documenting the island's geography, climate, and slave-based sugar economy with the same obsessive precision he applied everywhere. His published findings on Cuban slavery were pointed enough that Spanish colonial authorities took notice.