10 Pesos Piet Heyn

Piet Heyn is remembered primarily for the 1628 capture of the Spanish silver fleet in Matanzas Bay — the only time in history an entire treasure fleet was taken intact. The haul, roughly 11.5 million guilders in silver and goods, funded the Dutch West India Company's subsequent military campaigns and briefly broke Spain's stranglehold on Atlantic bullion flows. Cuba's decision to commemorate a Dutch privateer who humiliated Spanish colonial power off its own coastline carries a certain irony that the issuing authority almost certainly appreciated.